India Next on NBA's Agenda

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  1. Shapecity

    Shapecity S2/JBB Teamster Staff Member Administrator

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    <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>NEW DELHI -- Could LeBron James or Shaquille O'Neal catch on in the Hindi heartland?

    The NBA certainly hopes so. It is planning a major push to introduce basketball to India and expand its global reach into a country with a soaring economy, a growing appetite for Western tastes and, most important, 1.1 billion potential fans.

    The NBA has had tremendous success selling basketball overseas, most notably in China, where the league estimates 300 million people play the sport and Houston Rockets center Yao Ming is a national icon.

    India, a relatively untapped territory, looms as the NBA's next great challenge. But it might be a tough sell. The few public basketball courts attract little attention, and words such as ''slam dunk'' and ''alley-oop'' are met with blank stares.

    To help counter that, the NBA held its first-ever event in India last week, a ''Basketball Without Borders'' camp that featured charity events and basketball clinics in which NBA players taught young Asians.

    League executives say they're considering a wide range of plans to spread the game, including building courts in remote villages, seeking endorsements from Bollywood stars and bringing NBA players to India for exhibition games.

    ''We see tremendous growth potential for basketball in India,'' said Heidi Ueberroth, the NBA's chief of global marketing. ''The interest in sports is by no means saturated.''

    Indeed, most Indians are deeply interested in sports, but their passion rarely ranges beyond cricket, which is followed with almost religious fervor and is played wherever there's room to swing a bat.

    As Haresh Sharma, the secretary-general of the Basketball Federation of India sees it, no other sport competes with the national obsession.

    ''It's cricket, then cricket, then cricket,'' Sharma said.

    And that's where the NBA hopes to find a toehold.

    Dozens of schools in New Delhi and other big cities have teams that compete in newly formed leagues, and that number is expected to rise in coming years, Sharma said. He estimates about 4 million people (less than half of 1 percent of the population) play basketball at an amateur level.

    The NBA's biggest challenge in India will be to create the infrastructure, including building courts. That will be made more difficult by the absence of a star such as Yao.

    Much of the NBA's success in China -- the league says it sold more than 400 million products there in 2006 -- can be traced to Yao, who is set to lead China's Olympic team next month in Beijing. India hasn't sent a basketball team to the Olympics since 1980, when it finished last.

    The NBA selected five Indian teens to participate in a camp last week in New Delhi, compared with 12 Chinese players. Coaches said the Indians played well but were unlikely to make it to the NBA.

    Still, Sharma said he hopes to launch India's first pro league once he finds corporate backers.

    Marketers got a glimpse of the potential of pro sports in India with the debut this year of the Indian Premier League, a flashy cricket tournament that brought the biggest stars of the sport together with big advertisers, big crowds and big money.

    The cricket league caught the NBA's attention. During a trip to India, Ueberroth and a group of NBA executives attended a Delhi Daredevils match and came away impressed, she said.

    Their goal is not to compete with cricket, Ueberroth said, but ''to become the second-most popular sport.''

    ''It's about growing the game at all levels,'' she said.

    The first rung of that expansion plan might be the cricket pitch, such as the one where 18-year-old Mohammed Hasib plays with his friends twice a week.

    ''Cricket is our game,'' he said. ''But I would try basketball. If there's a chance, I would play.''</div>
    Source: SunTimes
     

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