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The NBA's on-and-off approach to expansion into Europe is back on again. Commissioner David Stern is considering new plans to create five full-fledged NBA franchises in Europe over the next decade, a league source told SI.com.

The initiative promises to be the big news of All-Star weekend in New Orleans, where international basketball officials are arriving this week for their annual meetings with the NBA. Stern is expected to reveal the league's new stance at a news conference Saturday, according to a league source.

The current idea would be to create five new teams in major markets to form a "European'' division within the NBA. The teams would play the full 82-game schedule and compete for the NBA championship. But the proposal is new and many factors will influence the eventual outcome, the league source said.

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I think there's a market for it, but I really don't have a clue how it would work. Aside from travel concerns, what conference would they be in? where are we getting the extra talent for 5 potential new teams? How are you going to convince kids out of college to sign up for an expansion team in a country where english isn't the primary language? (you can be damn sure there's only going to be one team in England.)

There is no market in Europe for expansion teams. They could generate money from tv rights but europeans are unwilling to spend that much money on "sports entertainement". In Europe, the stadium are filled with men supporting their teams not with famillies buying hot dogs, soda and popcorns .. Sports is not really an entertainement here, it's still a social practice that can be either practicing a sport or supporting a team. European sport clubs can still make a lot of money with merchandising and tv rights (when the entertainement part plays a more important role) but nothing compared to the nba. It's clearly on a different scale. No team in Europe could generate enough money to get anywhere near the minimum salary cap.

Yes the nba can easily sell out when they send a pre-season game or even the allstar game in Europe. But there is no way you are going to find 20 000 people paying more than 30 euros to watch a basketball team 1 or 2 times a week.

To give you a perspective, for a full year membership to the Paris football club, prices range from 135 to 1350 euros. Wich means you can go to every (around 20) games played at Parc des Princes for something as low as 135 euros a year!

And also the whole idea of a franchise is stranger to europe. Sport teams are synonym with the city or area where they are located.
Despite that i could see 2 cities with enough trader, bankers or any other kind of nouveau riche to support an Nba team. London and Moscow. English ppl don't care one bit about Basketball and i don't see a team of more than a few black players being popular enough in Russia..

This is simply impossible.

Dtown84 wrote:I think there's a market for it, but I really don't have a clue how it would work. Aside from travel concerns, what conference would they be in? where are we getting the extra talent for 5 potential new teams? How are you going to convince kids out of college to sign up for an expansion team in a country where english isn't the primary language? (you can be damn sure there's only going to be one team in England.)

1. They could make a new conference. Or it could just be a whole new league and the NB's cash cow in Europe. Who knows, maybe if that happens then we could have a "Battle of the Atlantic" where the North American champion faces the European champion.

2. Doi, Europe?

3. The Europeans have enough balls to come over here to play. Besides, if a kid gets passes over which would he choose to go to? The bunch of lower leagues or a second NBA branch.

T-Spot wrote:-= original quote snipped =-



1. They could make a new conference. Or it could just be a whole new league and the NB's cash cow in Europe. Who knows, maybe if that happens then we could have a "Battle of the Atlantic" where the North American champion faces the European champion.

2. Doi, Europe?

3. The Europeans have enough balls to come over here to play. Besides, if a kid gets passes over which would he choose to go to? The bunch of lower leagues or a second NBA branch.

1: The article is about expanding the NBA by five teams and having a seperate division, this has nothing to do with making a seperate branch, or some NBA europe. You sure as hell can't make a seperate conference for just five teams, let alone 5 expansion teams.

2: This is NBA rules, not international. There's nothing to suggest there's enough NBA level talent to fill out 2 teams let alone five. The league is watered down enough as is, expanding by 5 wouldn't help.

3: Again, this would be part of the NBA not a second branch. People have held out for far less than moving to a foreign country, hell people have been upset about going to Canada. What's a college kid's reaction to playing in Moscow? You can't say 'well Europeans can do it' of course they can, the money in the NBA is just that good. But if you're a high draft pick you can just as easily play in an american city for the same money.

What they should do is create or use what they already have and do a European league. And they play 82 games + the playoffs and they compete for the European championship

then the NBA title winners and the European title winners play for the World Championships in June.

Back to back games in Moscow and Seattle.....

That's a really bad idea. Most players find traveling across the country throughout the season pretty rough... what will they do if they have to go overseas 5 times a year?

They need to make a separate league, i.e.: NFL Europe.

Hope they like road games.

I cant see how this would work

It sounds like the infrastructure is there for the taking by Stern and the league with new arenas built/ being built, as well as the bad organization by all the European basketball federations. A European division makes sense, but what conference would the division fall into? Both conferences are already divided up equally. There are obstacles to overcome, such as travel and players getting drafted, but if the NFL, NHL and now the NBA are all exploring European expansion in some form, there have to be many things that are right as well, namely the $$$$$. Such an expansion is just a natural effect of the growth and development of the game around the world. Hopefully there will be some more concrete details after All-Star Weekend is over. David Stern will be answering some interesting questions from the media there.

I'd rather the idea of another league come to fruition, rather than a new division.

I am not really for expansion, as it is, there probably is not enough top-notch talent to field 30 teams, let alone 35 teams. Thats not even mentioning the logistical nightmare regarding conferences, and how american talent would be reluctant to play overseas.

I will say this though, travel would not be as much of a concern as some people think. You could easily have teams go on a 7 game road trip to europe, and get done with all of their euro road games in one 2 week period. Hell, San Antonio and L.A. go on long road trips during the year (rodeo and grammy's), and it does not really effect them.

The main thing I would see happening, if a euro division was set up, is that American talent would stay in America and Canada, where a lot of the international talent we see today, would start to relocate back to Europe, since the money would be the same.

Logistics makes the NBA in Europe unfeasible and impractical. Hell even if the all Concorde's were still up and running jet leg would still big a significant problem for the 30 teams over here in the States.
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UNLVNugsFan wrote:I am not really for expansion, as it is, there probably is not enough top-notch talent to field 30 teams, let alone 35 teams. Thats not even mentioning the logistical nightmare regarding conferences, and how american talent would be reluctant to play overseas.

I will say this though, travel would not be as much of a concern as some people think. You could easily have teams go on a 7 game road trip to europe, and get done with all of their euro road games in one 2 week period. Hell, San Antonio and L.A. go on long road trips during the year (rodeo and grammy's), and it does not really effect them.

The main thing I would see happening, if a euro division was set up, is that American talent would stay in America and Canada, where a lot of the international talent we see today, would start to relocate back to Europe, since the money would be the same.

Travel wouldn't be a problem? What about the teams in Europe coming over to the States? What type of road trips would they have to deal with?

I don't think the talent is there yet for that many teams.

Hairy Midget wrote:I don't think the talent is there yet for that many teams.

I don't think you can all of a sudden add 5 teams all at once to the NBA. You are talking about 75 players...

I'd think that the 5 teams would be...

London
Paris
Madrid/Barcelona
Berlin
and maybe Rome.

But yeah there is no way this happens. I think the players would through a fit and rightfully so. If the Lakers played in Paris, and then came back home. That's a nine hour time difference. It would take them AT LEAST 3 days before they were capable of playing any basketball at all.

The NBA said they were opening offices in London last summer too but I don't see any evidence of that... If I did I'd be asking for a job!

Jules Winnfield wrote:What they should do is create or use what they already have and do a European league. And they play 82 games + the playoffs and they compete for the European championship

then the NBA title winners and the European title winners play for the World Championships in June.

No.