Commissioner Adam Silver, discussing the hypothetical intersection between the NBA and the proposed NBA Europe, described a scenario this week in which teams from both leagues could potentially play each other, perhaps even in the NBA playoffs.
During an on-stage interview Wednesday at Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Forum at the United Nations, Silver also imagined a future midseason “NBA Cup” in Europe that could essentially create a worldwide “confederation” of teams from multiple continents, extending possibly to clubs from the Basketball Africa League.
“You could imagine teams from Europe, potentially Africa, competing in that tournament,” Silver said. “You possibly could see teams coming into our playoffs, top seeds from other leagues. But over time, I think, for example, certainly in Europe as plane travel gets faster… I’m reading all the time about more opportunities in aviation. When I think of the flight from New York to LA for example, there’s no reason if we had four teams in Europe, you couldn’t travel, play the Knicks or Nets, travel to London, play three, four times in Europe, come back home. So I think it’s very doable in our league."
With NBA Europe virtually imminent, as JP Morgan and the Raine Group currently try to set the market price for franchises, Silver again said the rationale, from a business perspective, is the lack of basketball commercialization overseas.
“From a commercial standpoint, we haven’t seen the kind of development you’ve seen, particularly in the United States,” he said at the Bloomberg Global Forum. “There are not many state-of-the-art arenas in Europe. It’s like even for those who were over in Paris last summer for the Olympics, we had fantastic basketball competition in the Bercy Arena in Paris. They revitalized it to a certain extent for the Olympics.
“But if you’re in the industry, everything seems fine if you’re in the seats and watching the competition on the floor, but it doesn’t have the suites, the restaurants, the back of house room to do larger events… London has the O2 [Arena], which has been a great advancement in Europe, but that arena is now already old and they’re looking at a new development. So we think there’s the opportunity to go in the major European capitals, again with a joint proposition, both arena development, a multi-use facility and all the opportunities around it."
30 comments
Just bring back SuperSonics first my guy
Sounds perfectly logical but to just assume you can always schedule it like this is kind of wishful thinking. You’re just adding another layer of complexity with the schedule making and you’ll undoubtably create more B2B’s.
>“From a commercial standpoint, we haven’t seen the kind of development you’ve seen, particularly in the United States,”
What a weird way to say “we found another thing to extract all possible value from, and we don’t get why Europeans aren’t rushing to price out their fan bases”
That’s some self delusional greedy think work.
So what happened to Balmer?
It’d be easy to fit this in the schedule if they played fewer games
And yet they can’t do away with conferences bc of Travel LOL?
this only makes sense if it’s for the NBA cup.
it’s like some lower level club beating a big club in the champions league
Why don’t you fix the overwhelming perception that your league is completely corrupted before talking about Europe, clown.
I already know that it’s going to fail spectaculary because the US sports style commercialization won’t work in Europe. Long and frequent commercial breaks are going to kill any viewership ratings even if they manage to gather the initial hype. It’s a genuine pain trying to watch the NBA, or especially the NFL live as an European. The NFL literally has more commercial time than game time during the broadcast. It’s absolutely silly.
Their goes the argument for having separate conferences.
Time to get rid of that now
That sounds terrible, especially in a playoff series
Good try. We’re still on the clippers
The New York to Europe flight wouldn’t be the problem, the problem would be the LA to Europe flight.
Such a New York centric POV. Teams west of the Mississippi would get completely screwed. Such a terrible idea.
Lmao jet lag is a mother fucking real thing just the time difference is alone and scheduling makes this stupid.
It kinda works for football because its one game a week.
Im on business in the EU and believe me those first couple days are awful +3/-3 isnt that bad but +6 or so and things get weird.
But we will try to extract every dollar
Time difference between NY & LA: 3 hours
Time difference between NY & London: 5 hours
He’s constantly saying shit that makes it blatantly clear he’s never been anything resembling an athlete in his life let alone one at the highest levels. Acting like the players having to adjust and recoup from the physical impact (sleep, performance, and recovery wise) from a 5 hr time change on either end of a roadtrip like that in the middle of an already packed NBA season would be not only “very doable” but wouldn’t have any very real negative consequences on the players and the product is ***insane***.
I’m not gonna lie – I’ve though Adam Silver is overrated as a commissioner for a while now just based on how shitty my NBA viewership experience has become over the years. And he’s proving that I’ve simply underestimated how bad he is
What if we payed them through shell companies while away too Adam?
Good luck navigating immigration and border nonsense in the current climate.
Silver sucks
Instead of resolving the issues he’s preoccupied with selfish schemes for money
There’s a reason literally no other league on the planet does this more than a few times a season lol
Nah bro you’re doing way too fucking much. Have some respect for Seattle, maybe throw a couple in Mexico/Canada if you’re feeling frisky, but talking about this type of expansion rn is stupid
Give us back the Sonics you alien fuck
During playoffs is probably when it is the least feasible.
Bro shut the fffffuck up
The flight time from New York to London is 2 hours longer than the flight time from New York to Los Angeles. So a team from LA.is flying 5½ hours to New York, another 7½ hours to London, playing games at 10-11 am Los Angeles time (sucks for players *and* fans), and then fly 11½ hours back to Los Angeles.
Even Miami, on the East Coast, is still looking at a 9½ hour flight to London. And they’d probably have to do that twice per year. For comparison, I believe the longest twice per season trip any team has to do right now is Houston and Portland (about 4 hours), and *every* Eastern Conference team would be looking at having to do that.
And then what do you do in the Postseason? What if a team in Paris is playing the Hawks? Are your really going to have those teams fly 9 hours across 5 times zones with just 1 or 2 off days in between just to immediately fly back again? Or what if a team playing in Paris meets the Warriors in the Finals? Are your really going to air an NBA Finals game at 11:30am on the West Coast on a Wednesday? I doubt any of the broadcasters are paying the NBA anywhere near as much for that as they would for prime time. And if you start the game at the same time the games normally air in the US, that’s 2:30am Paris time.
Fuck this loser. Bring back the Sonics!
I thought it was the national basketball association? Bring back the sonics first you capitalist dick