The Questions Facing NBA Europe & What Coaches Are Saying

Ever since the NBA announced their intention to move into Europe, I have been fielding questions from people about the project. This was only ramped up recently with more in the news regarding the ongoing situation, something we’ll get to shortly.

I am flattered that so many people, including some rather high-ranking NBA staffers, would ask for opinion on the NBA Europe project whether it be the viability, the vision, or the roll out. The venn diagram of people that understands both the NBA and the European market is rather small, and I am always happy when my place squarely in the middle allows me to have insight.

With all that has gone on in the past few weeks, it’s time to share some of my opinions on what’s going on, the future of the NBA Europe project, and something that hasn’t been discussed nationally at all–what coaches on the ground in Europe think about the NBA’s expansion.

As you have noticed, I love basketball, and it’s not just for the reason you might think. If you’ve followed me for a while, or you subscribe to The Painted Possession to get an edge in your coaching, you might think that the strategic element of the game and the chess taking place on the hardwood is what gets me going. And yes, that plays a massive role. However, one of the things I really like about basketball is the way that it can be a lens into markets, culture, politics, and the way the world works–and many elements of that are present with the entire NBA Europe project.

Since the NBA announced they would be moving forward with an NBA Europe project there were a lot of questions about what it was going to look like, and I’m not 100% sure the NBA knew either. My friends within the league would back this up. First and foremost, the biggest question I had, as well as pretty much anyone else with knowledge of European basketball, would be if the plan was to grab franchises that were already successful, or if they were going to start their own competing product.

Right away, this was fascinating.

Let’s get something straight about the European basketball market right away–it is not as booming as many people think.

Given how much I gush over European basketball and speak on how fantastic it is–it is largely regarding the on-court product.

When it comes to the business side of things, European basketball is much, much rockier. According to a recent BasketNews article, all but about 2 EuroLeague teams lost money last year, and that wasn’t some kind of anomaly–most of these clubs have been operating at a deficit for the last decade if not longer. European basketball has been growing, but not exploding. Ticket sales are just one metric of evaluating success and profit, but several EuroLeague teams still attract around 4000-5000 people a game (some of the buildings are only that big, which should be noted) which is something I have seen firsthand, and many do not have robust local television packages.

There is certainly a business case for why the NBA, operating like a venture capital firm, would see opportunity here. You have a tremendous on-court product, but something that hasn’t yet turned into a massive viewing product. Very easily the NBA could, and probably has, looked at many EuroLeague franchises and has wondered why they don’t get way more fans and interest in the area and sees nothing but opportunity to grab those eyes, and dollars, with some NBA branding added onto the product.

I also know that wrestling these teams out of their EuroLeague deals could be a challenge, and the NBA also discussed going at Europe with another route–setting up in cities that are large, full of money, but don’t have high-performing basketball teams.

England has a ton of people, and English speakers, but basketball has not yet taken off. London, Manchester, and Birmingham all looked like attractive options (yes, I know the London Lions are good–but they’ve only recently elevated, and ownership there has always been uncertain).

Paris basketball has performed well recently, largely carrying on the found success of Tuomas Iisalo, but they are a low-budget team that has constantly looked for investment and outside ownership, and the NBA would adore having Paris as a market.

Just a few examples.

So, there would be three real avenues to the NBA going after an NBA Europe league, whether blazing their own trail in different markets, luring teams from the EuroLeague, or doing some combination of the two.

Initially, the NBA tried to do both, but realized that getting teams out of their licenses with the EuroLeague to free them to join NBA Europe would be a challenge. So, they went after teams that were below the EuroLeague level–namely, teams currently playing the FIBA Champions League.

A quick aside–there is a very important story here that a lot of basketball media doesn’t seem to be aware of. FIBA and the EuroLeague do not like each other. Really, they’ve been in somewhat of a cold war for years. The EuroLeague is a fully private structure, which means they do not want to bend to the will of FIBA when it comes to things like acknowledging international windows (the EuroLeague doesn’t want to stop in the middle of the season so that players can play in FIBA events). It got so crazy that at one point, FIBA wouldn’t schedule referees for major events if they officiated in EuroLeague, and the EuroLeague fired back and did the same but in reverse, and for a time referees were put in a situation where they had to pick one side or another.

Point being, don’t expect FIBA and the EuroLeague to cooperate.

I have also found the dynamic of FIBA in this whole NBA Europe project to be quite interesting, as FIBA does not have major power in Europe because of the EuroLeague dominance. At every turn, FIBA has sided with the NBA and tried to attach themselves to the project and show full support which is on one hand understandable, but is also unmistakably funny as they don’t really have much to offer and are just trying to attach themselves to the larger entity.

