Much of Adam Silver’s job at the helm of the NBA consists of exploiting the global character of basketball to broaden its geographical horizons. This international expansionism has its starting point in the 1992 Olympic Games, when the Dream Team opened the spectacle of the best league in the world to the entire planet. At present, one of the simplest ways of penetrating new borders is the celebration of parties in territory other than the United States. A practice that has had to be discontinued due to the pandemic. With the idea of recovering these games as soon as possible, the League already has announced that Abu Dhabi will host matches in the 2022 preseason.
January 2020 is the last date on which the NBA played an international match with its getaway to Paris for a Bucks-Hornets. Months before, in September 2019, China was the country that hosted a good part of the preseason in one of the most conflictive episodes of the league in terms of foreign relations. Now, making up for lost time, Adam Silver and his partners have not wanted to miss the opportunity to introduce their product in the Middle East as they have already done with other points of interest such as Southeast Asia.
The League also maintains open fronts in Africa, where talent recruitment and branch leagues prevail. Other common meeting points are London and Mexico City, which have replaced Japan since 2003 as the favorite venue for regular season games. The date or number of games to be played is not yet known, but the NBA can already score a new goal thanks to the entrance to the gigantic economic market that is the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
(Cover photo by Doug Pensinger / Getty Images)
