Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game is under a new format in which an international team is featured against two teams consisting of American players.
The very fact that the league has evolved to the point where an international team can be justified, and even favored at BetMGM, is the result of decades worth of global investment and marketing to turn basketball into a sport with immensely broad appeal.
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International talent is here to stay
The shift in global power isn’t lost on NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum.
“There has never been more talent in the NBA than there is today, which is in large part due to the fact that basketball is more global than ever,” Tatum told Yahoo Sports.
With the All-Star Game now featuring a whole team of non-American players, questions do linger in regard to how American observers will receive international stars such as Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić and Victor Wembanyama.
But Tatum doesn’t waver.
“At the end of the day, our fans are drawn to elite talent and compelling stories, no matter where a player is from,” Tatum said. “A great example is Victor Wembanyama, who is the fastest player in NBA history to reach more than 1 billion views on social media.”
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Historically speaking, Tatum’s point is sound. The league has been littered with international stars before, even if the sheer volume of current stars is unparalleled.
Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Pau Gasol and Manu Ginobili spearheaded the early-to-mid-2000s and laid the foundation within the league to embrace talent that wasn’t developed within the confines of the United States.
The fact that all four players won championships allowed for an easier transition, especially for front offices, to look overseas and open their minds to new ideologies and development patterns.
This approach has been rewarded with Jokić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Giannis Antetokounmpo winning titles.
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Tatum notes that “roughly 30%” of players in the NBA are international, which the league believes makes for adequate representation with the three All-Star-team format.
International expansion
The next step for the NBA in embracing basketball globalism is, of course, a new league based in Europe, which has been widely discussed for years and is in the early stages of development.
There has been some concern from people within European basketball communities in regard to how the NBA will implement a league and whether it’ll respect the history of European basketball.
Tatum believes the NBA is indeed taking those considerations seriously.
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“We are being very intentional to ensure that our plans in Europe are built on the strong foundations that already exist on the continent. Celebrating, fostering, and elevating the rich traditions and history that make European basketball so special is fundamental to everything we want to create,” Tatum said. “Working closely with FIBA, we’re confident we can design a league that is authentically European — built by Europeans, played by Europeans and designed for European fans — while bringing that experience to more fans across the continent and creating new traditions.
“Our proposed league would give every team in a FIBA-affiliated domestic league in Europe a merit-based pathway to qualify on an annual basis, which we think will benefit players, domestic leagues, the broader ecosystem and, most importantly, fans.”
It’s crucial that Tatum and NBA commissioner Adam Silver stay true to their planned approach, as that is unquestionably the biggest challenge in front of them in regard to developing an “NBA Europe.”
If European fans feel their history being pushed away, they likely will reject and protest the presence of an American league taking over their traditions and basketball habits.
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But getting a taste of international competition through this All-Star format could be a small step for the NBA to appeal to an international and particularly European audience.
Global NBA tournament?
The NBA founded a league in Africa in 2019 called the BAL, which had its inaugural season in 2021.
With another league presumably being developed in Europe and the presence of the NBA in North America, could the league be looking at making a huge intercontinental tournament with teams from each league?
Tatum isn’t closing the door on that idea, even looping the concept into the fabric of the NBA Cup.
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“That’s something we’re still looking at, but in general we think there is a tremendous opportunity to reach even more fans by creating a new tournament or competition between NBA teams and teams from other leagues around the world, including the BAL and our potential league in Europe,” Tatum said. “And further down the line, I think we could potentially see teams from Europe and around the world participating in competitions like the NBA Cup. While there is nothing imminent, conceptually we’re open to anything that helps continue to elevate the sport worldwide.”
The NBA is thinking big, and looking at ways to activate more fan bases.
Adding international teams into the NBA Cup makes a lot of sense and could be a streamlined way of introducing different teams to a global audience.
We’ll see how it all materializes, but there’s no question that the NBA is thinking outside the box and beyond borders.
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