Tag: Capitanes

Could the NBA be planning to expand the G League further into Latin America?

The answer, as it usually is when it comes to league expansion, is complicated.

When the NBA made the momentous decision to add a G League team south of the U.S. border in Mexico City, it made history. The world’s premier basketball league had established a presence outside of the United States and Canada for the first time in its seven-plus decades of existence.

The possibility of pulling not only the NBA’s fans in a nation of over 120 million souls closer, but all of Latin America via lucrative broadcasting rights deals also had a subtext: What might come later should the Capitanes — Mexico City’s G League team — be successful.

Would an NBA team ever make its home in the Mexican capital or elsewhere in the republic?

Stephen R. Sylvanie-USA TODAY Sports

Fast forward several years and the Capitanes are among the best-attended and most-beloved clubs playing in the NBA’s developmental league just as that league was leaned on more by their Association counterparts.

Adam Silver says ‘no doubt we will be looking seriously at México City’ for NBA expansion

Mexico City is reportedly among the top locations the NBA is looking at for a potential new franchise to be added to the league.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver added some new context about the prospect of the league expanding to Mexico City at the 2022 NBA Mexico City Game, the first regular season game held by the league south of the border since 2019.

With the success of the Capitanes — the Mexican capital’s G League team — this season and the growth of the country’s NBA fanbase to roughly 30 million souls, Silver related that while the league is not currently ready to expand, Mexico City is among the top locations the NBA is looking at for a potential new franchise to be added to the league.

“Over the last three decades, we’ve experienced tremendous growth of the game here in México,” related Silver. “It’s now a top-five market outside the U.S. and Canada for the NBA.”

Mexico City’s Capitanes’ secret G League weapon? The altitude, per Mason Jones

“I think that being here for three weeks helped me and the team get used to this,” explained Jones.

One of the advantages for players looking to use a stint with Mexico City’s Capitanes in the NBA’s G League is the proximity to the parent league in terms of both distance and the fact that the teams are inside of the league’s ecosystem with largely the same rules and even at times same styles of play for a G League team as their parent organization.

Another is the boost the altitude of the Mexican metropolis provides at 7,350 feet above sea level. That fact was mentioned by Capitanes guard Mason Jones after a win over the Memphis Hustle, the G League squad of the Memphis Grizzlies. Jones related how Mexico City players used their high-altitude conditioning to outrun their opponent.

“I think that was the biggest adjustment,” Jones explained. ” … to play faster.”

Victorious in their first-ever G League home opener, Mexico City’s Capitanes represent novel opportunities

The team won its first home opener convincingly; can they convince more top talent to join them in Mexico City?

The Mexico City Capitanes played their home opener on Sunday night, a momentous occasion for NBA basketball in Mexico and the league more generally. While not the team’s first season in the G League, it was the first G League home game within Mexico. The Capitanes played only away games last season because of the pandemic and the logistical issues it created for international play.

Perhaps auspiciously, the local team won and won convincingly against the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, the developmental affiliate of the Houston Rockets. The Capitanes kicked off their existence in Mexico as a G League squad with a 120-84 blowout.

The Capitanes, helmed by head coach Ramón Díaz Sánchez, put together an entertaining contest to nearly 7,400 fans filling the modern Arena Ciudad de México’s lower bowl almost completely.

After having to play their first season in the G League in the US, the Capitanes return to Mexico City

After they were forced to play their inaugural G League campaign in Ft. Worth, Texas, the Capitanes return to Mexico City and a new arena.

The Mexico City Capitanes kicked off their 2022-23 season with a press conference on Monday morning, sharing information about their first campaign in the Mexican capital after spending their inaugural season in the NBA’s developmental league based in Forth Worth, Texas due to the pandemic, all of their games for the 2021-22 campaign played in opponent arenas.

General Manager Nick Lagios, President of NBA Mexico Raúl Zárraga, and several other members of the Capitanes organization were present to get the press up to speed on some fairly eventful news. Among the most important was that the team would have a new home in the modern, spacious Arena CDMX in the north of the metropolis.

“It’s been a challenge to be away from our fans,” said team president Rodrigo Serratos. “We are happy to be back in Mexico City in a top-rate venue.”

NBA to reportedly return to Mexico City as Miami Heat, San Antonio Spurs to play

‘One of the most amazing cities in the world,’ said Los Angeles Lakers forward Juan Toscano-Anderson in an interview with Rookie Wire.

After a three-year pause caused by the pandemic, the NBA is returning to Mexico City. The first regular-season game will be played in the capital city of the United State’s southern neighbor on December 17, 2022, between the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs according to the South Florida Sun Sentinal’s Ira Windman.

In 2019, the Phoenix Suns, Detroit Pistons, and San Antonio Spurs played a pair of games in the notably high-elevation metropolis, and the Heat’s first game in North America’s largest city since 2017, a fact picked up by then-Heat wing Dion Waiters at the time of their last visit according to Windman.

“I just found out it was actually bigger than New York,” observed Waiters. “That’s crazy.”

Slowed by COVID-19, Capitanes set to join G League in 2021-22

While COVID-19 forced Mexico City’s Capitanes from joining the G League in 2020-21, they are poised to start funneling local talent to the NBA in 2021-22.

While it seems NBA expansion fever has cooled a bit with few prospects of potential investors seeking the meet the steep asking price set by the NBA in the midst of a pandemic, the exact role of the league’s only G League team located outside of the United States or Canada has begun to come into focus.

The Capitanes, an unaffiliated G League team based in Mexico City, Mexico, spent much of the time since its December, 2019 announcement of it joining the NBA’s developmental league in a limbo of sorts after the initial hiatus of league activities in March of 2020 after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There had initially been some hope the team might be able to participate in the 2020-21 season being held in the same Orlando “bubble” environment which housed the resumption of the 2019-20 NBA season.

However, the decision was ultimately made to wait until the beginning of the 2021-22 G League season to formally begin play as an official part of that league.

Speaking with the media recently via conference call, NBA Mexico president Raúl Zárraga further clarified to the Rookie Wire the role the Mexican capitol and the Capitanes specifically have in the future of the NBA.

“At this point, the expansion idea — it’s not a priority. So, we have not been having any kind of involvement at all in the idea of expansion,” noted Zárraga, relating that “for sure Mexico is a very important territory for the league” however, most notably because of the presence of the Capitanes.

“The Capitanes are the only team that is not affiliated with any NBA team. But, on the other side, … even though it’s only in Mexico City, it’s representing the whole country when we play in the U.S. … There are no plans at this point to do any affiliation with any other NBA team; the Capitanes will move along as itself. We have a huge territory — a whole country — that we can maximize to make sure that we find talent.”

“So there are no plans for any affiliation at all with any NBA team,” he added. “We are building a product here to develop the talent in the home region to develop this comprehensive basketball ecosystem in the country.”

With the only one of the NBA’s seven Global Academies housed in nearby San Luis Potosi together with the Capitanes, the current plan is to funnel local talent into those programs and eventually the NBA.

In a call with Deputy League Commissioner Mark Tatum in December, the Commissioner related to the Rookie Wire that the academy has already helped place 11 prospects in NCAA Division I schools.

So while the dream if NBA expansion into Mexico (and likely everywhere) is probably going to have to simmer for a while while market conditions improve, we may well see the Capitanes and the Global Academy latin America begin to funnel players from south of the border into the NBA instead.

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