It is already a complaint of many longtime NBA fans that there are far too many teams and that the talent is too spread out and watered down. If you talk to someone over 30 years old they'll tell you that the NBA was much more talented before all these new teams were added. It allows players to play when they wouldn't have been able to make it twenty years ago. Why Stern wants to do this is strictly financial, the NBA is losing money and fast. Making the league global would definitely aid the finiancial crisis if not abolish it altogether.
The problem to me is, how are they supposed to complete a season? How are the Los Angeles Lakers supposed to play a game in LA one night, England the next night, and then Chicago the night after that? Just think about how many teams there would be, by my calculations there would probably be about 50 teams. Currently there are 30 teams in the NBA. One would figure that Stern would aim to add 10 in Europe and China respectively. So either teams would play over 100 games in the regular season, or some teams wouldn't play each other. Could you imagine a season with no Celtics VS. Lakers?
In his own words Stern said, "There's some good possibility over the course of many years, that if there's appropriate arena development in Europe, there could be actual NBA franchises in Europe," he said. "That's the way we see the development of basketball in the world....The model in Asia, probably in Latin America, possibly in Africa will lead us -- if there's adequate arena development -- to having NBA-affiliated leagues, with partners in local basketball federations."
Clearly Stern is serious about this and that's very bad news for the rest of us. The entire idea has so many flaws in it that I'll be shocked if it goes anywhere. The NBA is compiled of the best players in the world, Stern couldn't possibly claim that there are too many American players since the NBA is twenty percent foreign. There is no way the NBA is going to get the players association to go along with this. They have been complaining for years that they don't get to see their families enough. With this plan they might as well not have a family, they would see their wives and kids so infrequently that the adultery rate in the NBA would skyrocket.
This idea is bad in every way, no educated basketball fan will think this is a good idea.
