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International Basketball Association? Expanding to Europe could be in the cards for the NBAPosted: Monday February 11, 2002 1:00 PM
As Alicia Keys and Angie Stone finished up their patriotic medley before the tip-off of Sunday's NBA All-Star Game, cameras cut to Michael Jordan, who was pawing the ground like a thoroughbred in its paddock. In fact, the cutaway shot could have been of NBA commissioner David Stern, who's itching to make a move of his own. During his annual state-of-the-game press conference on Saturday, the commish let slip that the NBA expects to expand beyond North America -- and relatively soon, probably at the end of the league's new six-year TV deal. Much spadework needs to be done -- assessing market conditions, geopolitical stability and exchange rates -- but the will is there. And more people have been flattened by underestimating Stern's will than by getting between Shaq's shoulder and the basket. In divulging his intentions, Stern gave a nod to my Sports Illustrated colleague Jack McCallum. About a dozen years ago Jack asked Stern to limn what NBA expansion to Europe might look like. "It isn't going to happen," Stern replied, but he played along anyway. "If it were to happen, I'll tell you how it might take shape." Now Stern describes a basketball world along the lines Jack wrote about -- that is, with a kind of NBA Transatlantic Division, featuring four or five franchises in Western Europe. Teams based in the U.S. would make a continental swing to play the Rome Built-In-A-Days, the Athens Olympics and the Plasters of Paris, just as teams make an East Coast or West Coast trip today. On Saturday, the commish confirmed that this model is still a possibility. The problem: The NBA would be blowing off the fans and officials of clubs like Real Madrid and Panathinaikos Athens, which provide the texture and tradition of European basketball. To solve that problem, there's always Option #2: The NBA could simply fold existing European clubs into a new division or affiliate with an outfit like the Euroleague. But would a European owner be willing to pay current NBA owners the huge expansion fees they've come to expect? Most of the elite clubs in Europe have been around since long before the Ft. Wayne Pistons were a gleam in Fred Zollner's eye. They don't need the NBA to survive. Finally, the NBA may choose to start an overseas league from scratch. But next to the real thing, a new league couldn't help but have a second-rate aroma. Perhaps you could get away with putting the NBA brand on a new league in Asia or Eastern Europe, but in Western Europe players would balk at a developmental league's pay scale, and fans would know that the real product still hadn't crossed the pond. Of these three models, which seems most suited to Stern's style? Surely the first -- in which the NBA simply adds franchises in Europe and perhaps Mexico City. That would give the league office maximum control, and maximum control has been characteristic of every turn of Stern's career. (Just look at the WNBA, which sent the ABL back into the kitchen. Or the new National Basketball Development League (NBDL), which was up and running almost as soon as the CBA faltered, and is already establishing itself with a reality show on ESPN and a hip nickname -- "The Down Low," after the "DL" in NBDL.) The most respectful and immediately workable tack, however, would be to fold current European clubs into the NBA. "It's not anything I ever thought I'd be saying in a public forum," Stern confessed on Saturday, as he sketched out his global vision. But then who could have expected players with no Stateside experience -- Spain's Pau Gasol and France's Tony Parker; Germany's Dirk Nowitzki and Yugoslavia's Peja Stojakovic -- to swan into the NBA and assume starring roles at All-Star Weekend? Sports Illustrated senior writer Alexander Wolff is the author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure (Warner Books), available online and in stores everywhere. You can contact him at biggamesmallworld.com. |
