NBA 2026 Preseason: The Night of London Lions and the European Generation Rewriting Basketball's Map

That night at the Moda Center, the final buzzer sounded long after the result had been settled: 119-66. The stands of a preseason game are always sparse, and among the few fans who stayed until the end, most were staring down at their phones. The London Lions - the first British club to step onto the floor against an NBA opponent - had just walked off with a 53-point deficit. On their bench, a young player sat motionless, his towel still draped over his shoulder, eyes fixed on the empty space above the rim. No television camera caught that moment. But after rewatching the entire night's footage, I realized it was the most memorable image of them all.

The electronic billboards ringing the court blinked the words Global Game. Basketball is expanding across the world, and the London Lions are living proof of it. But when the talent gap is so wide that a quarter becomes a light practice session for the home side, the question is no longer who wins. The question is what people are expanding for, and who pays the price.

I have spent years following basketball through the lens of an esports content creator, a world where every patch reshuffles the power rankings and every season is a rewriting of history. This NBA season is entering a similarly large patch. And the preseason, however lightly regarded, is where those changes surface first.

The context of an overlooked phase

The preseason is a world of its own. This is when coaches experiment with lineups, stars are rested by design, and young players are given the chance to prove they deserve a spot on the main roster. The results of these games carry little reference value, because defensive intensity is far below the regular season, rotations are unrepresentative, and core players routinely sit out.

The absentee list from the recent slate was long enough to speak for itself: Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs, Isaiah Hartenstein alongside Ajay Mitchell and Nikola Topic of the Oklahoma City Thunder, plus a string of names at the Atlanta Hawks, Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz and Minnesota Timberwolves. Most of these were not injuries. They were load management, a term that has become standard in the modern NBA, where preserving fitness for 82 real games matters more than an October friendly.

The broader context deserves a place at the table: the NBA is in an era of unprecedented globalization. International games, European clubs invited to participate, and an ever-growing flow of international players into the league. The Portland Trail Blazers versus the London Lions was a milestone in that process. But it also laid bare the gap between two basketball worlds, a gap no advertising slogan can erase.

One verifiable fact bears repeating: according to international media reports, this was the first time a professional British basketball club stepped onto the floor against an NBA opponent. That symbolic event took place within the framework of the preseason exhibition series, where European clubs are often invited as opponents to promote the league's global image. I have followed exhibitions like this for years, and the interesting part is that the result often matters less than what happens off the court.

The signals hidden in the numbers

The first thing that jumps out when rewatching the footage is how Aday Mara was used. The big man played 33 minutes and 11 seconds, recording 17 points, 10 rebounds, 6 assists and 4 blocks. The number that stands out is not the scoring. It is the 6 assists. A big man dishing out 6 assists in a single game is a sign of the modern point-center model, a center who serves as both a defensive anchor and an offensive hub. Mara was run as a primary offensive hub, and that is a role signal, not proof of a verified skill.

This needs to be stated clearly, because the preseason is the ideal environment for inflated numbers. Young bigs tend to post unusually high assist totals against low-intensity defenses. The ball moves more slowly, the gaps are wider, and cuts are contested less fiercely. Mara's passes that night were beautiful, but they need to be re-verified in the regular season, when every possession has a defender fighting for it. The playmaking-center model was redefined by Jokić, and every young player with good passing touch gets compared to him. Most of those comparisons do not survive contact with reality.

The second signal is head coach Jordi Fernandez's decision to hand Egor Demin a starting role. The young Russian guard scored just 4 points and 3 assists in 22 minutes and 18 seconds, but the start itself was the message. A preseason start is not measured by scoring, but by the coaching staff's development priorities. Fernandez, a Spanish head coach, is rebuilding the Brooklyn Nets around young international players, and Demin is part of that plan.

Brooklyn enters this phase as a team in transition. With no remaining stars to carry the load, the franchise has chosen the long road: hand the ball to the young, accept losses to accumulate experience. Demin getting the start in an exhibition is an expression of that strategy. From an observer's viewpoint, this is the right direction, but it also raises the question of whether a young guard can withstand the pressure of a playmaking role on a struggling team.

