The NBA’s Euro-Trip

The exodus has begun. Over the summer, Atlanta Hawks forward and rising star Josh Childress became the first prominent NBA player to go overseas to play basketball. After Childress’ move to the Greek club basketball team Olympiacos, every other American pro-baller might be asking themselves the same question: Should I leave the NBA for more money? While some European teams do not have the financial backing, other better funded teams will surely try to bait American players with hefty contracts. In fact, some major NBA stars have already voiced interest in accepting the European offers.

Perhaps one of the most prominent of these stars is Kobe Bryant. At an Olympic press conference in August, he said that he would leave the Los Angeles Lakers for Europe if he received around $50 million dollars from a foreign team to play for one season. Another possibility for the three-time NBA champion is to be both an owner and player for a team in Milan. Twenty-four year-old sensation and Nike cover-boy Lebron James has also expressed interest in such lucrative contracts. With Kobe Bryant and Lebron James leading the pack, other players may follow suit.

The globalization of basketball has been growing rapidly over the past decade, generating not only a greater demand for American players but also the development of better players worldwide. These effects seem to be yielding a more competitive sport overall. The men’s basketball games at the Beijing Olympics were some of the most competitive games to date; the gold medal game, for example, was not a rout by the United States but a fairly close 118-107 American win. But this is only a small benefit of the overall destructive process; the deportation of our finest hoops talent will not be benefit the NBA or its fans. As a collective, American basketball fans care little about the international sport, notwithstanding the summer Olympics every four years.

If more big time players start jumping across the pond for briefcases full of Euros, the NBA will lose the foundation of its business: talented players. While this movement has not taken off yet, it makes sense that if one league loses its best talent, the level of play will decrease. Tom Brady, star quarterback of the Patriots football team, offers an object lesson for these issues. Brady completely changed the scope of the 2008 NFL season when he tore a muscle in his left knee during the first game of the year against the Kansas City Chiefs. While many Patriots fans are still faithfully following the team, it seems that far fewer NFL fans generally have shown interest in the Patriots this season. With stories like these, one can only imagine the feelings of loss that Celtics fans would harbor if Kevin Garnett packed his bags for Brussels, or what Nuggets fans would do if Allen Iverson skipped out to Sicily.

On a larger scale, this threat to the NBA exemplifies the darker side of globalization. While the benefits to these players—and the world basketball market generally—may increase as a result of their going abroad, there are inevitable costs. As a fundamentally American sport, born in Springfield, Mass. in 1891, moving players from their fan base would destroy the game at its popular epicenter Also, the move indicates the state of today’s economy. With an exchange rate that has fluctuated around $1.50 for every Euro, these foreign organizations have the purchasing power to offer American players attractive salaries.

For now, it is just basketball that is threatened. Let’s hope the owners of the NBA teams become aware of this trend and defend against their players’ European migration. Otherwise, only the prestige of the NBA, rather than its players, will continue to keep the world’s greatest game close to home, if at all. Perhaps someday there may be a World Basketball Series, but for now, a good NBA Playoffs is all I really want.



Marcel E. Moran ’11, a Crimson editorial writer,, is a Human Evolutionary Biology concentrator in Eliot House.