An NBA exhibition game in India next year? Vivek Ranadive & the Sacramento Kings surely hope so...

Indian-born software mogul Vivek Ranadive killed many birds with the same basketball-shaped stone earlier this year. When Ranadive's majority-owned group bought the Sacramento Kings, he succeeded in saving the Kings from Seattle to keep them in Sac-Town, he brought hope and optimism to a franchise struggling on court and with its fanbase, and, most relevant to desi fans, he became the first majority Indian-origin owner of an NBA franchise. Ever since then, the tech billionaire has brought back some positive vibes to the Kings, planning for a new arena, hiring new Head Coach Mike Malone, completely reinvigorating management and staff, drafting Ben McLemore, trading away former ROY Tyreke Evans, motivating their centerpiece DeMarcus Cousins (and giving him a contract extension), and turning 'Sac-Town' to 'Shaq-Town' by welcoming once Kings-tormentor Shaquille O'Neal into the franchise's ownership group. Excitement over the new ownership has helped the Kings surge to the number one spot in the NBA in new ticket sales.

But Ranadive isn't done yet. The Mumbai-born has spoken various times of turning the Sacramento Kings into a 'global brand', and specifically about popularizing the team back in his motherland. He wants to set up outreach programmes to connect with Indian fans and even added that he wants DeMarcus Cousins to be a household name in India (for all the right reasons, hopefully).

How is he planning to achieve all this, you ask?

By bringing the Kings - physically - to India. On NBA.com, Scott-Howard Cooper wrote yesterday that the Sacramento Kings have already started talks with the NBA and with officials in India about playing an exhibition game in Ranadive's native country as early as next season.

Next season? As in by the end of 2014. As in about a year from now. Ranadive mentions that finding a place to play would indeed be a challenge - "We have to find the right facility," he says, "Right now they don’t have one. But we have a year and the NBA is very, very supportive about building the brand in India." - but he seems to be fairly optimistic at this point.

Now I have been to very many basketball stadiums around India in recent years (I use the word stadium, and not arena, purposely), from Ludhiana to New Delhi, from Raipur to Nagpur to Mumbai. There has indeed been a recent positive surge in the construction of decent public indoor stadiums around the country. Until very recently, most of the biggest basketball tournaments in India - even the biggest national-level competitions - were held outdoors on shoddy courts with shoddier rafters. That trend has been thankfully changing. Over the last few years, nationals - of all age sub-divisions - have been held in indoor courts, in Cuttack, Patna, Kolkata, Delhi, Bangalore, and more. Chennai's Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium even hosted the 2009 FIBA Asia Championship for Women, and it is perhaps the most advanced government basketball facility in India at this point along with the Talkatora and Thyagaraj stadiums in New Delhi.

But even our best, most advanced basketball facilities are a far cry from the high standards that the NBA expects. The NBA has been to Asia several times for pre-season games of course, mostly in Japan, China, and Taiwan, and this year, for the first time to the Philippines. China will once again host the 'NBA China Games' matchups in Beijing and Shanghai, bringing the Lakers and the Warriors to their shores this year. China has several international-quality basketball arenas around the country, all of which are a major upgrade over anything India has to offer, and many are used by the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) teams. But most of these international-level facilities would still fall below NBA requirements, and only a handful of Chinese arenas - in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou - have lived up to the NBA expectations so far.

All this adds up to reiterate that the NBA has very high expectations. The courts must be perfect to NBA-quality surface, NBA-quality backboards, rims, and nets. The balls provided must be the type that NBA players are comfortable with. The arena must be have adequate security for the players, the staff, and the fans. The arena must be clean. The fans should have comfortable seats from courtside and all the way up to the top. All the entrances and exits must be clearly marked. There needs to be check for fire hazards and escape. There needs to be the technology - the hardware and the software - to run the scoreboards, timers, and more. There must be clean, comfortable, and high quality locker rooms with good facilities for the players. And of course, dozens of clean restroom facilities for the thousands of attending fans. There needs to be a way to control big crowds arriving and leaving such an event. And so much more.