Then there is Nolan Traore. The young Frenchman scored 17 points in just 19 minutes and 50 seconds. This is the most notable type of preseason stat: per-minute efficiency. When no true efficiency metric such as True Shooting or PER is available, points per minute is the crude but most useful gauge of who is seizing his opportunity. Traore scored nearly a point per minute, a pace that, if sustained in the regular season, would place him among the most watchable young guards. But that pace must also be read against the faster tempo and looser defense of an exhibition game.

In Washington, Bilal Coulibaly left his mark on both ends with 19 points, 3 steals and 1 block. This is the kind of player rebuilding teams crave: long, quick, able to defend multiple positions, and increasingly polished on offense. Coulibaly and Alex Sarr form a promising young duo for the Wizards, though every assessment at this stage is directional only. What caught my eye was how Coulibaly appeared on both ends of the floor - a sign he is being coached to become a two-way player, not merely a scoring specialist.

Also in this group, Sidy Cissoko scored 13 points in 15 minutes and 17 seconds. This is the kind of line scouts call per-minute efficiency - useful for spotting potential, but insufficient to conclude anything about sustainability. Cissoko is one of many young French players seeking a foothold in the NBA, and every minute he plays is precious.

In Phoenix, Anthony Edwards scored 26 points against the New York Knicks. This is the kind of line belonging to a star at the peak of his career who has nothing left to prove. Edwards scores like a man accustomed to carrying a team, and the 26 is a standard, not a breakthrough. For a player like Edwards, what matters is not the point total but how he distributes his energy across quarters and how he connects with new teammates.

More notable is Lauri Markkanen's 11 points, a modest total for a player who usually scores over 20 a night. But the preseason is where stars play with the handbrake on, and judging them on a friendly is a classic mistake. Markkanen is the kind of player who can score from many spots, and his failure to explode in one game means nothing for the season ahead.

And then there is Rudy Gobert with just 3 rebounds in 22 minutes and 4 seconds. For a player who has led the league in rebounding multiple times, this is a statistical outlier. But an outlier is not the same as a decline. With no data on the matchup, the effort level or his physical condition, this is something to monitor, not something to conclude. The Minnesota Timberwolves still won, and in a win, a veteran center coasting at half speed is entirely plausible. I have watched too many times as great players were written off over one unfocused exhibition.

As for the Minnesota Timberwolves versus the New York Knicks game, the 122-104 score favored the road team. In the source material I accessed, the Knicks were labeled defending champions. That is a claim requiring independent verification, because it shapes the entire reading of the game. If the Knicks truly are defending champions, then the Timberwolves' win at Madison Square Garden means far more than an ordinary exhibition. But I do not have sufficient basis to assert that, and by the principle of sports journalism, an unverified fact must be flagged as such.

When young rosters knock on the throne's door

What makes this preseason slate different is not any single individual, but the dense presence of a generation of young international players. Mara, Traore, Demin, Coulibaly, Sarr, along with names like Saraf, Wolf and Cissoko, form a group of players entering their first or second NBA season. This clustering is not coincidental; it reflects a wave of international scouting that is reshaping the league's structure.

For years, European basketball was seen as a source of fundamentals and tactical thinking. But the current wave differs in scale. European academies have moved beyond producing shooters; they now generate lead guards and versatile bigs as well. When a Spanish coach hands the ball to a Russian guard in Brooklyn, or when a 19-year-old Frenchman scores 17 points in 20 minutes, it signals a mature ecosystem.

From another angle, this is also when I think about Vietnamese basketball. We have young players seeking paths abroad, and domestic leagues that are increasingly professionally run. But the gap between a developing basketball nation and a development system that has operated for decades cannot be closed overnight. Watching the London Lions walk off with 66 points, I saw a mirror that both illuminates and reminds. It shows the road ahead, but also how long that road is.

The Portland - London Lions game carries symbolic weight. For the first time, a British club faced an NBA team, even in an exhibition. Games like this are often seen by analysts as market tests. The NBA is seeking to expand its presence in Europe and the UK, through regular-season games or even a team based on the continent in the future. The London Lions did not win a single quarter, but they helped open a door that did not exist ten years ago.

