The Heat last played in Mexico City in 2017, winning that regular-season game against the Brooklyn Nets. (Rebecca Blackwell / AP, Rebecca Blackwell / AP)
There will be an element of the southern border for the Miami Heat, confirmed the NBA on Wednesday.
Heat, is scheduled for a match of December 17 in Mexico City, which will count against the local San Antonio Spurs calendar and will be a television on a national scale on NBA TV.
It will be the first regular heat game outside the United States or Canada since he beat Brooklyn Nets 101-89 on December 9, 2017, against 19,777 lists in Mexico City.
The game in the sand of Mexico City is part of the expansion of the Spurs beyond their house in the At & T center, with the Spurs to play two games this season in Austin, Texas, as well as at the center of Alamodom.
For heat, the game will come instead of its regular seasonal trip scheduled each year in San Antonio. The heat visit last season in San Antonio had to be reprogrammed due to the pandemic, while the heat could not present the eight players required uniformly. The heat swept the two -game series last season of the Spurs.
During the trip from Heat 2017 to Mexico City, then the servers of the heat goalkeeper, Dion Waiters, said: "I just discovered that he was in fact bigger than New York. It's crazy.
"I'm going to tell you one thing, the cars do not stop. It's worse than New York. It's crazy."
of this 2017 match, Heat Erik Spoelstra Coach said at that time: "I was pleasantly surprised to walk and watch the NBA matches on television wherever we were, and fans we recognized. He felt like we were in Miami. »
This 2017 match in Mexico City took place three months after an earthquake of 7.1 hit the city, requiring an inspection of the NBA site before the meetings with networks.
will once again put the heat to an extreme elevation, Mexico is 7,350 feet above sea level. The highest elevation of the NBA is Denver, with 5,280.
"It looks like we played two games," said the heat goalkeeper then Goran Dragic after this 2017 exhibition.
In 2013, a game between the Spurs and the Minnesota Timberwolves in Mexico City had to postpone due to the smoke that filled the sand with a generator dysfunction.
Last month, in the Arboledas Park district of Mexico City, the NBA Mexico designed local courts with a mural that included a section with a painting by the Burnie Heat pet.
The NBA will return to international matches this season and is pre-season after a break due to the pandemic. The last NBA match of the regular season in Mexico arrived in 2019, between the Spurs and Phoenix Suns.
The NBA has already announced pre-season matches on October 6 and 8 between the Hawks of Atlanta and Milwaukee Bucks in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.
The League will also organize a regular season match between the Chicago Bulls and the Detroit Pistons in Paris on January 19.
The first NBA match outside the United States or Canada was a 1984 exhibition between Suns and New Jersey networks. The first regular seasonal match took place in Tokyo in 1990, between the Suns and Utah Jazz.
Among the other international places for heat games (all exhibitions) were Nassau, Bahamas; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Tel Aviv; Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Paris, London; Beijing; Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro. Heat has no international exhibition this year.
In a statement published Wednesday, before 3 p.m. NBA 2022-23 full version of the calendar, the NBA said:
"The National Basketball Association (NBA) and Zor of Mexico on Saturday December 17, marking the first match of Mexico City since 2019 and the 31st championship match in Mexico in general, more than any country in Outside the United States and Canada. The NBA and Zignia will continue to collaborate in future NBA initiatives in Mexico in the coming years. "
.Tickets for the NBA Mexico City 2022 will be sold on a later date. To date until Saturday, September 3, fans interested in attending the game can record their interest in tickets and have access to an exclusive presale of visiting tickets www. nbaenmexico.com .
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