The Magic Touch: Foreign Leagues Growing With NBA Players

During the past several years, NBA games have become much more competitive. An increasing number of NBA players have decided to join foreign leagues because of limited opportunities to play in games and higher salaries offered by clubs outside the United States. Underdeveloped but fast-growing basketball leagues in China, Turkey, and Russia, as well as mature leagues like those in Greece and Spain now regularly display former NBA players. 

Turkish Basketball League

First, let’s focus on the Turkish Basketball League. It was founded in 1966 by the Turkish Basketball Federation. There are now 16 teams in the league with the most famous ones being Galatasaray, Fenerbahçe, Beşiktaş and Anadolu Efes which won the most titles. Ranked as the fifth among the European national basketball league, TBL has drawn a number of former NBA players.

Jordan Farmar  who played for the Lakers from 2006 to 2010, Jordan Farmar decided to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2011, in the wake of the 2011 NBA lockout, and then transferred to Anadolu Efes in 2012–13. During the two years in Israel and Turkey, Jordan averaged out at 14.8 points and 3.9 assists per game. Now he has returned to the Lakers for 2013-4.

Sasha Vujačić He went to Israel with his Laker teammate Jordan Farmar in 2011. He signed a two-year contract with Anadolu Efes. As a point guard, Sasha averaged 11.0 points per game.

However, for most basketball fans, the first time they became familiar with the TBL is when Allen Iverson joined the Beşiktaş in 2010. Although he only played ten games for the club, this striking news led many people to pay attention to the TBL.

Rated as one of the top three European national leagues, the Liga ACB is a high-level league similiar to NBA, and because of this, many former NBA players chose to join this league.

Spanish Basketball League (The Liga ACB)
 

Spanish Basketball League (Liga ACB)

Andrés Nocioni played in the NBA from 2004-12 and as well as led the Argentine national team to win a gold medal at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Last year, he signed with Caja Laboral after he was let go by Philadelphia 76ers. Interestingly, Andrés had already played for this club during 2001 to 2004. However this time when he returned to the Liga ACB, Andrés failed to play as well as he did in the NBA due to his injuries. He averaged 10.9 points and 4.0 rebounds per game on average.

Chris Quinn played for Miami Heats from 2006 to 2010, but after that he was cut by several teams. In November 2012, he joined the Spanish League club Valencia. One year later, he returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers for the rest of the 2012–13 NBA season.

Greek Basket League (GBL)

Since Dominique Wilkins, the former NBA slam dunk contest winner signed with Panathinaikos of the Greek League in 1995. More than 100 NBA players have joined the GBL successively. Now, the most successful example is Acie Law, who is playing for Olympiacos Piraeus. With Olympiacos, Acie Law won the Euroleague 2012 and 2013 championships, and the 2011-12 Greek League championship.

Compared to these European leagues, the huge-potential Chinese Basketball Association has attracted the most NBA stars during the past several years, like Stephon Marbury, Tracy McGrady and J.R.Smith who have shined on Chinese courts.

As a former NBA All-Star, Stephon Marbury is widely acknowledged as the most outstanding and devoted international player in the CBA. In 2010, Stephon joined the CBA, but in order to win the CBA championship, he transferred to a stronger team, Beijing Ducks in 2011. After starting with a 13–0 record, Stephon and his team dominated the league in that season and finally won the championship. During the past season, he averaged 29.5 points and 5.3 assists per game, helping to lead the club to the second title. Currently, Stephon Marbury is in US for a surgery on his knee.
 

Stephon Marbury won his first championship in the CBA

Unlike Stephon Marbury who had a amazing performance in China, Tracy had an unpleasant memory in CBA. Although he averaged 25.0 points in 2012 in Qingdao Eagles, his team ended up in the last place in the league standings, with a record of 8 wins and 24 losses. Immediately after that season, Tracy went back to the United States and signed with the Spurs.

During the 2012-13 season in the Shanghai Sharks, Gilbert Arenas joined the team. Despite high expectation as a former NBA All Star, Arenas played in only 14 games and started just 8 of them because of injury. Partially due to his poor performance, his team finished the last place and missed the playoffs.

These three are the most well-known players, but there are many talented former NBA players playing in the CBA now such as Quincy Douby, Von Wafer, Delonte West, and Marcus Williams. Most of them are averaging more than 25 points per game.

So why do so many NBA players choose to play in foreign leagues, especially in CBA?

I believe that there are three major reasons for it.

First, for some players, their salary is much lower in NBA compared with the higher one offered by other foreign leagues. For example, in China an increasing number of companies have invested in the fast-growing sports industry and are determined to invest more. In 2011-12 season, J. R. Smith just played approximately 30 games for his team but earned three million dollars.

