In recent times the NBA has been billing itself as a truly global enterprise, breaking free of its primary market in the US to tap into burgeoning new-world markets such as China and South East Asia.
This has meant that, according to a study undertaken by Forbes, 35% of people who log on to NBA.com reside outside of the United States.
Nowhere has this impact been felt more than in Europe. Particularly players from Eastern and Central Europe, who once idolized players of the USSR and later their own budding nation states, are now turning to American idols instead, and eyeing moves to US Colleges as a route into the NBA.
This has led to an exodus of young talent from the European game, meaning increased international exposure for the NBA, but a worrying decline in the quality of the European game at club level.
Here are some of the ways both domestic European basketball and the NBA can better co-exist, for the betterment of the game both east and west of the Atlantic.
The US College System Is Gutting European Clubs
The NBA’s very own homepage recently boasted of 108 international players filling its franchise rosters, with many NBA odds lines packed with foreign talent. However, many of these come via the US College system rather than being directly sourced from European clubs.?
This follows a recent trend that has been driven by basketball’s world governing body FIBA and the NBA called Basketball Without Borders (BWB), which essentially cuts European clubs out of being able to benefit financially from developing young talent, siphoning off the best players at an early stage of their career to US Colleges, which then use the draft system to pass players on to the NBA.
What this has led to in the European game is a worrying trend in which clubs are incentivized to bring in sub-par American players or more experienced European players at the expense of their own local talent, a fact bemoaned by the president of the EuroLeague, Jordi Bertomeu. This trend has to end in order for basketball to flourish at a grassroots level in Europe.
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International scouting missions are more commonplace than ever before
FIBA and EuroLeague at Loggerheads
Basketball is far from the only sport where its international body is at odds with regional sports organisations and leagues, with similar issues arising recently in both boxing and soccer to name but two. FIBA and the EuroLeague have been at loggerheads for years and often to the detriment of the European game, with the latter blaming the former for a packed international schedule leading to increased injuries and a lack of exposure for domestic clubs.
However, what is unusual is for a world governing body to side with one country’s domestic league over others, which appears to be what FIBA has done in deciding to back the NBA over the EuroLeague regarding the BWB program as well as allowing the NBA to eat into FIBA’s summer international schedule with the NBA Summer League.
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The NBA continues to build on its international profile
When Will the Talent Dry Up? Other Sports Show How It Should Not Be Done
Although the NBA is right to search far and wide for talent, it should remember that talent pools eventually dry up if they are not regularly re-filled.
A case in point is that of dominant European soccer leagues, who have become intent on signing players from Africa and Eastern European teams at increasingly young ages, so as to bypass having to pay a transfer fee down the line, with some of those same players even switching nationality to play for their adopted country, which of course is to the detriment of the international game.
Although in the short term such a questionable tactic may be profitable for the NBA, in the long term they may find there are no young players left to scout, with coaching and training budgets at Europe’s clubs slashed as a result of chronic under-funding.
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