By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
During an on-stage interview on Wednesday at the Bloomberg Philanthropies Global Forum at the United Nations, Commissioner Adam Silver repeated that NBA teams can face in the future NBA Europe teams in the context of the NBA Cup, or even in the NBA playoffs.
This is not the first time that this scenario is mentioned, and it was already mentioned as a future option; however, this time, Silver himself elaborated on the idea.
“You could imagine teams from Europe, potentially Africa, competing in that tournament,” Silver said. “You possibly could see teams coming into our playoffs, top seeds from other leagues. But over time, I think, for example, certainly in Europe, as plane travel gets faster… I’m reading all the time about more opportunities in aviation. When I think of the flight from New York to LA, for example, there’s no reason that if we had four teams in Europe, you couldn’t travel, play the Knicks or Nets, travel to London, play three or four times in Europe, and come back home. So I think it’s very doable in our league.”
And once more, he repeated that the main concern for the NBA coming to Europe or anywhere else in the world is the arenas.
“From a commercial standpoint, we haven’t seen the kind of development you’ve seen, particularly in the United States,” he said at the Bloomberg Global Forum. “There are not many state-of-the-art arenas in Europe. It’s like even for those who were over in Paris last summer for the Olympics, we had a fantastic basketball competition in the Bercy Arena in Paris. They revitalized it to a certain extent for the Olympics.
“But if you’re in the industry, everything seems fine if you’re in the seats and watching the competition on the floor, but it doesn’t have the suites, the restaurants, the back of house room to do larger events… London has the O2 [Arena], which has been a great advancement in Europe, but that arena is now already old, and they’re looking at a new development. So we think there’s the opportunity to go to the major European capitals, again with a joint proposition, both arena development, a multi-use facility, and all the opportunities around it.”