The NBA goes international

by Zain Ahmed

In recent years, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has made strides towards making basketball an international sport. To make this a reality they started recruiting worldwide.

There have been foreign players representing multiple nationalities recruited to the association, resulting in the production of some of the best talents in NBA history.

These talented players include: point guard Steve Nash, center Yao Ming, center Pau Gasol, center Marc Gasol, guard Jeremy Lin, guard Tony Parker, guard Manu Ginobli, forward Dirk Nowitzki, center Hakeem Olajuwon, and many other.

These players have caught the attention of fans worldwide with many proud their country has produced some of the best NBA talents. As fans increase globally the attendance at games increased with people attending from all over the globe. In fact, during the 2017-2018 season, more than thirty-five percent of NBA.com users were from outside of North America with programming reaching over one billion outside of the country.

But one thing was still missing. While, they were able to watch the games and highlights from their devices back home, fans outside of the United States and Canada could not have the opportunity to see a game live unless they were willing to travel. The NBA then realized that they had to increase access for these worldwide fans to have a chance to be able to see a real-life NBA game in their own country. The association then started to invest in bringing these games to different parts of the world.

During the 2019 NBA season, the NBA is going to have some games outside of the States and Canada in countries including Japan, China, India, Mexico and France. Although there are not a lot of games scheduled outside of the North American region, it will still be enough to bring fans from all over the world into the game of basketball in the comfort of their home country. This initiative also gives people who have been fans for many years, but unable to travel across oceans, a chance to finally have the opportunity to witness an NBA game. While this process is reported to be slow, there are hopes that one-day basketball will be an intertionally competitive sport.