Isaac
Years ago
NBA considers division in UK/Europe
David Stern has conducted possibly his last press conference as NBA commissioner and it was in London during an NBA game. Included this quote from his replacement Adam Silver:
"It's most likely that if we were to come to Europe, it would be with a division rather than a single team for the sake of logistics," he said. "And it's something we're going to continue to look at. Part of understanding the opportunity is to play games like this, to measure the response and go from there."Full article
That Brooklyn-Atlanta game in London had 18,600+ in attendance, so on par with the better spectated NBA games in the US, though it was a one-off and not part of a 41 game home season.
Wonder how they'd do it as a division? Currently they have six divisions of five teams each. Maybe adjust the US lines to have 5 divisions of 6 teams, plus another Euro-division of six teams with (say) London, Athens, Moscow, Paris, a Spanish team and Istanbul?
I wonder if it'd work best to have the teams club-based using existing Euroleague teams, and risk alienating some fans, or with fresh brands and built around cities or countries?
