Isaac
Years ago
Commish wants more non-US imports
This news is about a week old now, but NBL Commissioner Rick Burton thinks there should be more variety in the NBL's imports - players from South America, Europe, that sort of thing. I also think there should be a nice girl in a bikini assisting me in the office, but it's not going to happen.
A couple of examples he raises are Dave Thomas (Canada) and Ebi Ere (Nigeria).
It's one of those things that's easy to pitch, but not all that realistic. As everyone has tended to agree in the past, US imports suit our league because there is not really a well-paying second-tier league in the US - the same cannot be said of Europe and probably not of China, the Philippines and South America - and we share a language (in most cases!) and a number of other things in common with US players.
Burton correctly identifies that the US hardly "has a monopoly on the best talent in the world", but neglects to state that we're hardly in a position to offer competitive salaries and/or keep our teams better than treading water on the ledger.
When a Michael Kingma-level player is in Europe courtesy of a passport and NBA scouts are probably more likely to watch their competition than ours, what hope is there of attracting Europeans to our league?
Major concessions would have to be made to get it done - a cap-exempt position, one per club, for a European player?
Maybe the odd press release with the word "global" helps with sponsorship, but I reckon keeping the Hawks in the competition might help with sponsorship too.