https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2026/04/19/silver-sees-long-term-potential-for-nba-division-in-europe/

As someone from the planet Earth rather than wherever Adam Silver spawned from, I have no idea what he’s talking about.

41 comments

  1. Soccer is the biggest and most global sport and even they can’t figure out how to make transatlantic competition really work outside of what are basically exhibition matches.

  3. Anything to distract us from the Aspiration scandal I guess. How about you clean up your own messes first before trying to expand into Europe.

  7. Well then wouldn’t it be the International Basketball Association and not the National Basketball Association at that point?

    Chill out with the quest for global domination and money.

  8. > : “It’s not just bringing in potentially an NBA-type team, but also same thing you’ve seen market by market in the United States that sort of started with this LA Live complex where it’s an arena … together with retail, commercial space, residential. So it looks like a really big opportunity we’re spending time on”

    So less about basketball than the commercial property opportunities. Big fucking surprise.

  10. Logistics would be a nightmare.

    You think playing 82 games is bad for players, now imagine trying to fight massive jetlag because you gotta play in France on a day’s rest.

    Also imagine your viewing audience dipping because the game is on at 4-6 AM and you gotta figure out which network/app it’s gonna be on.

  11. The logistics of an NBA finals series between a continental euro team and a west coast team sound like an issue – advancements in supersonic air or not

  12. How does that even work? Just because a team has a number of EU players right doesn’t mean they’ll have them at a certain point in the future. Do teams get shuffled in or out of the division depending on the % of EU players they have on the team?

  13. I feel like Adam got handed a relatively simple opportunity to play hero with the whole Donald Sterling situation, but has never actually been that great of a commissioner.

    I’m not as down on the state of the league as some people, but I also don’t think he’s really done much to benefit the league.

    Under Silver:

    * The league has really struggled to promote their next generation of stars
    * Games are harder to watch, especially for local fans
    * Promotional ventures (like All-Star Week and NBA video games) have gone stale, with the NBA branding being mismanaged
    * The league has gone really heavy into gambling
    * Teams are resting players a lot more
    * The CBA has been late / missed the mark multiple times. The league needed to push harder on cap smoothing early on, but then when they did react it was probably too late and too heavy-handed
    * Tanking has gotten worse, that’s in spite of how bad the payoffs have often been (OKC is more an exception to the rule than the rule itself).
    * Attempted rule changes have often missed their marks or been abandoned within weeks
    * Officiating isn’t as bad as some would say, but officials probably have been given too much leeway. For example, the league is currently structured to encourage dissent and disrespect towards officials

    And of those, I think the gambling will probably stand out as his biggest legacy. We’re only just starting to see the impacts there and it’s already pretty grim.

    He keeps trying to push gimicky quick-fixes and tournaments, but the actual management of the NBA brand has been pretty lacklustre.

  14. What if they allow teams to stay in Europe for an extended period, and vice versa? That’s the only way I could see this even being remotely feasible, is teams spend two to three weeks playing their Euro schedule out and having time to acclimate for jet lags and such

    Even then, there’s the tiniest sliver of hope this could actually work

  15. I don’t get what Adam Silver and the NBA want with Europe – other than money.

    They are clearly working with sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East for investment in their new European franchises.

    The Euroleague is a success and needs no meddling from the NBA. It is its own distinct product and fans in Europe love it.

    London and Manchester are tiny markets for basketball with really limited history of success. Of course that can change in the future but it would be like when 🇺🇸 created MLS and even now MLS can’t compete with the best five leagues in Europe and has become a retirement home for superstar players from Europe who want to be well paid and play in an easier league.

  16. Advancements in supersonic air travel?

    Did they launch the Concorde Version 2.0 when I wasn’t looking?

  20. This really doesn’t benefit anyone, costs will skyrocket for teams and make games harder to see based on timezone and the Europeans already have a established continental and individual leagues.

  22. I think it would be too much honestly. A nightmare to schedule and imagine having to stay up until or wake up at 5 in the morning to see your local team play

  25. The supersonic air travel he’s talking about would be the Boom Overture. An aircraft that was meant to be in operation in 2023, then 2025, then 2027 and now 2030. 

    It has never actually flown, and is now requiring the company, which has never produced an actual airplane, to make its own engine from scratch because the three major engine manufacturers all refused to work on the project because it is not economically viable. 

    It’s supposed top speed has also been reduced from Mach 2.2 to Mach 1.7 before it’s even flown.

    Anyway I’m sure the power of basketball will see the project succeed. 

  26. So is he aware of some kind of commercial air travel that the rest of us don’t know about?

  31. Its a bad idea

    They could have a champions league tournament where the winners from each country qualify

    Home and away matches, group stages followed by quarter, semi and final matches

  37. This guy gets paid 10 million dollars a year to spout nonsense, be the owners lapdog and refuses to make changes that will help improve watching an NBA game. I’ll do the same thing for a 10th of his salary.

  38. We did supersonic advancements several decades ago. But because supersonic travel also has its cons, the industry decided to shut it down.

    What’s so different now?

  39. I’m just waiting for fans 10 years from now saying “Players in the 2010s never had to fly from OKC to Munich, they’re basically plumbers”

  40. European basketball fans do not want the NBA version of basketball in their backyard. Has Adam Silver ever seen an Italian, Greek, or Serbian basketball crowd?

  41. Is he talking about the technology that transported the FEMA director to a GA Waffle House

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