NBA commissioner Adam Silver told reporters on Thursday in Paris that the league has been exploring whether starting a league in Europe is a commercially viable option. Silver clarified that no such agreement is in place; however, the NBA sees an opportunity overseas largely due to existing leagues not fully capitalizing on the sport’s popularity.
“While Europe continues to develop some of the best players in the world — many of our most recent MVPs, of course, are European — we think that the commercial opportunity has not kept pace with the growth of the game,” Silver said before Victor Wembanyama dominated the first of two games between his San Antonio Spurs and the Indiana Pacers.
“What we do at the NBA is we run leagues. We, of course, run the WNBA; we have the [Basketball Africa League]; we have the G League and we have a 2K video [game] league, so we operate five different leagues, and we think it’s an expertise we have.”
A day before that, Silver told French media that the NBA was discussing “a league independent of the NBA,” and that it was “moving slowly because we want to be sure that what we do will be accepted by the existing basketball ecosystem.” It is difficult, however, not to see the…
