NBA in Europe?

They've been talking about this crap since the 90's.

 

This is one of David Stern's pet projects he rolls out there every time he is interviewed and asked about globalization of the NBA. I can't see it working. The travel would be too costly and draining. They would also have to lengthen the season to allow for these flights and the season is already long enough.

The only way I could maybe see this working is if the European division plays all of their regular season games in Europe against the other division members and then flies over to the states for the playoffs. At that point, though, you wouldn't have balanced schedules from team to team.

There is a semi-pro basketball league out there (I forget the name of it) that has several teams in Asia. They way they do it is have the Asian teams play each other in Asia and then they all come over to play the American teams and play in the playoffs. This wouldn't work in the NBA because then the European teams in this case wouldn't get the opportunity to play home games against their American counterparts.

 

Would this mean creating 5 brand new teams for the NBA or taking 5 existing teams from the Euroleague?

 

God, I hope David Stern isn't still the commissioner in 10 years.

 

I could understand it working for the NFL

with only 16 games and have each week to travel, bye weeks, to adjust

but not the NBA when teams are playing 3-4 times per wk.

 

Hold on. I could have sworn i heard people talking about wanting to downsize the nba?! I just dont see it happening, althought it would be interesting bc for the most part all the euro players would want to play on teams over there and we would actually see two styles of basketball played.

 

The travel would be too hectic. I'd rather see basketball be the same as soccer, where there is more than one league that has the best players in the world playing. That way you could have NBA teams playing against teams from Spain and Greece in a champions league-like tournament.

 

amen to that

 

Here is a better idea...Take off some regular season games from the NBA. Talk to Fiba and international basketball community about what it would take to get a world club tourney going.

 

Move the Grizz, Twolves, Clips and Hornets to Europe. Then change the name to the IBA.

 

Can you imagine the amount of flopping if the NBA went to Europe?

 

stern is ****ing moron. 'Nuff said.

 

I feel like Stern is missing the gist of his own statement. By contracting in the US and expanding in Europe, he's simply saying "I want to move American jobs overseas."