These are a lot of expectations to produce anywhere in India - even if it's just for one stadium to turn into an NBA-level arena - over one year. No stadium in India has the type of court, facilities, security measures, or technology that could sniff at NBA standards. Most of the best courts are perhaps in private schools, colleges, or clubs, but even they might not be good enough (or large enough) to handle an NBA game anytime soon.

New Delhi hosted the CommonWealth Games in 2010, and once you look past the deplorable concerns and controversies associated with these Games (there's a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to these controversies), you could conclude that, at the very least, many of the sporting facilities in Delhi were given a major face-lift. A lot of new facilities were built (many of them are going to waste now, but that's another issue for another day) and many of them resembled international-level infrastructure during the course of the Games. And yet, even facilities that satisfy the Commonwealth organizers (or the IOC, or FIBA) may not be up to NBA standards.

And even if a NBA-quality facility is built in India over the next 12 months, would the cost of it be justified? Outside of the elites, very few average Indians would be able to afford an NBA exhibition, unless the costs are slashed heavily, and in which case, the investors of the entire project would be suffering a devastatingly heavy loss.

The NBA continues to break boundaries and reach new borders, and every year, they take teams for exhibition and regular season games to more and more nations around the world. I understand the urgency for Ranadive, the Kings, and the NBA in general to set sight on India as it's next big market, after China. India has 1.2 billion people, and even one percent of that audience buying into the NBA would make the entire effort into a success. But India is a complicated place: our minds may evolve to accept and love the NBA, but just like everything else, the infrastructure might take a lot longer to catch up.

In an interview with Jared Greenberg on NBA.com recently, Ranadive spoke in further detail about the potential of a future basketball revolution in India:

"Cricket will always be the national pastime in India," Ranadive said, "But if basketball can be a strong second, I think it will be an important step towards my vision of NBA 3.0, making basketball the premier sport of the 21st century. It's already become the fastest-growing sport in India. Following our purchase of the Sacramento Kings, there has been a lot of publicity, thanks to the NBA as well. It's the kind of sport that can be played in a poor country like India; it can be played by one person, by a few people, by boys, by girls, in villages, in cities, you don't need a lot of space for it like you do for cricket. So I fully expect it to be very very popular. Also, Indians love numbers, and there's a lot of numbers associated with basketball! So I think in about 10 years [the sport] will be a huge phenomena in India."

This is a man who came to USA with 50 dollars in his pocket and turned it into a billion and bought himself a basketball team, so we would be foolish to bet against him. I applaud Ranadive's outlook and his mission to make India the next big avenue for basketball, and thus, help the game itself become the 'premier sport of the 21st century'. But an exhibition game next year might be a dream too big, too soon.

Hoops DNA: Shireen Limaye follows her mother's footsteps to basketball stardom

Nature or Nurture? It has been an age-old argument: are an individual’s personality and skills developed by their DNA, or are they developed by the way in which the individual is raised? Or to put it simply: Are we born the way we are, or do we become who we are because of the environment around us?

It’s a complicated debate with possibly no absolute answer: every individual seems to be influenced by a little bit of both.

Shireen Limaye, Maharashtra’s budding hoops star, is probably not going to be any help in solving the debate either. See, Shireen is lucky to have the best of both worlds: She’s got hoops in her DNA, as her mother, Suvarna Limaye, is a former player National level basketball player. But Shireen has also been nurtured to become the best player she can be, playing basketball under her mother’s coaching from when she was just five years old.

The fruits of her nature and nurture are now developing into an exciting final product. If you read this before Sunday, Shireen would still be 15-years-old. She turns 16 on February 13th, and at her young age, she has already charted great peaks. She is currently part of Maharashtra’s Federation Cup squad, as she is one of the youngest, if not the youngest participants at this ongoing championship in Raipur (Chhattisgar). She got her first senior call-up for Maharashtra at the Sr. Nationals in Delhi last month, and a confident showing proved that she could hang tough even with women twice her age.

