We sat down with the basketball legend at the O2 to discuss his ties to Tottenham, Vancouver, Majorca and Macclesfield
Does your background, growing up outside basketball’s mainstream on Vancouver Island with English parents, help you appreciate how people in places such as London or Berlin feel when a big NBA game comes to town? Yeah. That’s true. I didn’t watch much basketball on TV until I started playing at 13, so can relate to coming upon something new and exciting. At the same time, the world’s so small now with social media access. But it is interesting to go to parts of the world where basketball is smaller and see how can we make the game accessible to them.
Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker and John Amaechi were guests at the O2. But every team had a foreign player on opening night this season, with 135 players from 43 countries across the league; up from 7% in 1992 to 24% now. Are the current Europeans different to that generation or have they just had more opportunities? Europeans have always been quite good. It’s not like Serbia wasn’t always great at basketball but, as the game has grown, the possibilities grow. The world gets smaller with the internet and social media. There’s not as much difference; everyone has access to all the pertinent information. The NBA is more accessible nowadays to people from Europe, Africa and every corner of the world. It’s only natural that more Europeans have success in the NBA.
