The NBA Goes International

For the past few years, the NFL has been hosting games in London in hoping to expand the brand further despite the fact the NFL Europe ceased operations. It seems that the NBA is continuing the international trend. The Nets and the Raptors will play two regular season games in early March at the O2 Arena in London which has already hosted NBA Preseason games.

These moves seem to be continuing the international trends of the major sports: MLB had the opening series in 2008 in Tokyo, the NHL has had some games in Europe, and the NFL incisively promotes American Football in London. Now to be fair, it has worked the other way around. In REAL football, the prestigious European teams, like Real Madrid and Man U, have come over here and played a few friendlies during their off season.

So the question remains: Is this a good move for the NBA? Yes and No. I do think that games overseas can be a good a thing for the sport. Basketball has much more prominence in the world than American Football. There's FIBA and an event for Basketball in the Olympics. American Football doesn't have an Olympic event. It is a bad move, however, by making the games feature the Nets and the Raptors. What about the Bulls, the Lakers, the Heat, or even the Mavericks. Of course, the big teams wouldn't want to give up any home games but it is still a lousy international selection.

P.S. I would usually say that all regular season games deserve to be played at home but it's only basketball.

P.P.S. Well, American Football does have an international organization for the sport. It's called the International Federation of American Football or IFAF. No, I'm not making that up. Wikipedia is.