How difficult is it to play in the world’s most famous basketball tournament?
The NBA is the culmination, dream, and ultimate goal of every basketball player’s career.
Unlike other sports, basketball has a huge difference between the number one league and the rest of the world. Currently, the NBA is a unique league in basketball, with outstanding player quality, media appeal, and income levels.
Basketball players have to go through hard work and intense competition from the college basketball teams to get to the NBA. Playing against top NBA superstars like LeBron James and Giannis Antetokounmpo is every basketball player’s dream.
Basketball was created in 1891 by American fitness teacher James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. Then, the Americans soon developed the rules and turned basketball into a professional sport.
In 1898, the American Basketball Tournament (NBL) was established. It became one of the first sports leagues in the world. Then came the BAA, NBA, and ABA basketball tournaments in America.
Americans have built a young league system at all levels from elementary to high school. go to university. The best players will be in the NBA. Meanwhile the rest move on to compete and become top stars in many tournaments around the world.
The Americans also soon introduced basketball to all over the world through missionaries and sailors aboard. Americans constantly developed and built a dense league system from all levels. The rest of the countries see basketball as merely an entertaining game. They are not interested in developing a professional tournament.
Basketball has grown and has a huge audience in the US since the late 50s
The Philippine Professional Basketball (PBA) is the first professional basketball tournament in Asia and the second oldest in the world after the NBA.
These factors are the big reasons why the NBA and the American basketball industry have a big gap from the rest of the world.
How good is the NBA?
The NBA began to grow and become popular around the world in the 90s with the arrival of basketball legend Michael Jordan and great vision from the late president David Stern. Jordan’s constant reforms and charisma help the NBA rise to the top of the sports league in the world.
In 2014, Chairman Adam Silver took over the hot chair left by David Stern. He is constantly making changes and adding rules to make basketball games more interesting. Rules were added to make the game fairer and keep spectators in the NBA.