The biggest business story related to the NBA has nothing to do with tanking, Kawhi Leonard, nor the NBA's new national broadcast partners. We are only a little more than a year away from the launch of NBA Europe, a new basketball league across the Atlantic that proposes to upend and Americanize the game.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver is swinging huge: The proposed league would feature 16 teams, 12 of whom would have permanent slots, and they are reportedly trying to put teams in Athens, Istanbul, Paris, Lyon, Munich, Berlin, Rome, Milan, Madrid, Barcelona, London, and Manchester. That list of cities highlights both how disruptive the venture would be and how much new ground would have to be broken. Basketball culture in Europe is not centered in the biggest cities the way it is in the United States, so the NBA is essentially betting that they can create it from whole cloth in places like London and Milan.
On the other hand, teams like Olympiacos and Panathinaikos in Athens and Fenerbahçe in Istanbul have deeply established traditions that the new league would disrupt. Massively important and well-supported teams in less glamorous markets like Belgrade and Kaunas, along with the EuroLeague structure, could be left to wither and die if this all works the way Silver wants it to. "If I thought that the ceiling was the existing EuroLeague and their fan interest," Silver said in January, "we wouldn't be spending the kind of time and attention we are on this project."
Making all of this frothier and raising the financial stakes further, the NBA is using this venture as a way to really get in with Persian Gulf sovereign wealth funds. There is a lot here, so Harry and I were thrilled to be joined by Ricardo Brito Reis to talk about it all for a little bonus episode of Nothing But Respect. Brito Reis might be familiar to Defector readers, as I interviewed him about his countryman and friend Neemias Queta a few years back. He recently used the Belgrade derby as a way into writing about what will be lost under the new regime.
You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Thanks for listening!
