FEBRUARY 15 2009
AMERICANWAY 47
WhenBassaniwould return to Italy,Dan
Peterson, theU.S.-borncoachofthesuccess-
fulTracerMilan team in the ItalianLeague,
would then provide Italian language voice-
overs for airingon ItalianTV.
“Without question,” Lyons says, “inter-
national TVwas the first important bridge
tobuilding the viablebusinesses and every-
thing theNBAdoes around theworld.A lot
of people think itwas about sellingT-shirts
andhats,but theproof is in theplayerdevel-
opment, which grew from those European
players beingable to see thegameplayedat
thehighest level.”
Today, NBA television programming
reaches 215 countries and territories, and
games arebroadcast in45 languages.
And Stern has watched the rosters of
his league’s teams swell with players born
outside the United States. In the 1983-
1984 season, there were eight internation-
al players on the NBA’s 23 rosters; by the
2006-2007 season, therewere 83, from37
different countries and territories.
The greatest increase, season to season,
occurred after Parker joined the Spurs in
2001 and became a starter for them, one
of the league’s best teams, as a precocious
19-year-old rookie. The very next season,
the number of international players in-
creased from52 to68.
Parker is one of nineFrenchplayers now
active in the NBA. That France, a country
so crazed about soccer, could suddenlypro-
ducemoreNBAplayers than any other na-
tionbut theUnitedStates isnoaccident.
“What happened is easy to explain,” says
Olivier Pheulpin, U.S. correspondent for
L’Equipe
,France’s leading sportsperiodical.
“After the Dream Team in 1992, many of
our best athletes began playing basketball
insteadof soccer. Simpleas that.”
Indeed, the phenomenon that was the
1992 U.S. Olympic basketball team, the
first to includeAmericanNBAplayers, had
adramaticeffecton theworldwidepopular-
ityof bothbasketball and theNBA.
Led by Jordan, Johnson, Bird, KarlMa-
lone, Charles Barkley, David Robinson,
and John Stockton, the American team
stormed through the Olympic tournament
inBarcelona, Spain, enjoying international
celebrity status.
(continued frompage42)
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