By Aris Barkas/ barkas@eurohoops.net
During the European Cups’ week, the NBA has its own break for the All-Star Game. And while there’s a strong – mostly local – following for the top European clubs and their quest for the first trophy of the season, guess where the casual basketball audience in Europe will tune in…
For many years, especially around the turn of the century, the European expansion of the NBA was a very popular topic in the basketball scene of the old continent. There has been a number of reports, turned into urban legends, about advanced talks under the late David Stern, or even about signed memorandums locked deep in the vaults of clubs like Real Madrid and Panathinaikos.
Even the creation of a private league like the EuroLeague back in 2001 was heralded as the first step towards this direction and almost 20 years later, the recent news about a joint meeting between FIBA, the NBA, and the EuroLeague revived briefly the old myths.
However, the awful truth is that during the digital age, the NBA has already expanded to Europe, without giving much back to European basketball and without having to spend anything on logistics and overseas trips.
Not only the NBA is by far the strongest and wealthier basketball league in the world, but it’s considered to be the mainstream basketball league in most of the world. The NBA has no anymore just some cult following in Europe, like in the 80s. The NBA is basketball to the mainstream audience.
It’s only natural for the viewer to be attracted by the top level of any sport, however, at this point, there’s a clear connection to the European audience, which only became stronger and more organic during the last two decades.
Just ask yourself where do the top European players currently compete?
Why the NBA has changed its scheduling and has teams playing during the weekends on the prime-time slot of European television?
Why the NBA has revived the NBA Europe operations marketing-wise and organized an NBA junior League in every top European basketball market, on most occasions together with the local federations which are dying for a collaboration with the League?
We are currently living a golden age of European – and international – basketball. The three main MVP contenders are not US players with Giannis Antetokounmpo representing Greece and Nikola Jokic representing Serbia.
The top seven rebounders in the NBA are currently Europeans and Luka Doncic remains arguably the most intriguing young star of the NBA
Per the official press release of the All-Star Game: “Fifteen international players from 12 countries, including six international All-Stars and a record-tying four international All-Star Game starters, will participate in NBA All-Star 2022 in Cleveland”.
Four of those players are Europeans, the brightest stars of the continent, and the top players of their countries.
Make no mistake. The NBA is already here in Europe to stay and at some point, if the logistics are finally worked out, we may even see the elusive “European conference”. But at this age, this is not a condition for the expansion.
The NBA has already expanded in Europe remotely and in most cases has a really big slice of the basketball pie, compared to European, domestic or not, competitions.