NBA Europe: More Idea Than Plan

The big rumor heading into David Stern's All-Star press conference, as reported by SI.com, was talk about plans to add five full-fledged NBA teams to league, and to base all those teams in Europe. Well, Stern's presser came and went with just a peep about the plan, which seems more like an idea than anything concrete.

"We really are thinking more about expansion teams in Europe in the decade," said Stern.

Speaking at his annual "State of the Game" address, Stern added: "What we've always said was that if there were the appropriate arena structure, if there were the appropriate fan affinity, and there was the pricing structure that would be necessary for a team to compete in the NBA, then it would seem to be an opportunity for us to grow."

That's a lot of ifs, which is good of course. No sense in doing something so drastic (and adding five new franchises to the league period is drastic) without careful planning and thought.

I doubt (and this is all on hunches) we'll see this plan go forward in the next five years, maybe the next 10. As Ball in Europe notes, Stern's new comments are almost identical to comments about Euro expansion he made six years ago. There's a ton of work to do on this before we'll see Stern's dream of complete globalization realized.