Aug 11, 2008 | 7:37 AM | Is Basketball Bigger Than Jesus?

by: Paul Miles

Sometimes the stars really do align and the status quo gets shaken to it's very roots. In the last few weeks the National Basketball Association has taken a back seat to players, European teams, and the biggest celebration of sport as pure competition on the planet. When was the last time basketball was this prominent on the sports and business page and David Stern was nowhere to be found? As a matter of fact, can you remember "basketball" and "Europe" being in the same breath without David Stern?

But the stars have fallen into rank and file. The US economy is at it's lowest point since the Great Depression. The European Union has become a stable and viable global community. And European teams, emboldened by the strength of the Euro, are courting high profile American ballers.

Josh Childress hasn't even suited up for Olympiakos and the two biggest names in the sport have already been quoted as saying they will consider a move to Europe when their contracts expire.

Is this basketball's first real volley at soccer in the war for global domination? Are we seeing the start of a paradigm shift where David Beckham will take a backseat to Kobe Bryant?

I don't know. If I could tell you that, I'd be at the bodega buying some lottery tickets. But the bottom line is, this is a damn exciting time to be a sports fan. Basketball is exerting itself in a way never seen before. Americans are being pulled into the global sports community like never before. Even during international events we're isolated. The insulation of our shores is even worse in professional competition. How many World Championships have the Celtics won? And how many of those championships have been defend on foreign soil?

David Stern has pushed the sport of basketball into Europe and Asia through several initiatives including Basketball Without Borders. Stern took the NBA's relatively benign participation in the McDonald's Championships to create the NBA Europe Live tour. And since 1988 NBA teams have gone from playing a game or two here and there to preseason games in Shanghai to four squads running camps overseas.

Now we're seeing the fruits of that labor. 77 NBA players were born outside the US in 2007/8. The level of international play grew so quickly that the best players in the world got their faces beat in for back to back Olympics. And while Josh Childress and Earl Boykins going to Europe may look like a bad thing for the NBA for the 2008/9 season, it's just the next natural progression for the evolution of the game.

Soccer has been the most popular sport in the world since about the mid 1500's. As part of the 1994 World Cup coming to the United States, we had to start Major League Soccer. It was about a decade later that high profile European talent started coming to the US when David Beckham signed with the LA Galaxy. But we are still nowhere near having a world championship in soccer comparable to what Mark Cuban spoke about in his blog last week.

That's not to say we won't see international competition for NBA teams. Basketball is a whole different animal than soccer. I do think an international professional tournament is on the horizon. I think we're a year from hearing the announcement from the NBA and FIBA, and two more years away from seeing the games.

There are a bunch of roadblocks that need to be knocked down before games can be played. First, FIBA and the NBA need to agree on one set of rules. You can't allow play above the rim in Europe and not in America. You can't call an over and back violation in America and not Europe. Get the ref's calling the same game. Then there's the matter of logistics. How do you manage an 8 or 16 team competition involving almost as many countries and two different continents?

If we follow the World Cup or NCAA tournament format, we're looking at a neutral site. That means you're going to have to argue over profit sharing percentages. And if team owners start bickering over percentage points we might want to get comfortable. We're going to be waiting a while.

But take heart, hoops fans. A brave new world awaits you when your club starts training camp in a couple weeks.

Labels: celtics, david stern, europe, fiba, josh childress, mark cuban, nba

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