“Of course, the first time I took the court as a Senior player, I felt a lot of pressure going against the best,” Shireen admits, “But at the same time I felt very proud to be there.”

Shireen’s mother, Suvarna, says that Shireen has grown up around the game. Suvarna, who is a coach in Pune, says that she used to carry Shireen on the court since she was just six months old! Shireen began training under her mother, and by age nine, she became the youngest to represent the Pune district in the U13 tournament.

“In a way, it was really easy to work with Shireen,” says Suvarna, her mother and her coach, “She has basketball in her genes! But also because she is incredibly passionate about learning the game.”

Shireen has much more than her mother’s basketball skills in her genes: her father, Vijay Limaye, has been a National-Level swimmer; her elder brother, Animish Limaye, has represented India’s U17 basketball side.

With this sporting background, Shireen had no trouble thriving in an environment where she was encouraged to play the sport she loved. Her high-point came when she represented the Indian Youth Team at the Youth Asian Basketball Championships, which were held in Pune in August 2009.

But she had a curious change of course since: Shireen got an interesting offer to change sports for a little while and represent India in the Netball tournament held at the 2010 Commonwealth Games. She practiced for a year with the new Netball team, before getting a chance to represent the country in Delhi, but this time, in a different sport.

“It was strange for me to switch to Netball at first, and the first two weeks it took some time to adjust but after that I got a grip of it,” said Shireen, “When we finally got to Delhi, it was great! We had a cheering Indian crowd behind us to make a good atmosphere.”

It took another brave, sudden transition in sports for Shireen again: The Commonwealth Games, where she represented India in Netball, lasted from October 3-14, 2010. 10 days later, Shireen joined the Maharashtra Junior Basketball Team that played at the Junior National Championships in Vashi. Along with other young stars in the team, Shireen helped Maharashtra ride the home support to reach the final of the tournament before they lost to Kerala.

“The transition between sports, I admit, was pathetic!” Shireen exclaimed, “But I had to manage.”

She also vehemently denies any further calling towards Netball. “I will always pick basketball! I don’t think Netball will have a future for me!”

As long as she can keep honing her skills, Shireen is sure to have an improving future in the game. She plays a versatile game, switching between guard and forward positions with ease. At 5”10, she is taller than most girls she competes with at her position, and with good ball-handling skills, she is looking to perfect her point-guard game which will allow her to overpower smaller opponents. She has also learnt from watching her mother play: “My mother had really good pivot moves in the post, something that she worked on with me and I have been able to pick up.”

With a lot of potential waiting ahead, Shireen is ambitious about her future.“After I finish my 10th Boards, I want to go to America to study,” she says, “In five years, I wish to see myself in the WNBA.”

Blessed with the perfect blend of nature and nurture, Shireen has little reason to doubt her dreams!

No Basketball at the Delhi Commonwealth Games

Are you in the mood for some crappy news this morning? According to an exclusive report by More than the games yesterday, the Basketball championships at the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi this year have been cancelled by FIBA.

This year's Commonwealth Basketball Championships, due to be staged in New Delhi in August, have been cancelled by the world governing body, FIBA.
The tournament was not directly connected with the Commonwealth Games, which are being held in India for the first time in October.
Although the scrapping of the tournament represents a set-back to the Indian organisers and those players hoping to compete, FIBA stressed that the cancellation had nothing to do with concerns about facilities, organisation or security - three issues which have blighted the build-up to the Delhi Games.
"The FIBA Commonwealth men's championship has been cancelled," a FIBA spokesman told national press agency Sportsbeat.
Basketball has only been included in the Commonwealth Games once, in Melbourne four years ago where teams from eight countries, including England and Scotland, competed in men's and women's tournaments.
Both gold medals were won by Australia, with England's men and women taking the bronze medals.
Although Australia are understood to have requested a postponement of the Commonwealth tournament until 2011, FIBA blamed a crowded international programme for its decision.
"The major national federations of the Commonwealth have experienced difficulty with the scheduling of the national team programmes as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have all qualified for the FIBA world championship in Turkey while England - as part of Great Britain - will compete in the European championships qualification series," said a spokesman.

