A summer full of unprecedented moves has taken another turn to the historic, this time on the team scale, with the NBA announcing that this March, the Toronto Raptors and New Jersey Nets will travel to London to play the first regular season games ever away from North American soil. The teams are scheduled to play at the O2 Arena on March 4 and March 5, before switching back continents to complete their respective seasons. Commissioner David Stern, long time dreamer of a fully global NBA landscape, said regarding the move:
“We’ll need to assess how we do in March,” Stern said. “It would not surprise me if this becomes an annual event. But I don’t want to make a commitment on it.”
To which I kindly reply: spare me.
Spare me the talks of revolutionizing the game. Spare me the tantalizing prospect of All-Star Games, playoff games, maybe even entire NBA franchises relocating to Europe on a permanent basis. Spare me the historic headlines, the sickening, contrived handshakes with fellow suits and any indication whatsoever that this is anything but your own, private pipe dream.
Before I go any further slandering this move and everything behind it, allow me a declaration of intent: the globalization of the NBA has affected and continues to affect me, an avid basketball fan living 5,522 miles away from the nearest NBA arena (Boston, by the way. No, I didn’t spend five minutes mid-rant checking this, why do you ask?), in a plethora positive ways. It has given me the ability to buy international league pass broadband, giving me full access to every NBA game without being forced to depend on international television broadcasting rights, which rarely provide the viewer with the long end of the stick. It allows me to vote for the All-Star Game every single day, while trusting that my moral fortitude is strong enough to stop me from voting for Omri Casspi (it isn’t). And while this isn’t all Stern’s doing, his league has seen it’s fan base bloom and grow to the point where I – just your everyday punk from Jerusalem who happens to have a keyboard – can instantaneously post my opinion on its every move. We are truly blessed to be fans of this sport at this time, and I count myself as such, despite the countless number of days through which I have been rendered dysfunctional by watching basketball from 2 a.m. to 8 a.m.
Some of this can be attributed to globalization more than anything. I can’t tell you if the services the NBA offers the international fan – from the fantastic blogosphere I am a proud part of to the high quality internet broadcasting – is any better than the MLB or NHL or NFL, because I couldn’t care less about those (though I do enjoy my college football). But I can tell you that regardless of where other sports stand, in America and elsewhere, the NBA is in very, very good shape.
Still, Stern is taking this too far, transforming the “global NBA” fantasy from a positive vision to an all-encompassing entity that ignores the debris it leaves in it’s path.
First and foremost, this doubleheader is a major competitive disadvantage to the Nets and Raptors. In a 30 team league, you are hereby sentencing 2 of them to play one game less at home, one more on the road – quite a road at that – and to do it in conditions they aren’t used to. How this passes by any ethically sound committee, I don’t know. As for the games themselves – I don’t know if you’ve experienced a transatlantic flight before, but believe me, the last thing going through your mind when you’re walking off that plane is basketball. Unlike the preseason, when games are about getting into shape, regular season games and how you preform in them actually matter to the grand scheme of things. What happens if the Nets or Raptors are jockeying for playoff position (hey, everybody’s optimistic in August) and they get knocked off course by playing two games on wobbly legs in a different time zone? Add that to the flight back home, the presumably condensed schedule that will be thrust upon them at other points in the season (so as to enable long breaks before and after intercontinental travel), and this hardly seems fair.
Both teams will suffer financial drawbacks as well. Every NBA home game is a complete package of ticket revenue, food sales, merchandising and what not. Well, 1 out of 41 of that is gone. While I am sure that these teams will be compensated with a share of the profits from London, I find it naïve to think that the NBA won’t take the lion’s share itself. Especially when the teams involved are relatively gray squads who don’t fill your everyday fan with the insatiable drive to watch them play.
And speaking of the fans … what about them? Why do Nets and Raptors season ticket holders deserve one home game less than their counterparts? Maybe to some people missing one game of Andrea Bargnani or Brook Lopez isn’t as bad as missing Kobe or Lebron, but from where does one draw the nerve to say that to fully paying fans, to devalue their passion for their teams to their faces?
In today’s world, one must think business first. I get that, and I find nothing wrong with it. I also fully acknowledge that for a business-thinking organization, there is always an untapped market, always another option to spread out and collect money from those silly native peasants. And as far as the participants in this trial go, everything makes perfect sense. London is a beautiful city, with a booming sports scene (I watched an Arsenal-Celtic Champions Cup qualifier match there last August, and it’s quite the experience) and a diverse population. Toronto is the NBA’s only “international” city, and boasts several international players. The Nets are possessed by the NBA’s only international majority owner, who has stated on multiple occasions that he intends expand the franchise to international icon status. Two teams of international aspirations playing in a wonderful international city.
However, this feels more like exploiting these teams’ delusions of international greatness than actually handing them as much. How much exposure do we really expect these teams to get in Britain? How many people who weren’t NBA fans will suddenly be fans of the Nets or Raptors because they saw them play a jet-lagged game on March 4 or 5?
I’m sure that the games themselves will be packed, and whoever will attend them will enjoy them very much – heck, I will benifit greatly from the ability to watch two NBA games at human hours myself, and you know that if the NBA ever makes an appearance in Israel I will show up faster than you can say “two-faced hypocrite” – but international exposure comes from international broadcasting and international players, not from gimmicks that help your sales while hurting the competitive balance of the sport.
Look, I’m all for progress. And I believe more than anyone that people shouldn’t be deprived of this wonderful thing called NBA basketball just because they weren’t born/don’t live in the States. But this isn’t it. This is David Stern shoving a personal fantasy down the throats of the teams that can’t say no. I mean, come on, do you honestly think the Lakers, the Celtics, the new faced Heat, or even the Knicks will ever play a game in Europe? Hell no. There will be outcries, both from the teams themselves and their opponents (“we only get to host them once/twice a year, how dare you take that away from us?” or “you always hated us, that’s why you want us to play one less home game and you only let us win the championship three times per decade”), and it will quietly fizzle back to the realm of failed ideas.
So please, David Stern, just take this away.
This isn’t an accomplishment, this isn’t a historical landmark that will change the NBA for the better. It’s just globalization gone awry, with the added perk of screwing over two franchises who have nobody to cry out for them. At the very best, this is fodder for conspiracy theorists who can add this to their ever growing list of selfish preferences you have accumilated over the years for the cost of competitiveness. I doubt that’s what you want.
{ 0 comments }
