Why NBA is looking at India for future basketball stars
A little over a month ago, 22-year-old basketball player, Gursimran "Sim" Bhullar made history for Indian hoops (basketball) fans. Bhullar became the first player of Indian descent (Bhullar's parents migrated to Canada from Punjab) to be called up on a 10-day contract to play for a National Basketball Association (NBA) team, the Sacramento Kings. Interestingly, the Kings also have an Indian connection, with their owner, Vivek Ranadive being the first Indian to ever own an NBA team. Ranadive was born in Juhu, Mumbai.
While Bhullar enthralled Indian fans by his size and presence (he is seven-feet-five-inches tall, and weighs roughly 350 pounds) during his short visit to India over the last few days, another Indian is set to pen another historic chapter for Indian NBA fans next month. The name of the 19-year-old Satnam Singh Bhamara, who is seven-feet-one-inches tall, and hails from the Ballo Ke village in Punjab but has perfected his skills at the IMG Academy in Florida, US, has now been declared for the 2015 NBA Draft, which will be held at the end of June after the 2015 NBA Finals.
It is interesting to note that Bhullar's and Bhamra's coming to prominence on the NBA circuit have happened in the last few years. Similarly, in 2011, women's hoops star, Geethu Anna Jose, was also given the opportunity to try out for a few WNBA (Women's National Basketball Association) teams. Although Jose couldn't make it, all this has been very much part of the NBA's thrust to promote the game in India. The NBA has actively been involved in developing the game at the grassroots at least for the last six-seven years. In 2011, the NBA also set up an office in Mumbai to provide a more focused approach to their initiatives in the country.
At the start of the current 2014-15 NBA season, a record 101 international players from 37 countries and territories featured on opening night rosters, up from last year's record of 92 international players. Players represented countries from all around the world, including Canada, France, Australia, Argentina, Cameroon, Congo, Georgia, Senegal, Slovenia and Venezuela. Names like Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Luc Longley, Toni Kukoc, Dikembe Mutombo and Arvydas Sabonis have all come from different corners of the globe to feature in the NBA. At this year's NBA All-Star game, the tip-off featured Pau Gasol and Marc Gasol, siblings hailing from Spain. The problem is that India, a country teeming with a population of 1.25 billion-plus individuals, is yet to have a player who has made any real significant inroads into the league.
Globally, the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), the game's governing body at the international level, contends that 450 million play basketball around the world. India has the largest GDP and population of any country without a professional basketball league. It has a FIBA world ranking of 61 and a FIBA Asia ranking of 11 behind the likes of Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Qatar. It is understood that about five million-plus people play the game in India, but even this number hasn't been good enough to produce a player of Indian origin to feature in the NBA, before Bhullar.
The NBA clearly wants to correct this, but also because the financial takeaways for it are huge. The NBA earned $150 million from basketball-related broadcasting and merchandising in China in 2013. By this time, China had already produced a world-class NBA player in the form of Yao Ming, who made his NBA debut when he was chosen first overall, in the 2002 draft by the Houston Rockets. Ming's inclusion in the NBA catapulted the league's popularity in China on an almost overnight basis, with Ming becoming something of a phenomenon in that country.
It is the same talent that the NBA is hoping to unearth in India. While at the technical end, they have conducted a number of coaching clinics for coaches and the youth, across age categories, in schools and colleges, they have also built the NBA brand over the last few years by conducting a number of events such as NBA Jam (a three-on-three basketball tournament held across India) and launching Reliance Foundation Jr NBA, a comprehensive school-based youth basketball programme in India, in October 2013. In its first year, the Jr NBA programme aimed to teach basketball to more than 100,000 youth and train 300 coaches and physical education instructors while over the course of the long-term partnership, the goal is to reach one million youth and train 2,000 coaches and physical education instructors across India.
These programmes have coincided with the surge in broadcast of NBA games in the country. In the mid-90s when cable television became the norm in India, hoops fans got access to the NBA through Star Sports' "Game of the Week". Then ESPN came along and started broadcasting two-three games every week, taking the weekly broadcast of the league to four games in India. Today, with the NBA having entered into a multi-year broadcast partnership with Sony SIX a few years ago, as many as 14 games (two a day) are shown through the week. Online fan following on social media, which was non-existent as late as 2010, has surged to half-a-million followers across Facebook and Twitter.
In the last decade, we have also seen a number of high profile NBA players, current and former, visit the country. From Kevin Garnett to Dwight Howard to Chris Bosh to Ron Harper, Peja Stojakovic and Horace Grant, the NBA has sent these players as the league's ambassadors to interact with the fans and grow the image of the league in the country. More recently, Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan was roped in by the NBA to attend the 2015 All-Star weekend that took place at the Madison Square Garden, New York in February as a goodwill ambassador for the league.
The commitment to growing the game in India has come from the league's highest office. Former NBA commissioner and the man responsible for turning the NBA into a global game, David Stern, visited India in 2013. At the time, Stern had said that he hoped to have an Indian in the NBA "in five years". Stern's visit was followed by new NBA commissioner Adam Silver's visit in December 2014, when he came to India with Sacramento owner Ranadive and former NBA player Vlade Divac. Echoing the league's approach to the country, Silver said, "I would say India is the next frontier for the NBA."