It feels like we’ve been hearing about the NBA’s interest in expanding their operation beyond the bounds of North America for years now, but no tangible progress has come about. Sure, we’ll get a few preseason games overseas and a regular season tilt in London and/or Mexico City every year, but that’s still a far cry from actually having franchises based on a different continent altogether. One aspect of this we haven’t heard about (at least from what I can recall) is an actual, established European club showing interest in joining the NBA. Until now.
Florentino Perez, the president of Euroleague champion Real Madrid (also a fairly famous soccer team, as you may have heard), told ABC.es (h/t NBA reddit) that he wants his team in the NBA:
"“I would love that Real Madrid play in the NBA. Now comes the commissioner and try to talk to him,” said the leader. Real Madrid will face in early October the Celtics at the Palace of Sports and will then match Florentino Perez David Silver to make a proposal that would be revolutionary for European basketball."
That is a bit of a rough translation, but you get the gist. NBA commissioner Adam (not David) Silver will be on hand with the Celtics when they travel to Spain to take on Real Madrid during the preseason next month, where we can assume the subject of a prospective Euro expansion will come up.
The logistics behind expanding a domestic league to that degree are obviously quite complicated, with the main hangup seeming to be difficulty of travel. A move that audacious would surely require a massive scheduling overhaul, among other things. In order for it to work, Silver has said in the past that he’d like to have several European clubs join the league at the same time, forming a European division.
Obviously, if the NBA can find a way to make it all work, then expanding the league to include teams based overseas is a super fun idea. Unfortunately, it still feels like we’re going to have to wait quite a while for it to come to fruition.