NBA back in the UK

LONDON – Basketball isn’t the most popular sport in Great Britain but the NBA continues to push the sport slowly up the ladder of public awareness with a regular season game between the Atlanta Hawks and Brooklyn Nets set at the O2 Arena here on Jan. 16. The 20,000-seat stadium was where the men’s knockout games up to the finals and the women’s semifinals and finals contests were held during the Olympics last year.

The O2 Arena is accessible on the Jubilee underground line with North Greenwich as the exit station. Last Thursday, Barry Gibb performed in a solo concert before a jampacked crowd at the venue. Gibb is the only surviving member of the pop group Bee Gees after his brothers Maurice and Robin passed away.

It will be the eighth NBA game held at the O2 Arena since 2007 and the 12th in London since 1993. Atlanta and the Nets aren’t newcomers to the UK scene. The Hawks played a pair of pre-season games against Orlando in the NBA’s first appearance in the UK in 1993. The Nets, then based in New Jersey, saw action in a pre-season game in 2008 and two regular season contests against Toronto two years ago.

Despite the NBA’s persistent invasion of UK shores, there just isn’t enough media attention for basketball. The sports sections of British newspapers are deluged with news on soccer, rugby and cricket with a smattering of boxing. Tennis and F1 racing also draw significant space depending on the incidence of events. On Tuesday, the NBA will stage a pre-season game at the Manchester Arena – which is slightly larger than the O2 – between the Philadelphia 76ers and Oklahoma City Thunder. You would expect that by now, newspapers are brimming with stories about the NBA visitors. But it’s not happening.

Last Thursday, I came across a story in the free London newspaper Metro on the Sixers’ Thaddeus Young. It wasn’t a story about the coming game but a question-and-answer with Young by writer Matthew Nash. The feature was on a page dominated by an F1 report.

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Young said it’s his first trip to England. “I’ve been to France and Germany before but never the UK so there is a lot I’d like to see if I have the time,” he said. “I just want to walk around being a real tourist. Having said that, it is hard for me and the team to blend in when I’m 6-8 and we’ve got a couple of guys at 7-1. I’ll try my best though.”

Both the Sixers and Nets are showing up with brand-new coaches. Philadelphia is now steered by former San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Brett Brown and the Nets by Jason Kidd. The Sixers failed to make it to the playoffs last season, their hopes of advancing gone up in smoke with Andrew Bynum’s unavailability due to knee problems. Bynum, who was on two NBA title squads with the Los Angeles Lakers, never got to play a single minute with the Sixers and was recently signed by the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Philadelphia is rebuilding with a young lineup. The pre-season roster lists 20 players, 16 of whom show up to three years of pro experience, including seven rookies. Brown is putting a premium on ceiling with seven players at least 6-10. Three players are foreigners, namely, 7-1 Solomon Alabi of Nigeria, 6-11 Tim Ohlbrecht of Germany and 6-10 Mac Koshwal of Sudan. Young is the top returning scorer with a 14.8 clip last season. Others who averaged in double figures were Evan Turner (13.3), Spencer Hawes (11.0) and Jason Richardson (10.5). Top scorer Jrue Holiday is no longer with the team.

The Thunder will miss guard Russell Westbrook from four to six weeks when the season begins so coach Scott Brooks hopes Reggie Jackson and veteran Derek Fisher deliver during his absence. With sharpshooter Kevin Martin gone, the Thunder will rely almost exclusively on Kevin Durant to spread the floor, attack the basket and do everything necessary to win. Ronnie Brewer, Thabo Sefolosha, Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins are role players who complement Durant.

Without Westbrook, the Thunder fell to Memphis in five playoff games last season. It’s obvious Oklahoma City can’t win with Durant alone. Like the Sixers, the Thunder is a young team with eight of its 17 players in the pre-season roster logging none to two years of pro experience.

The Atlanta-Brooklyn game should be a humdinger. It is one of two NBA regular season contests to be played outside of the US and Canada this season, the other an encounter between Minnesota and San Antonio in Mexico City on Dec. 4.

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The Hawks and Nets both made it to the playoffs last campaign but didn’t advance beyond the first round. Atlanta lost to Indiana in six and Brooklyn bowed to Chicago in seven. Like Brooklyn, Atlanta has a new coach Mike Budenholzer. The Hawks underwent a major personnel shake-up with top scorer Josh Smith and Devin Harris gone. Newcomers include Elton Brand, Petron import Elijah Millsap’s brother Paul, Mexico’s Gustavo Ayon and Macedonia’s Pero Antic. Holdovers count on Al Horford, Kyle Korver, Jeff Teague and Louis Williams.

Kidd welcomes former Boston Celtics Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry to team with Deron Williams, Brook Lopez, Joe Johnson and Russia’s Andrei Kirilenko. Team owner Mikhail Prokhorov, no doubt, isn’t thinking of the future. He wants to win now. That’s the reason why he brought in the Boston veterans. Of the Nets’ 16 players in the pre-season, seven display pro experience of at least 11 years.

British fans should thank their lucky stars that they’ll be treated to two NBA games – one in Manchester on Tuesday and the other at the O2 Arena on Jan. 16. The NBA invasion comes on the heels of disappointing news that UK Sports has cut the budget to support the British national basketball team because of a lowly 13th place finish at the recent FIBA European Championships in Slovenia.

The squad played without NBA veterans Luol Deng, Joel Freeland and Pops Mensah-Bonsu who anchored the host country at the London Olympics last year. Great Britain placed ninth at the Olympics and posted its only win at China’s expense, 90-58. NBA guard Ben Gordon, who is eligible to play for Great Britain, skipped both the Olympics and European Championships.

One of the best British players today, Daniel Clark, suited up in both tournaments but like Deng and company, doesn’t play locally. Clark plays in Spain. It’s important that the UK has a vibrant local league to promote the sport. The NBA may continue to send teams to play in the UK but if it has no local league to sustain fan interest with recognizable stars, basketball is destined to play fourth or even fifth fiddle in the British sport hierarchy.