A potential European league could be a gold mine for the NBA as the top-flight North American league looks to muscle its way into a deep pool of talent across the Atlantic Ocean.
The NBA is exploring the launch of a European league with world basketball governing body FIBA as a partner, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said last week, with an eye toward a 16-team format made up of 12 permanent clubs and four qualifiers.
The continent’s longstanding Euroleague quickly signaled its readiness to enter into talks with the NBA, even as it has balked at the idea of another league in the region.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“They understood perfectly that NBA became global, the last MVPs [Most Valuable Players] are almost all international players. They see that the talents come mainly from Europe,” said Olivier Mazet, an agent to players in the NBA and Europe. “There is a will to take the field, to ensure the storytelling from the emergence of talent in Europe to their arrival in the NBA.”
A joint-record 125 international players from 43 countries were named to NBA teams at the start of the 2024-2025 season, with all 30 franchises featuring at least one player born outside the US.
With the global pool of talent growing in the sport, the NBA follows a similar playbook to the other “Big Four” men’s US sports leagues, which are looking to stamp out their territory abroad.
The NFL has rapidly expanded the number of international games, with a Christmas Day Netflix streaming slate boosting its global ambitions, while MLB launched its season this year at the Tokyo Dome.
“It’s another example of Adam Silver’s vision and leadership in conceptualizing a way to internationalize the NBA,” said Leigh Steinberg, an American sports agent best known as the inspiration for the titular character in the movie Jerry Maguire. “One of the keys is the fact that the most popular American sport which is the NFL is not played in other countries where basketball is.”
Steinberg said he believed there was a possibility for the NBA and Euroleague to coexist, pointing to the NFL and its neighbor to the north, the Canadian Football League, as proof.
However, European bosses were not inviting.
The Euroleague is celebrating its 25th season with a cult-like following and attendances have been steadily on the rise, more than 3 million spectators going to games last season and average attendances rising 18 percent.
“European basketball does not need to be saved,” Euroleague Basketball chief executive officer Paulius Motiejunas said via e-mail. “If NBA and FIBA truly care about its growth and about the fans, their focus should be on contributing to its progress, not on creating a new league that fragments, divides and confuses fans.”
“We have consistently extended an open invitation for dialogue with any organization interested in supporting the growth of European basketball. That applies to the NBA, FIBA and any other organizations, but creating a new league does not go in that direction,” Motiejunas said.
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