The NBA
offers the world’s best basketball competition in which players can play for
any of the league’s clubs regardless of nationality. FIBA offers the world’s
best basketball competitions in which players compete only for teams
representing their countries of origin or naturalization. Because the two
groups draw on much of the same player pool, injuries sustained in one
competition affect the other. Paul
George’s recent mishap has led to suggestions that the relationship
disproportionately favors FIBA.(1)
That may
indeed be the case and the NBA office needs to find out if it is. The league
needs to perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine if the risks of endorsing
international player participation outweigh the rewards. If it determines it
receives more from FIBA and the IOC than it puts in, it needs to put together a
really kick-butt PowerPoint to demonstrate how to its owners, since at least
one loud one believes the opposite.(2) If it determines the
arrangement needs alteration, it should do it in a hurry to give any outrage a
chance to die down as much as possible before the next wave of Olympic hype.
The most
crucial area the NBA needs to analyze is how much benefit it derives from its
international exposure and what role having its players compete internationally
plays. Can we feel certain that marketing benefits flow to the NBA from inter-country
games and not the other way around? The point has been made that the NBA’s
ability to make money internationally skyrocketed after the Dream Team’s 1992
Olympic appearance. (3)(4) While the time frame matches up to the
beginning of a rise in the league’s global fortunes, measuring Barcelona’s
impact is complicated by a couple of other synchronous developments. First, the
Cold War had just ended. It is likely that NBA teams would have long been
signing Sergei Belovs or pre-tendon-injury Arvydas Sabonises had not the
players’ governments forcibly prevented such freedom of association. That related
notions of “amateurism” held a certain sway didn’t help, but NBA/ABA money could
have defeated those shams. Also in the early 1990s, Sky Sports launched.(5)
Soon, Europe would have sports-only channels to help popularize NBA games and
other contests. The internet would shortly follow. Thus it is by no means clear
that having pros in Olympic competition was the essential tipping point in the
league’s rise in worldwide popularity. The NBA’s high level of international investment
in recent years has also provided it a present-day marketing prowess that does
not depend on its players wearing the red, white, and blue or the bleu, blanc,
et rouge.
The
Association should also evaluate just how much its players value the
opportunity to compete in their countries’ uniforms. They could attempt to
monetize it in the next CBA by requiring players to make contractual
concessions to participate. The NBA could also allow individual clubs to decide
whether to allow their players to play internationally. Free agents could then
decide if they preferred, for instance, the team that offered the most money or
a team that would allow them to suit up for Scotland in the Commonwealth Games.
The league could also, as Mark Cuban has suggested, simply part ways with FIBA
and launch its own nation-specific tournament.(6) That possibility
brings us to the organization that needs to perform a cost-benefit analysis
even more than the NBA.
FIBA’s bottom
line reads as follows :
If the
NBA forbids its players from playing internationally, FIBA will lose most of
its top players. If FIBA forbids players from playing in the NBA, FIBA will
lose most of its top players. Even the International Olympic Committee won’t be
able to help FIBA overcome guaranteed contracts financed by a percentage of the
NBA’s massive revenue pie.
FIBA may
decide it doesn’t need the top players because fans will support its
competitions solely because of the names on the fronts of the jerseys. If it
decides instead, however, that its business model depends on having elite
talent, then the organization needs to take some initiative and figure out how
to make international competition into a partnership with the NBA that is
sustainable. They can't risk the NBA's cost-benefit analysis showing them as anything but an asset. Maybe FIBA should be the ones to show up at the owners’ meetings
with a kick-butt PowerPoint. Otherwise, they risk another Cold War – one they
can’t win.
Rush Olson has spent two decades
directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently
creates ad campaigns and related creative projects for sports entities through
his company, Rush Olson Creative & Sports.
RushOlson.com
Linkedin.com/company/rush-olson-creative-&-sports
Facebook.com/RushOlsonCreativeandSports
Footnotes
(1) Marc Stein, “Mark Cuban wants 'own
World Cup',” espn.com.
http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/11301340/mark-cuban-dallas-mavericks-feels-paul-george-renews-call-separate-quadrennial-competition
(accessed August 5, 2014)
(2) IBID.
(3) Mac Engel, “Cuban concerned about
cash, not player safety,” Star-Telegram.
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/08/05/6019805/cuban-concerned-about-cash-not.html
(Accessed August 5, 2014)
(4) John Smallwood, “Mark Cuban has
it all wrong,” philly.com. http://www.philly.com/philly/sports/sixers/20140805_Mark_Cuban_has_it_all_wrong.html (Accessed August 5, 2014)
(5) “Timeline,” Sky.
https://corporate.sky.com/about_sky/timeline (accessed August 5, 2014)
(6) Stein
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