LONDON — 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.
Not surprisingly, the league has done everything in its power to capitalize on the growing interest, slowly increasing the number of games its played overseas each year. This season 12 of the league’s 30 teams were scheduled to play 10 games in eight different countries, including Thursday’s game between the Nets and Hawks in London.
But as the NBA continues to play more international games — and specifically in Europe — could it be conceivable to have one or more teams permanently based across the Atlantic in the future?
“It just shows how much the NBA has grown, how it’s become worldwide,” Paul Pierce said this past week. “You never know how long it is before it’s a normal thing, to where you probably have a team in London, and you see regular season games here often.
“The NBA is expanding, and you see it all the time with the way we’re traveling, so definitely in the next five, 10 years, you could probably have an NBA team here.”
Migration
Thursday’s game between the Nets and Hawks at O2 Arena was the fourth regular-season game in London over the past four seasons. And, according to NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver, players and coaches should keep their passports handy in the future.
“We do have plans in place to continue playing regular-season games in London,” Silver said. “It’s been a fantastic experience for our teams and our players, and we hope to continue building our business in London and throughout Europe.”
The decision to begin playing regular-season games in London, starting with the Nets and Raptors playing back-to-back games in March 2011, was the next logical step in what has been a gradual increase in the NBA’s presence outside North America.
Since the league’s first exhibition game outside the U.S. or Canada, when the NBA’s Washington Bullets lost to FIBA’s Maccabi Tel Aviv in Israel in 1978, the NBA has held 147 exhibition and regular-season games in 20 different countries and 43 different cities around the world in an effort to expand the league’s global audience.
But with the NBA now planning to make these trips to London an annual tradition — Silver said the plan is for at least one regular-season game a season in London, and there has been at least one each of the past three full regular seasons (skipping only the lockout shortened 2011-12 campaign) — the question now is whether the next step is eventually basing one or more teams in Europe permanently.
Logistics
The increasing number of overseas games makes it clear the NBA is interested in expansion beyond North America. But it’s one thing to leave for a few days during the preseason for a faraway game, or to do what the Nets and Hawks did and take a week during the regular season to play a game in London, the challenges increase exponentially if one or more teams are based in Europe.
The biggest hurdle is scheduling. Everyone involved in this week’s trip admitted it took them at least a couple of days to get adjusted to the time zone, and that was with two Eastern Conference teams making the trip. The adjustment for a team from the Western Conference likely would be even more difficult.
“I don’t know how realistic it is,” Shaun Livingston said. “With all the intangibles, flight, travel … they’re definitely going to have to work something out, and iron out details, because it’s a long ways away.
“You think about the Western Conference opponents? It’s crazy. How are you going to make that work? That has to be a week to two-week trip, every time. I’m sure they’re thinking about it, but realistically, my opinion? No [it can’t work].”
That’s why even Silver admitted the NFL, which has held at least one game a year at London’s Wembley Stadium since 2007 and has three scheduled next season, has an advantage over the NBA in terms of permanently having a team in London because of scheduling.
“The NFL, they play once a week, and you can get a bye week so you can bring teams over and they can adjust and they can play one game here,” Silver said.
The NFL even made a bid to become the anchor tenant of London’s Olympic Stadium, but that was rejected.
“In some ways, even though they’re not indigenous in the way basketball is globally,” Silver said, “logistically they may be in a better position to pull it off.”
With that in mind, Silver, who will take over as commissioner on Feb. 1 when David Stern retires, said any potential NBA expansion plan likely would be to include an entire European division, not just one or two teams. That would allow American teams to come over and play several games at once, as opposed to flying over for one game then heading straight back to the U.S.
“It’s something we’ve talked about for years, and that is bringing NBA franchises not just to London, but to other major European cities, as well,” Silver said. “I think most likely if we were to come to Europe, it would be with a division rather than a single team for ease of logistics, and it’s something we’re going to continue to look at.
