03/28/2008: "NBA EUROPE?"
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Will the NBA ever expand into Europe with a multi-team division, taking a full part in the league schedule?
It is the British basketball question that just won't go away.
No. Not "When will the BBL EVER get a TV deal?" (That one's been answered).
Not, "How can any credible league allow teams to use player-coaches?" (We know the answer to that).
Not even, "Who is actually in charge of running the GB national team?" (That one will NEVER be answered, at least not in our life times).
This one emanates from the fertile imagination of NBA Commissioner David Stern and just won't die. It boils down to a simple question: Will the NBA expand into Europe with a multi-team division taking a full part in the league schedule?
The topic was first raised by Stern at the LA All Star Game in 2004, an event which the all-powerful Commish traditionally uses to throw out some weird and wonderful proposals.
A year later, and after some cursory research by the league, Stern reported a Euro division was a non-starter, purely because of the lack of suitable arenas in the Old World.
But this topic is like one of those interminable Terminator movies starring the Governor of California. Just when you think it is over and the issue is dead … guess what …
At All Star in February, Stern - or people close to him - leaked the notion to Sports Illustrated that the idea isn't dead at all and that Europe is now ripe for such a project. This week, on a conference call with English journos to launch NBA Europe Live, he even put a time scale of "within the decade" on it.
All of which, of course, raises more questions than answers and that is exactly what Stern intends to do.
He's throwing the issue out there precisely to see what response he gets. Who knows? Maybe he gets a call from Roman Abramovich or Bernie Ecclestone offering the $300-400m it will cost to buy an expansion franchise?
Maybe the Mayor of Istanbul - where the NBA would really love a franchise from what I hear - calls to say he's starting building a venue tomorrow.
Maybe Rupert Murdoch is on the line saying Sky will show a London team's games for the $10m-plus any new team would need to generate in local TV revenue.
Then again … maybe not.
The unavoidable fact is that Europe does not seem any more ready for an NBA division now than it was in 2004.
Then, London's O2 Arena was being built and Berlin's O2 World (opening this year and even better than London, I'm told) was at the planning stage with vague talk about buildings in Rome and Madrid.
Now? London and Berlin are open, there is a hole in the ground in Rome and a whole lot of talk and political problems with the project in Madrid.
Even if all these arenas are up and running in a couple of years, there remain numerous obstacles.
Stern told me in New Orleans that he has was stunned that the English Premier League's proposed overseas game was met with such hostility all over the world. But if he thinks federations in Italy and Spain - not to mention the Euroleague - will be happy about the sort of competition European expansion would generate, he might be in for a surprise.
There are more practical problems - which I'm sure the Commissioner has thought through. Like conflicting labour laws, fluctuating currencies and the big cultural difference between US and Euro sports crowds - there, people go to an "event," just as they go to the movies or a concert; here, people go to support their team and see them win.
Those are real problems unlike the red herring about travel problems. Believe me, if the NBA tell the NBA Players' Union they are creating four new teams and 60 new jobs for their members, they will receive no objections from players about a Euro division.
Travel? The NBA schedule is already so brutal that it will not take much tweaking to accommodate a European division. One smart suggestion I've read from a Spanish journalist is that the Euro division would be in the Eastern Conference one season, the West the next.
It might mean longer road swings and longer home stands, but travel is no obstacle at all.
There is a simple answer to the question that won't go away and it's this:
If the NBA can make money by starting a European division, they will. If they cannot, they will not.
That does not necessarily mean selling out 20,000 seats at the O2 for every home game in an 82-game regular season - though selling out the arena quickly for last year's Boston-Minnesota game did no harm and nor would selling out the Miam-Jersey game quickly.
But it does mean an expansion team would need to sell out the luxury suites, generate TV revenue and sign up sponsorship and marketing partners in all host cities. Oh, and a multi-millionaire would also need to step up and show the NBA the money, to the tune of $300m-plus.
But, as Stern himself said this week: "If the fans say yes because they are the new generation that's playing EA games and going to NBA.com and watching our games on television, then it will happen. If they don't, it won't happen.
"But given the pace of globalization, I think that's a real possibility, and we are going to follow the developments of the fan affinity for our game."
And, in any case, one thing is absolutely guaranteed.
We haven't heard the last of this subject.