Stern for years has made efforts to expand the NBA brand overseas, leading to its status as the world's No. 2 global professional sport, behind soccer. Yao Ming, who retired last week, was the single most important player in marketing the league in foreign markets in the 21st century.
As a result, Asian and European basketball fans are no longer content with their home teams. They have seen Michael Jordan take on Drazen Petrovic and Kobe Bryant playing against Yao on satellite TV. Allen Iverson's contract with a Turkish team was just an appetizer. With the NBA lockout on, foreign teams are expanding their interest from broken down stars to current perennial all-stars.
To whet the fans' appetites, Besiktas, the team that signed Iverson, announced last week that Williams has agreed to play in Turkey should the lockout wipe out much or all of the NBA season. There is no insurance policy against Williams getting hurt, reports Yahoo, but it's a risk Williams and Besiktas appear willing to take.
Why? Look no farther than Stern. The forward-thinking NBA commissioner long ago recognized the overseas earning potential and went to lengths to convince foreign teams and star players that extending the NBA's reach was a smart business move.
As Stern told Sports Illustrated's Jack McCallum in 2009, the NBA players have "demonstrated that our sport deserved the support of American sports fans and fans around the world. In some ways Barcelona [he means the 1992 Olympics] and Beijing [the 2008 Games] are the paragraph indentation and the exclamation point on that."
Well, they listened. Bryant is reportedly listening to offers from foreign teams after mulling a Chinese barnstorming tour, and players such as Amar'e Stoudemire have said they would join him.
Stern was right to believe there was enormous capital in foreign markets. Little did he realize that he wasn't the only one who could capitalize on it.
