Euro expansion?

[The Fresh Prince]

Ultimately the NBA is a business. Europe is the largest economy in the world. Expansion seems like it is just good business to me.

If SLC can support a team I find it hard to believe that the largest cities in Europe would have a problem doing the same.

It would take a lot of time, a lot of rescheduling, a lot of change.
If it does happen, it will probably take somewhere around 10 years to completely format, and tons of money to form Euro conferences, franchises.

I don't think it's an expense that the NBA or even Europe wants to take on.

 

[BTP]

Yeah but the base would basically be the same in many cities. There would be more "event spectators" who would want to be seen in their boxes and courtside. And then you'd have the big hooligan squads in Greece, Turkey and Lithuania for example. An NBA team could not afford to let those in with fireworks and shooting flare guns towards players.
I don't see enough interest to sell out a 20k spectator venue on all the home games.
In Germany there isn't a single city atm drawing a sufficient level of fan interest. In Berlin you have a popular soccer and ice hockey team as competition.
Even if their soccer squad is in the 2nd league, their basketball team doesn't have a boost in fans.
Hamburg has 2 soccer teams and handball. In the past a Hamburg team couldn't even attract 4k spectators for a game in the German league average.
Munich doesn't have a 20k spectator indoor venue but might be an attraction to develop a fanbase. Problem there is also that when you go 100km(60 miles) outside of Munich, people won't come to games for local rivalry. So the catchment area is limited too.
Cologne has the venue but has 4 1st league soccer teams nearby and an icehockey squad. Local rivalry with 500k inhabitant Düsseldorf would limit its attractiveness too.

 

[Gameface]

Not enough top talent for the current size of the NBA. An expansion into Europe would stretch it even further.

Except unless...

I keep suggesting it and I'm totally serious, 3on3.

 

[addictionary]

Playing against each other the whole season won't work. It'd be better if they could arrange a formal version of that old McDonald's Tournament which even starred Michael Jordan, only if they can schedule it somewhere away from the World Cup and the EuroBasket. That way we wouldn't have to see for instance the Bobcats getting beaten by a superb European team and people start saying "You see how far the Euroball've gotten?" Or some small market NBA team destroying a lesser Euroball team and then some other guys saying "You see even that team bosses your teams around!"

I think some national teams in Europe have an upside against American basketball's athleticism with their incredibly fast ball movement and set plays. I always would love to see that kind of comparison under a formal (real deal) organization in which each side will take it seriously and each side represents their basketball culture at the highest level.

 

[ema]

Come on people, at least try to be a little bit forward-looking. It's certainly possible. Not in 10 years but maybe but in 20 years or so, why not.

Talent wise, if it's gonna be a small expansion like a 5 team division for Europe, it won't degrade the overall talent. There are already teams in Europe that could compete for a playoff spot with a few tweaks.

Travel wise, in twenty years there maybe much faster jets in common usage. Even if they are not that common, NBA can rent or buy for the travels a few of them super fast jets. Even today the flights are almost down to 5-6(7 average) hours for a New York to London travel. (Btw, I'm not even mentioning teleportation)

Business wise, believe or not but Basketball is growing in Europe faster than ever. It's still far behind futbol but it will stay that way only if we don't do anything. Even the talk of an NBA expansion is good for Basketball business and propagation in Europe. Just a few years ago British people had no idea what a Basketball ball looks like but they now have semi decent NT teams both men and women. Even further, if it wasn't for the Chinese and far east interest of the NBA, we could be talking a lot more serious on the Europe expansion. The money on the far east was the main intervention for this possible Europe expansion to become more realistic by now.

Implementation wise, it's not gonna happen over a night, people. There are a lot of pre-projects. Like having super cup games between NBA champs and EuroLeague champs. Special tournaments, prep games(which is happening for a few years now), Euro teams visiting NBA teams, other interesting concepts and all...

I say it's not only possible but it is probable and it will be very interesting for the development of the game of Basketball.

 

[♪alt13]

^repped(gotta spread it around)
agreed with most of what you said But I don't see the NBA being down for any super cup games unless the leagues went through a merger(business). I do think we will start to see more NBA exhibition games outside US.

Think they would call it the IN.B.A.?
INternational Basketball Association

 

[BTP]

I think one of the biggest obstacles would be working out uniform player contracts that are valid in 7 countries(USA, Canada + 5 out of Spain, Russia, Turkey, Germany, Italy, France, Lithuania, Greece, Israel, England and Serbia)
Everyone knows how much a pain in the *** lawyers performing under the same workrights can be. Now imagine you've got 7 of them at the same table with different income taxes, insurances, pension payments to be covered by employers etc.
Would be really hard to do under the CBA, since if in 1 country your max contract's net is 50% and in another it's 70%. Guess where everybody wants to play.

 

[♪alt13]

Because of time zones I think they would limit expansion as far west as possible. There already is a discrepancy between new York and texas(no income tax in texas) New York always puts together good teams. If it turned out to be a problem they could give high tax countries a break on the luxury tax.

 

[Gameface]

Is there a Europe wide basketball league or are there multiple smaller leagues? I honestly don't know. But if there was a single dominant European league I could see maybe having a international championship game between the NBA champs and the Euro champs. I imagine as it stands right now the NBA champs would be the better team, but maybe in several years it wouldn't be so cut and dry.

 

[Gameface]

But hey, one more time for my favorite solution.

3 on 3

Advantages:

Smaller overall roster. Somewhere between 7-9 players per team.

More space on the floor for todays athletes to perform.

Harder to double and triple-team top guys.

Faster game.

Easier to officiate.

Easier for casual fans to see everything that's going on.

More interesting line-up options. Could go 3 bigs, could go 3 guards, anything in between. It would be even more of a chess game as the standard format would be gone.

But one of the biggest advantages... it would concentrate the talent so that there might be enough to go around, giving more teams a chance to win.

 

[♪alt13]

But hey, one more time for my favorite solution.

3 on 3

Advantages:

Smaller overall roster. Somewhere between 7-9 players per team.

More space on the floor for todays athletes to perform.

Harder to double and triple-team top guys.

Faster game.

Easier to officiate.

Easier for casual fans to see everything that's going on.

More interesting line-up options. Could go 3 bigs, could go 3 guards, anything in between. It would be even more of a chess game as the standard format would be gone.

But one of the biggest advantages... it would concentrate the talent so that there might be enough to go around, giving more teams a chance to win.

Get rid of the double teams and the number of players who would be capable of competing would dwindle. So yeah fewer players per team but your role players would be out. I think this would make games less competitive not more.

 

[Hitman]

Travel wise, in twenty years there maybe much faster jets in common usage.

I know a bit about planes and aerodynamics and stuff, and commercial aircraft aren't going to get any faster. Ever. The Atlantic Ocean will remain the single biggest obstacle to expansion of the NBA to Europe. The NBA season is long and the schedule is tight as it is, so even if you don't allow for time to recover from jet lag, the travel time alone would have a serious impact on scheduling.

However, if they were going to do it, I'd send over a Division at a time to play all Euro teams in a single road trip, then reverse the process, then the Euros play the next division in the US before they all fly to Europe to repeat the process, and so on. In between visits from a US division, the Euros would play each other.

But then where do the Euro teams fit into Conference play? How do they make the playoffs? Is it fair for West Coast teams to play in Europe? Do you expand into Asia-Pacific simultaneously and add one overseas Division per conference to balance things out, putting Europe in the East and Asia-Pacific in the West? Even if you make allowances for the travel, there are still other issues that need to be addressed.