The WBC. 

Wait, isn’t that the World Baseball Classic?  Isn’t that the tournament thrown together a few years ago to decide who was the best country for baseball?  We probably can’t use the acronym “WBC” for this. 

But what else could you call this thing?  It’s going to be the World Basketball Championship at stake.  There will actually be a NBA World Champion instead of a team that calls itself the world champion because they beat 28 other U.S. residents and one team from Toronto, Canada.  Maybe we’ll just call it the NBA World Championship?  I haven’t come up with it yet.  But believe that this is in the works. 

It won’t be anytime soon, either.  This is probably 20 years in the making.  Kobe will be retired in any of the 49 states where he has a clear conscious (Sorry, Colorado).  Dwight Howard will have put his Superman cape away.  Mark Madsen will have picked up the pom-poms for the last time.  And LeBron will have his billion dollars and will be looking to purchase a team of his own.  But he’ll have options, more options than you could ever imagine. 

There has been no secret that the NBA wants to expand globally.  Ever since the Dream Team in 1992 when Michael Jordan, 10 of his closest Hall of Fame worthy friends, and Christian Laettner went to Barcelona and whipped the world by 40 points per game, the world has had an insatiable hunger for being on par with the U.S. in terms of basketball glory.  Ever since Lithuania almost kept the U.S. from their continued dominance in the 2000 Sydney Games, the world has been of the mindset that they are almost on par with the U.S. in terms of basketball glory. 

And ever since Argentina took home the gold in the 2004 Athens Olympics, the world has realized that this world basketball dominance is a thing of the past that can only be remembered through DVDs, ESPN SportsCentury specials, and anybody that is still lucky enough to have kept their commemorative McDonald’s Team USA souvenir cups (the Chris Mullin one was the one to have).  I think it’s safe to say that considering Spain, Argentina, Lithuania, and Greece aren’t afraid of playing the U.S. team and in fact believe they’re supposed to win that game, we can probably concede that not only is the game of basketball global, it might be time to make the NBA global.  And that’s exactly what is to come in my estimation. 

As basketball and more directly NBA fans, we’ve pondered the idea of expanding the NBA into Europe.  It’s been rumored for years now that David Stern would love to get teams into Europe and for the most part, fans in the U.S. have felt this would be an egregious error on the part of the best commissioner in sports.  How would that work for road trips?  Would it put the players at a huge disadvantage in terms of flying into the United States for a month at a time?  Would the NBA become a 10-month sport?  What are the international laws for paying child support to the groupie that got one past the goalie, so to speak?

Well, I don’t think that’s the plan.  I think we’ve been nearsighted as fans in terms of looking at the expansion of the NBA.  Much like the NFL did so unsuccessfully; there would probably be a NBA Europe, only successful.  There would be its own league with its own “commissioner” (Stern would still have last word on everything) and it would compete with the Euro League (or merge?) for the top players in Europe.  But that wouldn’t be it.  There would be a NBA Australia, NBA China, NBA India, and NBA Africa, and maybe even NBA Latin America.  Much like Edward Norton’s dad in Fight Club, the NBA would be setting up franchises.  My guess would be that there will end up being 8 separate NBAs sprinkled throughout the rest of the world like American Embassy’s or Shawn Kemp’s illegitimate children. 

Why do I think this?  There are a few reasons. 

1.) David Stern alluded to it
When talking about setting up a Chinese league for the NBA David Stern made it very clear that there wouldn’t be a D-League in China.  He wanted the league to stand on its own two feet and be its own entity (much like the WNBA, I mean, … but successful and interesting).

"That would be a separate league that would be NBA-affiliated or NBA-sponsored, but it would be independent," Stern said. "And it would just sign players. For a very long time to come it would be at a lower scale than the NBA. But as the sport develops in China, and as more players around the world recognize the opportunities of playing in China, we see that league growing and strengthening." 

What this sounds like to me is that the NBA is definitely going to set up leagues.  China is actually the perfect tester to see if it can be successful.  They clearly have the fan-base for it with 1.3 billion people and a good percentage of them worshipping the ground that Kobe, LeBron, and Yao Ming walk on.  I’m guessing they wouldn’t acknowledge Stephon Marbury.  They have more money than just about every nation in the world and would be able to quickly support a league of this magnitude.  And they have enough business savvy and discipline to make this a successful league within 10 years of its inception.  It sounds like this is the direction we're headed for globalization. 

2.) Basketball Without Borders
This was an incredible program that was much more believable than the NBA Read to Achieve Program.  Every player outside of Mike Wilks and JJ Redick can play basketball and play it at a high level.  So to have them going to less fortunate and third world countries to promote, preach, and teach basketball to hundreds and thousands of willing students was a great program that is clearly paying off long-term.  It’s also much more believable than Darius Miles and Eddy Curry trying to teach kids how to read.  If anything, you’d think it would be going the other way. 

They’ve had this camp/program in Yugoslavia, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, South Africa, China, France, and most recently India.  Many of the countries have had the program in multiple years and the league hopes to expand this one day to six continents (sorry, Antarctica).  With this program, the NBA has been able to work with children, teens, and eventual professionals to hone their skills, learn how to play basketball the right way, and have basketball become integrated into their lives the way it has been in the United States for over 100 years.  This program’s success is arguably the most telling sign that NBA Global Expansion with new leagues instead of just new teams is extremely likely and likely to work. 

3.) NBA Expansion Doesn’t Make Sense
I know this isn’t a news flash to anybody, but the NBA doesn’t need any more teams to dilute the talent pool that’s already fairly shallow.  In fact, expansion to anywhere out of North America just doesn’t make sound financial and logistical sense.  But expansion through the creation of new leagues makes total sense.  Assuming they don’t run into issues with the Chinese professional leagues and most importantly the Euro League, this would be a profitable and exciting globalization tactic.  Like Stern said, they would sign their own players and I would venture to say that everyone would have a comparable collective bargaining agreement that includes fairly similar contract stipulations so every league wouldn’t be at a disadvantage in terms of getting players to sign with them. 

This isn’t a process that could become a reality any time soon.  This would literally take decades to set up to the point that we would have enough leagues around the world to validate having a NBA World Championship Tournament.  But that could end up being the zenith of the NBAs success. 

It would be like the World Cup and the World Baseball Classic; only I think that it would eventually be bigger and have more success.  For argument’s sake, let’s assume there are 8 NBA leagues around the world in 2030.  The championship team from the NBA, NBA Europe, NBA India, NBA China, NBA Australia, NBA Africa, NBA Latin America, and NBA Mediterranean (Turkey and Israel are hotbeds for basketball talent right now) would gather to play in a NBA World Championship that would actually validate the Larry O’Brien Trophy as a world championship trophy. 

That means we could have the Boston Celtics, Buenos Aires Lizards, Shanghai Sharks, Johannesburg Warriors, Istanbul Isotopes, New Dehli Cobras, Barcelona Suns, and the Sydney Devils all playing for a bigger and better championship trophy. 

This is where basketball is headed.  This is where basketball will belong.  We’ll no longer justify the Spurs being world champions because half of their roster needs a work visa.  We’ll have our champion and we’ll have our grand spectacle that makes soccer and baseball look WNBA-ish in comparison. 

We will have our NBA World Champion. 

Now, we just need a clever name for it.  You know, the opposite of Oklahoma City Thunder. 


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