Another FIBA international competition has come and gone and it is clear that the United States has established itself as the best basketball team in the world and that the gap against competition is quite high again. The question becomes: now what? Well, that isn’t really the question but the pundits are questioning the utility in even competing with pros in the FIBA Worlds or the Olympics anymore.
Yesterday, Adrian Wojnarowski laid out the main arguments against the use of NBA players in the future. Let’s take a look at his main arguments:
-The tournament is a waste of resources for NBA teams, who face risk of injuries to stars (see George, Paul) but are offered little reward, while FIBA or the IOC makes money without really doing anything but renting an arena. To quote Wojnarowski: “Those most stridently touting the irreplaceable value of USA Basketball are those profiting the greatest from it.”
-The USA Basketball is essentially undue free publicity for Mike Krzyzewski to recruit (though he agrees that Coach K has done a great job).
Let’s start with the Coach K point quickly because it is really a side issue. Krzyzewski does get an advantage over other college coaches by his involvement but that is nobody’s concern. He is there to win games and if he didn’t he could be fired and suffer humiliation. He may as well reap the rewards when he does well.
The real question, though, is Wojnarowski’s first point. In order to properly answer it though you must define your terms. Wojnarowski never actually addresses the issues in the context of the real question: what is the point of having NBA stars competing in the first place? The involvement of the pros seems to come from two basic factors: (1) U.S. embarrassment about losing with the college kids and (2) the demand of the world to see the best, which, in turn, could fuel the popularity of the NBA abroad. The first factor isn’t really that important. Only the most die hard U.S. hoops fans really remember that Arvydas Sabonis and Oscar Schmidt ate up college players in the late 1980s or even the later struggles of the NBA pros in 2002 and 2004. In addition, the pratfalls hurt the ego of U.S. fans briefly in the early 2000s but it didn’t change anyone’s perception that the U.S. had the best teams. More to the point…who cares? If Stephon Marbury and Allen Iverson can’t beat Greece or Spain does that really change our lives?
The second factor, however, seems quite real. The NBA and basketball have both grown in popularity since the Dream Team dominated the Olympics in 1992. Of course it is impossible to say to what extent the 1992 team helped this or, if it was big factor, then whether the NBA gets any mileage out of the continued involvement of its first and second tier stars in international competitions (it is fair to say that Europeans did not ask for Kenneth Faried’s autograph).
Wojnarowski’s main point, though, is fair. Mark Cuban raised this quesiton earlier. Why should the NBA just give FIBA or the Olympics its valuable commodities without receiving much benefit (other than the difficult to quantify interest of the global audience)? Now neither I nor Wojnarowski should really care if the NBA is getting the benefit of a bargain with FIBA or the IOC. We should just sit back and watch the games and not care if the risk allocation makes sense (we do have to recognize that NBA fans do have an interest though to the extent that they might not want their stars getting hurt in meaningless exhibitions).
I do agree, though, that the NBA might want to assert its own rights in the future. But as a fan, I think the only question is whether international competition can be packaged in a way that is more interesting to the fans or might perpetuate more fan growth. The obvious alternative is to have the NBA champion compete in a super bowl-type Finals with the winner of the Eurocup. This sounds interesting in theory also, though it also raises issues. Would fans coalesce enough around a non-country based series? Is there really widespread interest in, say, how the 2013-14 Spurs would do against Eurochamp Valencia BC (whose best player is the immortal Justin Doellman)? Even if there is interest, logistically, the NBA plays seven games series while the Euro teams plays shorter series. How would that difference be squared away? And would an NBA team feel like playing in this after a long season anyway? Possibly if the money is good. Frankly, it would be fun to see some kind of international professional tournament but the novelty of such a tourney, like FIBA/Olympics, will wear off quickly.
I think the ultimate answer is to keep changing the format to keep it from becoming stale and keep an open mind about what would be interesting to the public. Alas, there is no good permanent answer for this but a change in format wouldn’t hurt.