“Part of understanding the opportunity is to play games like this and to measure the response and go from there.”
Venues
If the NBA were to consider adding a Euro division, there would have to be NBA-ready arenas for their teams to play in across the continent, and that simply isn’t the case at the moment. Outside of the O2 in London and the O2 World in Berlin, there isn’t another arena the league would consider moving into immediately.
“There are some great arenas, but nothing of this magnitude,” Silver said, referring to the O2 in London.
Then there’s the financial difficulties most of the continent is dealing with. While basketball is very popular in many European countries — including Spain, Italy and Greece — putting NBA teams in, say, Madrid, Rome or Athens would require new arenas in each of those cities. Given the fact all three of those countries are going through the fallout of the worldwide economic downturn of the past several years, the idea of building new arenas in any of them isn’t feasible at the moment.
Stern admitted Thursday that even holding regular-season games at other European arenas is a challenge at this time, given the limitations of the potential venues, and especially the fact there is an NBA-ready arena already in London.
”The O2 is a spectacular building. The last time we played in Italy it was in the [Mediolanum Forum outside Milan], and I think the Forum might almost be as old as I am, and it looks it,” the outgoing commissioner said. “Our sponsors, our licensees, our international broadcasters, they enjoy coming to the center point here in London, and this has been very good. But I think we’re going back to those places. We will be in Spain, we will be in Italy, we will be in Greece. I just don’t know when Commissioner Silver is going to decide to do that.”
Game time
Another thorny issue is what time the games are played. One of the things that limits the NBA’s potential popularity in Europe is the time difference. London is five hours ahead of New York, so if there’s a 7 p.m. tip-off at the Garden, that is midnight in the city by the Thames. A 7:30 p.m. West Coast start would end around
6 a.m. in London, when some people are getting up to go to work.
Trying to accommodate an audience that would span 8-10 time zones would make it even more problematic to get games on at hours that a European audience reasonably could watch.
Then there’s the idea of having players being sent to live overseas, which Silver said would have to be written into the league’s collective bargaining agreement. And though it’s unlikely the NBA Players Association would put up much of a fight to the addition of a potential new European division — one which would create an additional 75 jobs for players — there is little doubt it would require a major adjustment for players to move across the Atlantic and live in a foreign country.
Despite such hurdles, Joe Johnson said guys would find a way to make it work, if it meant having an opportunity for an NBA career.
“In any situation, especially if it’s your job, your craft, something that you love, you adapt, and you can adapt in any environment,” he said. “I think a guy could really adapt to coming over to Europe and playing over here.”
Likelihood
Though Silver said the possibility of permanent teams in Europe is a far from being even a proposal, the league is continuing to look into new ways to try and grow the game. He acknowledged the idea of having an in-season tournament of some kind to potentially be held overseas, and also said the idea of holding the All-Star Game in London or somewhere else overseas is an intriguing possibility.
“I think it would be a really fascinating thing to do, to bring it over to Europe, but, again, it’s just a function of days,” Silver said. “Can you build in the time for travel, build in the time to come back, build in the time to adjust for the time zone. Our schedule is so dense as it is, you already hear issues about the back-to-backs that we have, so where do you find the time? But, potentially, would we start earlier, would we go later, would we reduce the number of games? [Those are] all things that we’ll continue to look at.
“I don’t think there’s any question in terms of the popularity of the game we could pull it off. I think, again, it’s just a matter of logistics and creating enough space in the middle of the season to pull it off.”
The idea of potentially having a team based here and in other European cities isn’t going away. Silver said the NBA isn’t going to close the door on the possibility of it happening down the road.
“There are a lot of hurdles but, having said that, in terms of interest in the sport, there’s no question that soccer and basketball are the two truly global sports,” Silver said.
“It’s a little bit of a pipe dream, honestly. It’s something that’s been floated forever. But if you start looking out over the next 20 years at the league’s growth, I think we owe it to ourselves to take a serious look at it.”