Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Ron Artest provocation: "There's no balance..". Too many non-Americans in the NBA?

Is the NBA board or Commissioner David Stern thinking to put a limit to the number of  international players in the League? This sounds like a shocking project: is there something real in that idea? America has always been open but something could change in the next future.
The NBA has become in the recent years a melting pot of players from all the nationalities. There are almost one hundred ballers non-Americans in the League, lots of them just make the team but no more than a dozen of them have an effective impact on the game.

Does the NBA need to keep the door open to international players when thousands of Americans have to ball overseas at any level, from the Euroleague to the Careebean leagues or North Africa for a living? The topic is serious, even more in a so troubled economy.

Maybe the big media didn't take too serious what Lakers forward, Ron Artest said  when on tour in Europe with Kobe and co. the other day about the international leagues: "They need to let more Americans play in the European leagues".
The provocation of Ron Artest hit the core of the problem. With the exception of the Euroleague, all the domestic major leagues - like the spanish ACB, the italian Lega A, the greek league and the russian one.. -allow a maximum of two-three non-europeans per teams. Is that fair comparing to the NBA?

The Ron Artest analisys makes sense if you think about the Milwaukee Bucks but even to the Toronto Raptors.
"You see a lot of foreign players - Artest said - come over to America to play in the NBA. It's not fair that a lot of American players can't come to China or can't come to Europe to play with as many players as they want, so there's no balance.. They should just make it more even".
What might it happen if the NBPA (National Basketball Players Association) should decide to threaten a strike to defend more jobs to Americans?

No comments:

Post a Comment