Just a year ago the CNN reported that David Stern, the NBA commissioner, is about to publish the plan for the NBA European division. This main idea in the plan is to add a new division for the NBA with about 5 new teams, which will take part in the NBA league. Those 5 teams should be from five big markets in Europe like Rome and London, but will only participate in the NBA and not in the local leagues.
The plan sounds great but there are several reasons why it isn't realistic. Although NBA is popular across Europe and probably all the seats will be sold out, we need to understand that at least three of the five big markets already have a basketball team that play in the Euroleague for example: Athens got "Panathinaikos" the European champions. Rome got "Lottomatica Rome" a solid Eroleague team and the Spanish cities got "Real Madrid" and "Barcelona FCB". So by making new teams in those cities will make a competition that will cause one of the teams Damage that will be hard to fix and it most reasonable that this team will not be the NBA one. Also the new team will cause the Euolaeague and the local leagues to loose their crowd because they cannot compete with the NBA glow and the NBA stars.
Crowd mentality is the next problem. While the American crowd come to a NBA game to watch a show, cheering according to the screens and even watching the rival team stars the European crowd. There isn't something wrong at it and it's even better than the aggressive European crowd that sings, drums, lights fireworks and throwing coins. Just try to think what will happen if a coin will be tossed in a NBA game and will hit a player (we all remember the pistons – pacers brawl ). The European crowd will only make damage for the NBA image. And you can not make the European crowd less violent.
Courts and budget is not the reason that prevent the plan to start moving and the problems I just mentioned is only a drop in the sea of problems that the plan is causing so for now I don't see that happens in next ten or even more years.
Here is little taste of what is a Basketball Crowd in Europe:
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