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Par Pierre-Andréa Fraile | Journaliste sportif
As the NBA increasingly opens its doors to international players, many from Europe are borrowing star status. As such, commissioner Adam Silver has acknowledged the Old Continent’s superiority in one area.
Is the United States’ reign over world basketball about to come to an end? It has never looked so fragile. The Paris Olympics confirmed this, as did the recent coronation of yet another international player, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, as NBA MVP. Adam Silver has therefore deemed this context propitious for the adoption of a new format for the All-Star Game, and explained this Wednesday in Breakfast Ball:
Adam Silver: Next year, with the new broadcast contract, the All-Star Game will be broadcast on NBC. And it happens to take place during the Winter Olympics, which will also be broadcast on NBC. (…) So, what better opportunity to adopt a format pitting the United States against the rest of the world. That said, I don’t yet know exactly what that format will look like.
Adam Silver’s viral comparison about European and American basketball
Witnessing the internationalization of basketball, the NBA commissioner clearly intends to adapt and adopt reforms accordingly. In fact, it’s hard for him to ignore the fact that foreign players, particularly those from Europe, are playing an increasingly important role in the league. And he attributes this gradual rise to power… to a better training system:
Adam Silver: Kobe grew up and started playing basketball in Italy, and it’s clear that he was ahead of his time. I talked to him a lot about it after he retired, and he placed a lot of importance on training. In fact, he coached his daughter and hoped she would have a great career in the WNBA. But what he kept telling me was that the most important thing was still the game and collective results.
And I think that when it comes to training and education, Europe is ahead of the United States in some respects.
Even more than just tweaking the All-Star Game, Silver would like to have a say in the training of young American players and model himself in part on that of European prospects:
Adam Silver: I’d like to defend the American players a little, because in my opinion, it’s not their work ethic that’s lacking. (…) I think the NBA needs to get more involved in training and coaching young players. There’s nothing more important to us than making sure that the best young players are trained to be good team players, and not just to have skills.
