NBA launches Basketball Africa League, first combine at Nets’ facilities

The NBA and FIBA are poised to launch the Basketball Africa League in 2020, and are holding the new league’s inaugural combine at the Brooklyn Nets’ practice facilities this week.

The Brooklyn Nets have long been one of the league’s more internationally-oriented franchises.

With their foreign majority owners over the last decade (first Mikhail Prokhorov of Russia and now Joseph Tsai of Taiwan), the team has helped raise the league’s international profile for over a decade.

Now, Tsai’s Nets have contributed to yet a new wrinkle in the expanding scope of the NBA’s overseas interests.

Over the last few years, the NBA has aggressively stepped up longtime efforts to boost the sport and league abroad.

Most recently, it began to lay the groundwork for an international basketball league spanning the continent of Africa in conjunction with FIBA, even recruiting notable basketball fan Barack Obama to the cause.

The league, the Basketball Africa League (BAL), is to feature a dozen teams and begin play in March of 2020. But first, the league will need players, which is where the Nets come in.

On Dec. 2, the NBA announced it will hold the first-ever BAL Combine at the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) Training Center – the Nets’ official practice facility – in Brooklyn, New York on Dec. 4 and 5.

The Combine will feature 50 players from Africa and around the world for the 12 teams to scout, using 5-on-5 games, positional skill development and a variety of testing methods to inform front office staff of the novel league’s teams as they seek to assemble competitive rosters.

Former Nets interim and assistant coach P.J. Carlesimo will serve as camp director for the Combine, deepening the team’s ties to the event.

Carlesimo, who also served as an assistant for the 1992 Olympic “Dream Team”, will work with a number of former and current NBA, G League, NCAA, FIBA and other league coaches and staff while conducting the event.

Some of the more notable names connected to the Combine include Hall of Fame big man Dikembe Mutombo, NBA Champion coach Paul Westhead, and two-time All-Star Luol Deng, among several others.

“Our goal is to establish the Basketball Africa League as a destination for top players with U.S. college, G League and international experience,” said BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall (via the NBA).

“Our first BAL Combine will provide teams with the opportunity to evaluate a deeper pool of talent as they fortify their rosters ahead of our first season, which tips off in four months.”

It’s tantalizing to think how the BAL might help transform the landscape of not only the path to the NBA itself in ways we are just beginning to take hold in places like Australia’s NBL, but even the sport’s growth as a whole around the world starting in Brooklyn.

But with the NBA’s growing international popularity, such potential seismic shifts in basketball were likely only a matter of time, making one of the United States’ most historically diverse culture melting pots an ideal springboard for the next phase of the sport.