Adam Silver wants to launch NBA Europe. Not a European marketing tour. Not a preseason exhibition series. A whole league. Because what the continent that already has EuroLeague desperately needs is Americans telling them how basketball should work.
Silver says he still intends to get a deal done with EuroLeague. Still intends. That phrasing does the heavy lifting. Means he tried before. Means they told him no. Means he's coming back with a worse offer and more confidence.
The EuroLeague has operated for decades without NBA involvement. They have their own teams, their own fans, their own system that works. Silver looked at that and thought: what if we f*cked with it?
Retail traders will see this headline and start Googling which basketball stocks to buy. They'll find some Lithuanian sneaker manufacturer that went public in 2019 and sink their rent money into it. They'll tell their friends they're early on the European basketball boom. Their friends will ask what that means. They won't have an answer but they'll feel smart saying it.
Here's what happens next: Silver flies to Madrid or Barcelona or wherever EuroLeague executives take meetings. He brings a PowerPoint with revenue projections. The projections will be bullish. They're always bullish. EuroLeague executives nod politely and say they'll think about it. Silver flies home and tells reporters he's confident a deal will get done. Confident means he has no idea.
NBA Europe will either never launch or it'll launch and lose a hundred million dollars before Silver calls it a learning experience and pivots to NBA Asia. The only sure thing is that somewhere right now a day trader is looking at international sports ETFs and feeling like a pioneer.
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