The NBA now clearly wants some new teams to rise for the NBA Europe project, and you are seeing the roots starting to take, for example, Luka Doncic investing heavily in BC Roma–a team that hasn’t had the recent basketball history of a team that should be at the top of Europe, but is a major city that the NBA would love to have represented. Look to see more of these deals happen soon, where big cities that don’t have a great basketball team suddenly get major investment to position themselves to get into an NBA Europe position. Plus, given how absolutely absurd the price is for NBA teams, rich people could easily see a clear pathway to spend less on an NBA Europe franchise and hope to exponentially grow their investment.

Speaking of the price of teams, the NBA did recently try to buy the EuroLeague, and that’s where we saw the biggest and most recent development.

Admittedly, as much as I love to talk about basketball markets–I am pretty ignorant when it comes to finances relative to big business. Though, when it comes to valuing massive entities, everyone can start to get pretty confused. That’s what we saw back in March, when the EuroLeague went to get some private equity money and published an evaluation for the League and the member institutions at around $3 billion. Okay, keep that number in mind.

That’s because the NBA recently tried to buy the EuroLeague, including all member institutions…for a number that was reportedly in the $3 billion range. And the EuroLeague and members instantly said absolutely not.

One quote in a BasketNews story that I particularly loved came from someone in the EuroLeague who said the NBA’s offer and attempts to merge with the EuroLeague were “colonialist” and “unacceptable.”

This brings me to the biggest point about the NBA Europe project that I haven’t been able to get an answer about, and I also can’t see it in what they are trying to do.

What is the goal of NBA Europe? Is it truly “manifest destiny” and the NBA is just trying to absorb as much foreign soil as possible? Be the first American professional league to truly operate in another continent?

Ultimately, I do think the NBA sees something I mentioned earlier–I think they see the incredible on-court product of European basketball and they see some of the incredible atmospheres, and they also see how culturally basketball has not taken over all of Europe. Yes, people care about basketball in Europe, and there are some cities that adore basketball over anything else (go check out an Olympiacos, Zalgiris, or Partizan game, among many other) but there is clearly a ton of room to grow, and financially the NBA could see a much better pathway to growing rapidly in Europe than getting some of their franchises in America to make more money in their markets.

However, I am not sure they really understand how they’d do that–even in Europe.

Fundamentally, the NBA thinks that they can throw NBA branding on something and like Midas’ touch will instantly turn it to gold. There is belief internally that if Real Madrid and Fenerbahce and Paris and Bayern Munich were suddenly NBA branded, people would care much more. Would this happen? Perhaps, but I’m not so sure. Having walked around in many cities with EuroLeague teams, I see much more NBA gear than the local basketball teams, and some could see that as a cry for NBA branding locally. I do not agree with this, however. People wearing NBA jerseys are doing so because they love LeBron, Steph Curry, and Luka Doncic–and we should understand this by now. The NBA is a star-driven league, and people love the players, not the brand. I do not believe that Crvena Zvezda playing against ALBA Berlin would suddenly have a ton more interest because it’s now an NBA Europe game. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I would point to something that I cannot believe doesn’t come up more when talking about NBA Europe.

The Basketball Africa League.

People remember this exists, right? Many of you will have forgotten about its existence, and I don’t blame you for it.

I remember when Chance The Rapper put out a new album called “The Big Day.” It was not well received. My favorite review I read said something along the lines of this:

“The Big Day wasn’t a disaster, but it would be much more interesting if it was,” suggesting that it was just such a bland flop that there wasn’t all that much to actually discuss or read into, and it wasn’t even bad enough to get memed–it just kind of, dissolved into the ether since people didn’t care.

This is somewhat like the Basketball Africa League, which has been a disappointment relative to the high aspirations early, but hasn’t been a disaster that would warrant any kind of media coverage.

When the NBA launched the BAL, commissioner Adam Silver gave his expectations that in a decade it would be a “top sport” in the world. I guess it’s only six years in and there is time, but the measurable growth in the league has not been there, and BasketNews and Sports Business Journal have both reported how the deficits the league is running have only gone up every year. The NBA’s equation here was that:

Well…I’d say this experiment shows that you can’t just throw NBA branding on something and people will suddenly care. People know what the NBA is and what it isn’t. And I don’t believe that Europeans will suddenly look at matchups on their continent and care more because it’s an “NBA Europe” game. If they want the NBA, they’ll watch the Knicks and Spurs. I almost think it’s insulting people’s intelligence to suggest that if they didn’t care before about a game between Besiktas and Efes they now will when it’s got an NBA label when the players and atmospheres are all the same.

Muddying the waters of what the NBA actually wants NBA Europe to be, as well as my perception of if it will work, was a recent podcast with Brian Windhorst who is as connected as it comes with the NBA. He mentioned how the NBA wanted to use NBA Europe as a developmental league for players.

