Graphic by Sophie Jesson-Ward; Photo courtesy of Getty Images
What do the last five winners of the NBA’s MVP award have in common? They’re all foreign-born.
Giannis Antetokounmpo from Greece, Nikola Jokić from Serbia and Joel Embiid from Cameroon have dominated the past half-decade, amassing each MVP award. The 2023-24 MVP race is no different, as Jokić, Shai Gilegous-Alexander from Canada and Luka Dončić from Slovenia were announced as the finalists for the award. Despite this, the NBA held just two international games during the 2023-24 regular-season — not including Toronto Raptors’ home games.
One may expect the NBA’s organizers to select its elite, foreign stars — like MVP’s Embiid or Antetokounmpo — to headline the two international games.
They did not.
If not established foreign players, wouldn’t it make the most sense for the league to pick a young and emerging, international star to fill the arena? Like the San Antonio Spurs’ rookie, phenom Victor Wembanyama from France or the Utah Jazz’s All-Star Lauri Markkanen from Finland. This was not the case.
Instead, the NBA chose the Atlanta Hawks to face off against the Orlando Magic in the Mexico City, Mexico, game on Nov. 9, 2023, and the Cleveland Cavaliers to face the Brooklyn Nets in Paris, France, on Jan. 11, 2024. Only eight of the 41 active players across these four teams come from abroad. While the Magic have Franz Wagner, a promising fledgling out of Germany, the only foreign-born All-Star in either of these games was Australian Ben Simmons of the Nets — his latest selection in 2021.
Last year, in a 12-country survey by Ampere, people were asked what their favorite sports competition was. The NBA ranked third, only behind the Premier League and Fifa World Cup. International games deserve to be a spectacle, there are many fans globally who want to watch them. These games need to stand out, and, if they do, they will entice more global viewers than any other regular-season game. But changes must be made. This begins with choosing the right teams: fans want fierce matchups between first-class teams and premier players. For example, a matchup between European MVP candidates Jokić of the Denver Nuggets and Dončić of the Dallas Mavericks.
If it wants to cultivate greater publicity, the NBA also needs to start precisely scheduling its international games. The game in Paris was only the third regular-season game ever held in the city. Yet, the game was played on a Thursday.
How does the administration of the NBA expect people to truly care about international games when half of the world is at work or school when they start? International games should be on the weekends when most people are free of responsibilities. This also gives people something to look forward to during their busy week, making international games a larger spectacle.
However, these administrators wouldn’t need to focus on scheduling and matchups as closely if they instead focused on a broader solution: scheduling more games. In a league brimming with foreign talent, there are no excuses why out of the 1,230 regular-season games, only two are played internationally.
On the opening night of the 2023-24 season, 27.7% of NBA players were born abroad. The MLB, a league comparable in terms of revenue and viewership, had a 28.5% international player base for the 2023 season and has a similar projection for the 2024 season. Despite the resemblances, the MLB has taken more strides to connect to its overseas audience.
By the end of the first week of its season, the MLB will have hosted the same amount of international games as the NBA did in total. Excluding the Toronto Blue Jays’ home games, the MLB has eight international games scheduled for its 2024 regular season. The league kicked off its regular season with a two-game showdown between state rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres, at the Gocheok SkyDome in Seoul, South Korea.
Japanese sensation and two-time MVP Shohei Ohtani spearheaded the Dodgers while the electrifying, Dominican All-Star Fernando Tatis Jr. of the Padres put on a show for fans to gawk at. Matchups like this draw crowds physically, alluring fans into the stadium, but they also attract people to tune in and watch across the globe. Back in 2019, the MLB chose the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox to bring their century-long rivalry to London, England, netting the highest-rated regular-season game for the season.
The NBA needs to schedule international games between teams with a historical rivalry of the same caliber as the Dodgers and Padres. Games between rivals have an element of conflict that produces viewer numbers incomparable to an average game. The NBA’s highest-viewed regular-season games for the 2022-23 season all involved teams that had past conflicts with each other such as the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies. The two teams competed in a dramatic six-game series in the playoffs the year prior, an entertaining string of games. Their rematch on Christmas day in 2022 drew in 4.74 million total viewers, the second most viewed game of the entire season. However, the NBA is doing the opposite and schedules its only two international games to be non-rival teams. Its ignorance is glaring, and the result may be boring, potentially dispelling viewers.
Incredibly, this isn’t as bad as it gets for the association. The NBA has about 4.5 times the number of games compared to the NFL, 1,230 to 272. The percentage of NFL players born internationally pales in comparison to the NBA — with only 82 of its 1696 total players of players born overseas, a measly 5%. Basketball is a sport played by both men and women with hundreds of leagues globally. American football primarily involves North American men, with the total number of leagues being vastly overshadowed in comparison to the number of basketball leagues.
It would be embarrassing if the NFL had more international games than the NBA. There is no way the NBA would let that happen, right? The NFL had more than double the number of international games than the NBA during its 2023-24 season with five total held — three in England and two in Germany. NFL games occurring weekly does help with scheduling, however, this is not much of an excuse.
Besides growing the viewer base, international games benefit the athletes as well. The Cavaliers and Nets’ players were each given three days off before and after their game in Paris to allow ample time for players to adjust to France’s time zone. This gives the teams a small break during their season to rest and recover outside of the All-Star break. Because of this, international games are win-win scenarios: players get time to visit a city abroad and explore while fans can attend an NBA game without flying across the globe.
“Obviously, spreading the game of basketball is a huge opportunity for us as well,” Caris LeVert, the Cavaliers’ forward, said in an interview with Tommy Wild of Cavs Insider. “Playing a game out here in Paris is a blessing for us. So, super excited about it.”
The NBA has a wide-open layup regarding international scheduling: Instead of making the obvious choice of scheduling more international games that are more compelling for fans, it sits still as it falls behind its competitors.
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