EXPANSION: With basketball’s popularity expanding throughout the world, the National Basketball Association (NBA) looks to expand its borders.
By Levi Murtaugh, Staff Writer
Since 1978, the NBA has played 148 international games. Every year, the NBA pushes to raise the bar for more international play. In the future, it hopes to permanently expand internationally and locate a team somewhere in Europe.
Many people, including New York Post sports writer Tim Bontemps, credit this opportunity of international expansion to the Dream Team of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The Dream Team was the first American Olympic basketball team to feature active NBA players. “The Dream Team captured the world’s imagination and became the story of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The result was an explosion of basketball’s popularity around the globe and an influx of foreign stars into the NBA,” Bontemps said. Of course, the NBA will seize any opportunity for revenue as soon as possible; they have already scheduled nine international league games this 2017 season in Shanghai, Beijing, Barcelona, Madrid and London.
International play is already a significant component of professional basketball in the United States. In 2014, the Texas San Antonio Spurs won the NBA championship with 10 of the team’s 15 players. In 2012, the NBA had 85 international players from 36 different countries. “It’s not even the National Basketball Association anymore,”the Spurs’ center Boris Diaw, a player from France, said. “It’s now like the IBA – the International Basketball Association. Our team reached the championship last year with nine foreign players,” Diaw said.
Some would say international expansion has already begun with the Toronto Raptors in Canada. But while Canada is certainly a step in the right direction, it will take much more to truly integrate this American culture of basketball into the world.
The NBA has had its ups and downs, but the thought and opportunity of international expansion is certainly a benefit. With these holding promises of great riches for the NBA, it’s sure to happen sooner or later, especially with the gradual increase of games across the Atlantic; as a result, the NBA should see a large increase in revenue.