Anunoby’s championship-winning season and his clutch moments throughout the year come at a timely crossroads as far as the future of British basketball is concerned.<\/p>\n
The NBA is planning to launch an independent European league within the next 18 months. London and Manchester are in place to be hosts to a franchise each when that league is launched, currently planned for October 2027.<\/p>\n
By the time it has launched, both cities will have hosted an NBA regular-season match in the two years leading up to what could be the biggest changes to club basketball across the United Kingdom and Europe.<\/p>\n
“I think London, especially, is an untapped market. There’s so much talent and so many people playing basketball, so I think it would be amazing to bring a team to Manchester and London and continue growing in England,” said Anunoby on the prospect of a European NBA league.<\/p>\n
“As time goes on [basketball in the UK] is going to grow more and more. I think over time more and more [young boys and girls] are going to pull up at the NBA or WNBA. <\/p>\n
“I want them to see that someone from where they are from is doing this. There is a lot of untapped potential and hope it’s going to grow. It will mean exposure, growth, more leagues, more excitement for the game.”<\/p>\n
The London Lions recently signed a multi-year deal to remain competing in EuroCup for at least the next three seasons, which could be extended to five.<\/p>\n
Anunoby was previously a minority owner of the franchise, who are coming off the back of a domestic quadruple-winning season. <\/p>\n
It is an exciting time for a sport that has struggled to consistently produce top-level British stars but is showing growth and enormous potential at grassroots level.<\/p>\n
Anunoby’s championship-winning run is both timely and an inspiration for the next generation of UK-based basketball hopefuls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anunoby’s championship-winning season and his clutch moments throughout the year come at a timely crossroads as far as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-707089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=707089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/707089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=707089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=707089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=707089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}