The Nba

European basketball is in crisis, and only David Stern can fix it. So says former NBA star Sarunas Marciulionis, the founder of the Northern European Basketball League (NEBL), who has called on the NBA commissioner to preside over a summit to restructure professional basketball in Europe. "Right now [European basketball officials] are in the dark," says Marciulionis, whose emigration from Lithuania to the Warriors in 1989 helped open the pipeline of international players to the NBA. "They have no vision."

While European soccer is unified under a single umbrella that includes the wildly successful Champions League, which last year generated hundreds of millions in sponsorship revenue from such brands as Heineken, Sony and MasterCard, European hoops is a model of economic instability and contentiousness. The continent's top league, the Euroleague, has only a fraction of the Champions League's sponsors, and its relationship with FIBA, basketball's international governing body, has been fractious at best; the two, in fact, broke off ties between 2000 and '01. The FIBA- Euroleague split, which led to the creation of two major European leagues (think the old NBA-ABA wars) divided the continent's fan base--and turned off potential sponsors. Though reunited, the two organizations remain at odds about how to fix their sport.

"There are no big brands--none--connected with high-scale basketball in Europe," says Marciulionis, who intends to parlay his tenure with the smaller NEBL into a run for the presidency of FIBA- Europe. "[There needs to be] a long-term master plan with FIBA- Europe, the Euroleague and the NBA so that they all understand one thing: They have to join together to promote basketball."

Hence the plea to Stern, whose global marketing savvy and credibility abroad makes him the perfect candidate to help clean up the mess. "We need one structure, one clean pyramid," says Marciulionis. "I think David could unite Europe."

Stern has pushed ambitious European initiatives in the past--as recently as three years ago he publicly floated the idea of an NBA league or division on the continent--but he is no longer pushing European expansion, nor is he willing "to intrude" in the affairs of another league. "We have so many issues on our own [continent]," Stern told SI last Saturday. "We think that the Euroleague is professionalizing the sport and working very hard under difficult circumstances to raise the level of basketball."

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