The NBA preseason is usually nothing to write home about, but for the second consecutive season, the Denver Nuggets will be playing an early exhibition in a non-traditional location.
On Tuesday morning, the NBA announced that the Nuggets would be taking on the Toronto Raptors in Canada at the start of the preseason, but not in Toronto.
VANCOUVER… The @Raptors & @nuggets are coming to town on October 6! Register your interest now for #NBACanadaSeries presented by Bell.
➡️ https://t.co/YM7vnwK4yz pic.twitter.com/LOM1V2Y97U
— NBA Canada (@NBACanada) July 22, 2025
This year’s NBA Canada Series will be played in Vancouver, highlighted with one of the biggest international faces in the game in Nikola Jokic and one of the best Canadian talents in the league in Jamal Murray. On the other side, the Raptors will be putting on for their country in a different city. Scheduled for Monday, Oct. 6, the contest will give sports fans in Vancouver a taste of NBA basketball, something the town has been wanting back since the Grizzlies left town in 2001.
The game will be played at Rogers Arena, the former home of the Grizzlies and current home of the NHL’s Canucks.
Vancouver had an NBA team call the city home for six seasons from 1995-2001 before a combination of the lockout, low attendance, poor performance, a weak Canadian dollar, created a scenario that practically forced the old ownership to sell the team, which led to the new group relocating the franchise to Memphis.
This will be the second consecutive season that the Nuggets will have played a preseason game in a special, neutral site after they traveled to Abu Dhabi to take on the Boston Celtics for two games to kick off the preseason a season ago. There were no neutral games in 2023, and one in 2022 when the Nuggets played against the LA Clippers in Ontario, California.
There have been plenty of talks regarding NBA expansion in recent years, but Seattle and Las Vegas seem to be the two frontrunners for whenever Adam Silver decides to go forward with the plan.
The NBA is also playing preseason games in Abu Dhabi (Knicks vs. 76ers), Melbourne (Pelicans vs. teams from the NBL) and China (Nets vs. Suns). This is one of five total preseason games for the Nuggets, with the other four yet to be announced. The NBA regular season begins on Oct. 21.
