Foreign Players Help San Antonio Spurs Win NBA Basketball Championship

More international players, broadcasts increase popularity for NBA Finals

19 June 2007 -- Washington – The popularity of the National Basketball Association (NBA) has been growing around the world as ever-increasing numbers of international players join NBA rosters and the games are broadcast to more places and in more languages.

The San Antonio Spurs symbolize this international movement in the NBA. The club had five players this season from outside the United States who played pivotal roles in winning the club its fourth NBA championship since 1999 on June 14.

International basketball players now represent roughly 20 percent of all NBA players, with 85 international players from 37 countries and territories now on teams. According to the NBA, there were only six foreign players on NBA rosters in 1979.

In addition, the global audience for the NBA Finals -- the league’s championship round -- in 2007 was higher than any other year. Fans in more than 200 countries and territories watched the games in 46 languages, including Arabic for the first time.

The Spurs’ overseas players are Francisco Elson, who has ties to Suriname and the Netherlands; Manu Ginobili and Fabricio Oberto from Argentina; Frenchman Tony Parker; and Beno Udrih, who hails from Slovenia.

The diversity on the Spurs’ is evident not only by the faces on the club, but also by the signs that hang outside the teams' locker room -- which have been translated into Dutch, Spanish, Slovenian and French.

Experts around the NBA acknowledge that the Spurs are the most successful team at signing talent from outside the United States. Spurs General Manager R.C. Buford says the team always has “tried to find good players wherever they were."

This trend likely will continue around the league after the overwhelming success of international players in 2007.

The Dallas Mavericks’ Dirk Nowitzki from Germany made history by becoming the first European to be named the NBA’s most valuable player (MVP) for the season. Tony Parker became the first European in league history to win the NBA Finals MVP award.

There are several explanations for basketball’s growing popularity around the world over the past decade.

Parker says he remembers staying up until 3 a.m. as a child to watch Michael Jordan play during the Chicago Bulls’ dynasty of the 1990s. He credits the rise of the NBA in Europe to more games being broadcast there as well as increasing numbers of Europeans in the league.

“Before, everybody knew Michael, but that was about it. Now, European fans know the entire NBA. They know all the players. We have seven French players in the NBA, so now the [French] fans can get really interested in the teams and these players,” said Parker in an interview on the Spurs’ Web site.

Francisco Elson even has inspired a following for the Spurs in the small South American nation of Suriname. Elson has relatives in Suriname and vacations there, and according to the International Herald Tribune, local sportscasters have started referring to the Spurs as the "Dutch-Surinamese team."

Another well-publicized turning point in the rise of the NBA worldwide was the dominance of the so-called Dream Team at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. That team featured several of the greatest players in NBA history, including Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Charles Barkley.

“That forever will be the focal point of where the popularity in the sport just hit a springboard and really took off,” says Terry Lyons, the NBA's vice president of international communications. “We ended up with just a lot of very good athletes picking up a basketball for the first time and then nature takes its course.”

This year, a record 128 broadcasters provided coverage of the NBA Finals to a worldwide audience.

The Finals also were broadcast live in 15 languages direct from the NBA’s Web site. The languages were English, Albanian, Arabic, Bosnian, Dutch, Flemish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Mandarin, Polish, Russian, Spanish and Tagalog.

For the first time, a TV station from the Middle East, Arab Radio and Television (ART) based in Jordan, sent a commentary team to cover the NBA Finals live in Arabic for NBA fans throughout the Middle East.

“The NBA Finals is no longer just an American event, it is worldwide,” said Mustapha Tell, ART head of sports. “While we have been showing NBA games on ART for years, this year for the first time we are attending the game and are right in the middle of it all and can share that excitement with our viewers.”

Source: US State Dept.

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