Front Office Sports<\/a> conference in New York. \u201cThe opportunity is now to do something like this.\u201d<\/p>\nThe NBA and FIBA announced back in March that they were partnering to bring a European league to life, ending years of speculation. Since then, the process has accelerated, with JPMorgan Chase and Raine Group recently joining to advise on finances and long-term strategy.<\/p>\n
Early plans suggest the league could start with 16 teams, though the number is not set in stone. Iconic European clubs such as Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Fenerbahce Istanbul are among the candidates, along with global soccer brands like Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain.<\/p>\n
One of the hurdles is making sure there\u2019s a competitive balance with those teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs much as I\u2019m an admirer of European soccer, we don\u2019t want a top-heavy league,\u201d Silver said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want a league where there\u2019s only a few teams where the perception is they are in the position to truly compete like the Champions League. We want to try to model a league after a system we know where it might not be a hard cap system but where you can regulate competition. There\u2019s a sense that if you have a team, your team has a fair chance to win a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
The commissioner also pointed out the strength of European talent in today\u2019s NBA. About one in every six current NBA players hails from Europe, including Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, and Victor Wembanyama.<\/p>\n
\u201cBasketball\u2019s probably the fastest-growing sport in the world right now, and it\u2019s a huge No. 2 sport in Europe behind soccer, so I think there\u2019s a real opportunity,\u201d Silver said.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: Dirk Nowitzki Declares No. 1 Pick Cooper Flagg \u2018The Real Deal\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A brand-new professional basketball league in Europe could be on the way, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver believes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149142,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-149141","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149141\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}