Second, for many leagues, the length of a season is much shorter than that of the NBA, and low-level games are not as intensive as games in the NBA. A CBA season only lasts for four months, so players have more time to relax in the year.

Lastly, unlike several decades ago when NBA was the only league that people knew about, today more basketball leagues are well-known in the world, which attracts attention from the public and NBA players.

However, it is not a wise strategy for these upstart basketball leagues to solely rely on their better foreign players in order to achieve a better record. Rather, giving sufficient opportunities to players from the country where the league is based is necessary for further development of the leagues. These leagues can only achieve a healthy and prosperous development of their own leagues if domestic players are vital contributors.

The Magic Touch: The Chinese Basketball Association vs. The NBA

Because of the success of the NBA, many leagues in different countries are driven to offer better and better products.  The result is a high-level of competition in leagues around the world.

The Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) is one of these improving leagues.  For example, as the CBA has developed over the past several seasons, many former NBA players have joined the league (i.e Stephon Marbury, Tracy McGrady, Steve Francis, etc.). This infusion of talent has made the CBA much more competitive and prominent than ever before.

However, the NBA and CBA developed in different countries with varying conditions, and there are many fundamental differences between them. Through the observations of both basketball leagues for many years, I have summarized four major differences between them.

1. Competition System

There are 30 clubs in the NBA, but in contrast, there are just 18 clubs in the CBA. Like its American counterpart, the CBA also has pre-season games, playoffs, finals and All-Star games.  Although it emulates the NBA to a certain extent, it is limited by fewer teams and an uneven geographical distribution. Therefore, the CBA only has 306 games during a season, as opposed to approximately 1300 NBA games.

The distribution of CBA teams in 2013

Besides the difference in the quantity of regular season games, the NBA has a much more developed system of pre-season games and Summer Leagues. Because of this, players have abundant opportunities to adapt to the new season and get familiar with new teammates while teams can promote their global images through overseas games. However, since Chinese basketball clubs are not as wealthy as those in America and pre-season games lack chances to make high profit, the CBA does not have a Summer League or enough high-quality pre-season games.

2.The structure of management

In the NBA, the Board of Governors and Commissioner (management), along with the Player's Association (employees) work to grow revenue and increase competitive balance. For instance, these parties set the salary cap to make sure teams have equal opportunities to sign great players and play close contests. They try to make the resources of each team more equitable to guarantee the competitive balance, going so far as sharing broadcasting and ticket revenue. All of these functions show that the management approaches of the NBA are operated with the same principles as a successful business, because these methods are all market-driven and serve to enhance the advertising value of the games.

However, the CBA, is managed by the Basketball Department of the General Administration of Sport in China, which is greatly limited by the government. Even though the department has implemented many market-oriented operations, it cannot be fundamentally be turned into a market-oriented organization because of its inherent centralization.

The Management Structure of CBA

 3. Business Model of Clubs

NBA teams’ revenue sources are diversified. Some of those resources are managed by the league as a whole, like the national and international broadcasting rights (TV and online), derivative products, or sponsorships and media companies (NBA TV, NBA Tape/DVD). Each club controls most revenues from local TV contracts, gate receipts, and in-game retail sales.

In contrast, ticket income accounts for a much more significant percentage of total income for CBA clubs because of the immature nature of broadcasting, advertisement, and derivative products in China's sports industry. Another source of income for CBA teams is to sell the naming rights to other companies, which is common in Asian sports leagues.

Shanghai Maxxis Partnership

 

 

For example, the Shanghai team has sold its naming rights to Maxxis, a tire brand, so its name has become Shanghai Maxxis basketball team. In the 2004-05 season of CBA, the total revenue of selling naming rights reached 27,480,000 yuan, which accounted for 29.13% of the total income. Now, these numbers are skyrocketing. Last season, the Double Star Group spent 20,000,000 yuan to buy the naming rights of the Qingdao basketball team.

4.The way talents entered the league

Since 1947, basketball fans have always been accustomed to watching the annual NBA draft in June, and many players picked from it would become stars the very next season. As we all know, most talents in NBA draft are from NCAA, an effective talent pool for NBA. Because of the high-level matches of NCAA, many outstanding talents are trained to be qualified candidates to NBA teams.

Students from sports schools

However, in China, fans do not have chance to feel the excitement of the draft. The way talents enter the CBA is completely different from that of NBA. In every province in China, each has a sports bureau which is in charge of looking for and organizing sports talents in its sports school. When the talent qualifies for the professional league, he or she will be directly transferred to the CBA team or other professional sports clubs in this province. In Liaoning province, one of the best sports talent breeding-grounds in China, the sports school supplies the Liaoning basketball team in the CBA with many talents every year.

Certainly, most basketball leagues have a lot to learn from the NBA, the best basketball league around the globe, but each of the leagues still need to preserve their unique elements, which result in the heterogeneous prosperity of world basketball.