That is the logic of a global sports industry: the value of a game lies not in the score, but in the market it reaches. A night at the Moda Center with sparse stands may not stir American fans, but it is news in London, in Madrid, in Belgrade. In a world where basketball increasingly has no borders, exhibitions like this are the first bricks of a much larger structure.

I wonder whether, ten years from now, anyone will remember this night. Probably not. But sports history is often written in small moments that contemporaries overlook. A dynasty does not collapse with a thunderclap, but with a slip in the final minute of stoppage time - and sometimes, a new order also begins with an October friendly nobody bothers to name.

The contrarian view: preseason fever and what the numbers conceal

There is a paradox in how we consume the preseason. The less reliable information there is, the more easily we cling to flashy numbers. A young player scores 17 points in 20 minutes and is instantly a phenomenon, despite scoring those points in a game where the opposing defense played at half speed.

I want to pose an uncomfortable question: if we strip away all the numbers, what are we left with? The answer is very little. No true efficiency metric, no impact metric, no usage rate. The data from this slate is purely points, rebounds, assists and blocks - things anyone can read off a box score without analysis. A player who scores 17 points may have taken 20 shots or 8; we do not know. A player with 10 rebounds may have played 35 minutes or 15; we do not know that either.

Worse, there are signs the data itself is scrambled. In the Portland - London Lions stat sheet, the names of a few players who belong to other teams appear. This raises a question about the reliability of the entire dataset. When the data is untrustworthy, every conclusion drawn from it needs its confidence lowered. This is a basic principle of the profession: never build a house on a shaky foundation.

The concern is not the result of the game, but how we read that result. The preseason exists to experiment, not to conclude. Turning October numbers into April forecasts is a trap even veterans easily fall into. Teams are not playing to win in this phase; they are playing to find their best lineup. And sometimes, losing an exhibition is the most useful thing for a young player, because it teaches him that the highest level forgives no lapse.

I recall the image of Rudy Gobert with 3 rebounds. On social media, people immediately declared him washed up. But a 33-year-old center playing 22 minutes in an exhibition, on a team that won, does not mean he has declined. It only means he is saving energy. The rush to conclude reflects a habit of our age: we need a story instantly, and we are willing to use flimsy numbers to build that story.

For young players, the trap is even more dangerous. The rookie wall is a real phenomenon: first-year players often slump in the middle and late season due to fatigue and adjustment. Hailing them after an exhibition can create unnecessary pressure and sometimes derail an entire development path. I have seen this happen to more than a few young talents, both in basketball and in esports, where a peak performance in a small tournament can turn a player into the target of unreasonable expectations.

Load management also deserves mention. The mass absence of stars is not a sign of a declining league, but the expression of a mature sports-science culture. Teams understand that a player's value lies in his ability to contribute in games that matter, and an October friendly is not one of them. This is a lesson many other sports, including those where stars are forced to play every game, have yet to learn.

Conclusion: a season beginning with things that cannot yet be named

When the night at the Moda Center ended, what lingered was not the 119-66 score, but the sense of an order in motion. A British club stepped onto an NBA floor. A Spanish coach handed the ball to a Russian guard. A young Spanish center ran 33 minutes as an offensive hub. These pieces do not yet form a complete picture, but they are moving in the same direction.

The regular season will answer everything. The numbers from tonight will be forgotten, but the roles handed out, the opportunities opened, and the market doors pushed ajar - those will remain. I will follow Mara when he has to face true centers. I will follow Demin when Brooklyn has to win. I will follow Gobert when the season begins and every rebound counts.

And I will remember the young player on the London Lions bench, who scored nothing of note, who appeared in no highlight reel. He is part of this story, perhaps the truest part. For in basketball, as in any sport, people usually remember only the winner. But it is the losers who teach us how to read the game. And on a night when the score was settled very early, the man on that bench, towel still on his shoulder, was the one who told me the truest story about the gap between two basketball worlds.