Money and Olympics key to NBA in London

NBA commissioner David Stern is counting on the 2012 London Olympics to give the basketball league a foothold in Britain.

For the second straight year, the NBA has brought two teams to the British capital to play a preseason game - this time between the Miami Heat and the New Jersey Nets.

“The future of the NBA with London is to grow the sport at the grassroots level, to grow the business of the sport, because this a huge market with huge potential,” Stern said today at a temporary basketball court built on the bank of the River Thames.

Stern said the NBA wants to make basketball “as popular as possible during the 2012 Olympics, and then to use the Olympics as an even better springboard to develop the sport in this country.”

Last year, Stern said proposals to base an NBA team in Europe would take about 10 years - with London being a likely favourite venue.

“We’re an arena closer, because we’ll be opening up the O2 World in Berlin, but there’s no timetable,” Stern said. “Now we know we’ve got two great NBA-ready arenas here, one in London and one in Berlin, but it’s a long process and that’s not the way we measure ourselves.”

Besides Sunday’s game at the O2 Arena in London, the New Orleans Hornets and the Washington Wizards will play Tuesday at the O2 World in Berlin. The same two teams will also play next Friday in Barcelona, Spain. On Thursday in Paris, the Nets beat the Heat 100-98 in overtime.

“It’s a very long term agenda,” Stern said.

“It’s not about whether we have a league, it’s about growing our sponsor relationships, our merchandise relationships, our television relationships, our online relationships.”

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© 2008 AFP