For a while now, there has been speculation that the NBA is planning to make a move to Europe. At the latest two games played in Paris between the San Antonio Spurs and the Indiana Pacers, NBA commissioner Adam Silver was in attendance. He talked about the opportunity afterwards. The league believes that the NBA can target a significant amount of untapped money in the European market for pro basketball.
The NBA commissioner talked about the commercial opportunity, and how he believes their expertise in forming media deals can help European teams make more money. Yet, the latest reports contradict his statement.
NBA Europe Set for Disaster From the Get-Go
According to a report from BasketNews, a website that closely follows the EuroLeague, NBA Europe doesn’t plan to involve teams from Serbia, Greece, and Turkey. Despite their passionate fan base, teams from these countries might not make it to the initial NBA Europe bracket.
What is more important is that some of the best players in the league, even the latest MVPs, Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, come from these countries.
Brian Windhorst recently wrote about how the NBA might offer membership to long-standing EuroLeague teams. In the EuroLeague, there are 16 permanent members and several temporary members. NBA Europe might set the stage for a battle between the NBA and the EuroLeague.
One reason why the NBA might not consider countries like Greece, Serbia, and Turkey, is the market. Per Windhorst’s report, the league is looking at large European markets where basketball hasn’t been particularly popular. In other words, they are looking for cities that do not have a large base and try to invigorate the basketball fans. For example, London, the capital of the United Kingdom, has the London Lions. The team has been kicked out of competition in the EuroCup due to financial issues.
Another idea the NBA has explored is partnering with major soccer clubs to have expansion teams under the soccer clubs’ umbrellas. For example, Real Madrid, FC Barcelona, and Bayern Munich are teams in mine. Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have teams competing in the EuroLeague.
NBA Leaving Out the Most Popular Teams
If we look at attendance for the 2023-24 season, the NBA is making a huge mistake by leaving out teams from Serbia, Greece, and Turkey. The numbers for the 2024-25 season are still not out, but looking at games this season, they will probably follow the same trend.
During the 2023-24 season, six of the top 10 teams by attendance are from these three countries. KK Partizan and KK Crvena Zvezda, the two Serbian teams, sit at the top. Those two had better attendance than more than half of the NBA teams in the same season.
If It is About Money, the NBA Has to Follow the Trend
A week ago, Silver talked about how the NBA league office has been investigating the concept of starting a standalone European league. It will be separate from the NBA, and he talked about how he believes the Euroleague is leaving money and growth on the table. He said,
“While Europe continues to develop some of the very best players in the world — many of our most recent MVPs, of course, are European — we think that the commercial opportunity has not kept pace with the growth of the game. What we do at the NBA is we run leagues. And so we are looking very closely to see if there’s an opportunity to professionalize the game to another level here to create a larger commercial opportunity.”
But if that statement is true, then the report that the NBA plans to leave out teams from Greece, Turkey, and Serbia is absurd.
Final Thoughts
The NBA is taking a huge risk by trying to start a league in Europe without some of its most popular teams. Not only they are popular, but teams from Turkey and Greece, for example, are among the most successful ones as well. We have to go back to the 2013-14 season in which a team from Greece or Turkey didn’t play in the Finals. Fenerbache, Panatinaikos, Anadolu Efes, and Olympiakos have been part of the last nine Finals.
This season so far, Fenerbahce and Olympiakos sit at the top of the standings.
Photo credit: © Kyle Terada-Imagn Images