"This is going to be part of their sales pitch when they get it done. They're gonna limit how many American players can be on there, they're going to expand the rosters, because they're gonna be playing in two different leagues, the national league and the NBA Europe," he said. “They're going to say 'the reason you should care about our new teams in London, and in Rome, and elsewhere and the existing teams is we're going to develop European players.”

Okay, so what is it? What is NBA Europe? Is it going to go after the top of European basketball and compete with or be the Euroleague? Or is this going to be a developmental program?

Next question…what the heck is the point of NBA Europe being a developmental league?

This is what I do not get at all. Europe has been producing elite NBA players just fine recently, though that pathway is getting entirely disrupted by the NCAA and NIL. Many of the top players, well, almost all of them really, are heading to play college basketball early. And there is nothing that European teams can do about it. Recently Spain just started their under-22 league as a way to try to keep players home, and it only made for a better system for college teams to evaluate players and poach them for lucrative NIL contracts.

Does the NBA think that these elite 17-22 year olds will stay in Europe…because there will be NBA Europe teams? Really?

And…why?

The NBA loves the NCAA, and I don’t think people really get this. Why do they love the NCAA? Because the NCAA and their institutions develop players and more importantly build their brands BEFORE they get to the NBA. The NBA gets stars like Cooper Flagg, AJ Dybantsa, Paolo Banchero, and Zion Williamson, and they are already developed from a basketball standpoint and have massive followings–and the NBA doesn’t have to pay a cent! This is well-known in NBA circles, and they are more than happy to be hands off of the college system as they allow them to do the brand-building for young players.

Yes, the NBA tried briefly to get involved with the G League Ignite program, but they realized there was no sense in trying to compete financially with college teams, and they should just accept that the college system of developing players and brands is working.

Why would they possibly try to get back into the development space with NBA Europe? It does not make any sense. Plus, like I said, they can try to keep the best 17-22 year old players home to play for NBA Europe, but it will not work. They will not stay and develop at BC Roma for $120K when there is $1.2 million at LSU.

The thought of NBA Europe existing as a development league is laughable when you consider they will not get young players, so who are they developing? Yes, the idea of NBA Europe existing to produce more Daniel Theis types who come over to the NBA as journeymen is exciting to me as a nerd, but I don’t really think that would get the juices flowing for the average basketball viewer.

It also seems like the NBA isn’t all that interested in getting eyes from North America on NBA Europe, even though I do think there would be opportunity there. I absolutely love waking up on the weekend and having European basketball games on in the morning, and think a lot of North American basketball fans would do the same if they had the ability to watch them and experience the quality and the atmospheres. Again, having the NBA Europe project operate as a developmental league doesn’t exactly help with that.

The last piece that I need to talk about is what coaches in Europe are actually saying about the NBA Europe project.

I can’t lie, when I first started asking coaches about this last year, I thought I was going to get pushback. I thought coaches would be so proud of the product in Europe and the culture of the teams there that the intrusion of the NBA would be seen as, well, “colonialist” like the recent reports from the EuroLeague said.

That wasn’t the case at all. Truly, it never has been.

Every single European coach I have talked to is extremely happy about the NBA coming to Europe. Every single one.

Before, I mentioned how European basketball leagues are facing some financial issues across the board. This has not affected players, and salaries for players have continued to go up. However, that is not the case for coaches.

Coaches and support staff in Europe are criminally underpaid in almost all situations. Even with big-name EuroLeague clubs, and especially with clubs that are in first-divisions but not playing in European competition, coaches are making minimum wage in their countries or even less–depending on what the laws allow. I’ll be honest, as someone who has often dreamed about coaching in Europe and has fielded several offers to do so, it is often disheartening to see how low the salaries are. This leaves many coaches living paycheck to paycheck, and most are working second and third jobs–hopefully in basketball doing things like coaching in camps or doing kids teams, but sometimes in other areas.

There are a ton of great coaches in Europe and not a ton of great positions, so wages are kept low.

Coaches in Europe see the NBA entering the market as a chance for more competition and more jobs that are hopefully better paying. I was talking to one NBA executive about NBA Europe and mentioned to him just how low some of the pay is in Europe, and was sure to tell him just how much of an advantage a team could have in Europe by having the best coaching staff while paying less than what some of their video coordinators make in America.

Coaches and people working in basketball in Europe welcoming the product could very well help the NBA get footing, and if it does–I truly hope it means more money for coaches in Europe.

Ultimately, I still have a ton of questions about NBA Europe including what it will look like and what needs it will fill–but I know it’s coming, and I want to be prepared for it.

I hope this piece gave you some new perspective on the situation, which is just what you get at The Painted Possession.

Thanks y’all.