{"id":272564,"date":"2025-11-09T05:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T05:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/272564\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T05:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T05:12:11","slug":"we-definitely-want-a-team-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/272564\/","title":{"rendered":"We definitely want a team here"},"content":{"rendered":"

The managing director of the National Basketball Association, George Aivazoglou, has confirmed talks over a Milan-based franchise in the new European league.<\/p>\n

According to ESPN<\/a>, the NBA are targeting October 2027 as a potential launch date for the new Europe-based league. They have been working on it with FIBA \u2013 the International Basketball Federation \u2013 and more details are expected soon, with Milan and Inter reportedly in talks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking at an event in Milan, the NBA Europe managing director Aivazoglou hinted at a bit of a soft-launch in 2027 or the year after, because not all of the slots 16-team league would be filled in time given the logistics involved.<\/p>\n

The 16-team model will have 12 permanent franchises, Aivazoglou revealed. They envisage London, Manchester, Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona, Rome, Milan, Munich, Berlin, Athens and Istanbul as possible host cities.<\/p>\n

The other four teams in the league could qualify by winning either FIBA\u2019s Basketball Champions League or based on how they do in domestic leagues. Aivazoglou was asked about the Milan-based team.<\/p>\n

\"AC<\/p>\n

\u201cWe definitely want a team here [in Milan]. The city\u2019s brand is one of the most important in the world. There are two great football teams, there\u2019s a great basketball team, Armani, so there\u2019s no way we can forget Milan when we think about the cities we want in our league.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are many conversations underway with the city\u2019s ecosystem to understand what the club and the arena will be like. Milan or Inter? I can\u2019t comment on the ongoing discussions. But I can say that we will have teams in three categories.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, we\u2019re talking to some existing basketball teams. Second, we\u2019re talking to football teams that have a strong brand, and therefore a great fan base, but don\u2019t have a basketball team. Many of the most interesting conversations we\u2019re having in this country and in this city are of this type. And there are situations, in very limited cases, where we\u2019ll start from scratch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re thinking of London and Manchester for the United Kingdom, Paris and Lyon for France, Madrid and Barcelona for Spain, Milan and Rome for Italy, Berlin and Munich for Germany, plus one in Athens and one in Istanbul, to have a balance also with values \u200b\u200bsuch as history and tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The managing director of the National Basketball Association, George Aivazoglou, has confirmed talks over a Milan-based franchise in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-272564","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272564","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=272564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}