So this truly sucks: Here was a chance for hoop enthusiasts in India to be able to see some better international talent perform at home, and be able to size up how our own national team competes alongside them.

Come on FIBA: pull some strings... make it happen... It's the friggin Commonwealth Games. Once you get past the primadonna auto-rickshaw drivers and the rapists, Delhi isn't all bad.

Trideep Rai: A discourse in disillusion

For a former captain of the Indian Basketball Team with nearly a decade of international experience, Trideep Rai (26) comes of as humble and brashly honest. But perhaps the humbleness shouldn’t surprise me – Indian basketball ‘stars’ have always seemed down to earth, since most of these stars get their shine dimmed early and often in their professional careers. They have no choice but to be ‘down to earth’, because a career in basketball in India has never given them an opportunity to aim too much higher.

But it is his honesty that does surprise – disillusioned by what they believe to be incomprehensible decision-making by the higher authorities, most pro players silently accept the system for the fear of banishment from the national camps. On a self-imposed exile from the Young Cagers, Trideep spoke to me about his career, the pros and cons of the Indian professional system, and the potentially troubled future of the national team.



I have a personal connection with him, too – Trideep happens to be one of the many great players to have grown out of my hometown, Varanasi. He first played the game at the UP College in the city, and my older brother has played pick-up games with him on several occasions.

Trideep started playing basketball at age 13 at the UP College basketball court, but only at age 17 when he was called up for India’s Under-19 camp did he begin to consider the sport as a possible career option. At age 19, he began to play for the Western Railways, where he was for three years. He then moved on to play for the Indian Overseas Bank for a years, and for the past three years, he has been a part of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC).

He has been involved with the Young Cagers from 2000 onwards, last playing in a tournament in Indonesia earlier this year. The highlights of his national career have included captaining the team during the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and in the same year, winning the distinction of Most Valuable Player and leading scorer in the Prince Crown Invitational Cup in Thailand, where India finished a respectable third place.

He is a high-scoring ‘forward’ (or more specifically, shooting guard, for the NBA-oriented reader). He is a good long-distance shooter and is known to regularly attack the lane.

On his career… “I consider myself to be luckier than most other players,” Trideep says, “In all of my postings (Railways, Indian Overseas Bank, ONGC) I’ve never had to do any actual work – I was recruited as a basketball player and was only expected to play basketball.”

“There are many other players I know – legends of the game in India whom I look up to – who have had to toil through years of a schedule of basketball practice in the morning, working at a railway platform in the afternoon, and then practice again in the evening.”

The system, Trideep admits, has its pros and cons: Indian “professionals” are actually only semi-pro players who are given a post in a government service. The post, as in Trideep’s case, can often be nothing more than a formality – at the Indian Overseas Bank, where he was a probationary officer, Trideep says that he only had to check in his name every morning and his job was done. At the ONGC he has been ceremoniously named an ‘Assistant HR Executive’; he admits that he isn’t expected to actually report to work, and instead, only focus on basketball practice and games come tournament time.

The lack of a league system definitely hinders the players’ exposure and being tied up by other jobs means that they can’t fully dedicate their lives to the game like professionals in other countries. “But it has its advantages,” says Trideep, “A league system in Indian basketball will never be very rich, and even the best players will only earn a contract of around 1-2 lakh (100,000-200,000) rupees per year. With a government job we have a guaranteed salary and job post-basketball – if I get injured or decide to retire from the game, I can at least be sure that there will be something for me to fall back on.”

“It’s the same reason why most players don’t accept offers to go into leagues in other countries,” he says, “The potential for growth and exposure is exciting, but we don’t want to give up the job security we have here.”



It is a very different system to that from the United States, and had indubitably affected the state of international level talent produced in India today – but I’ll leave that debate for a future story.

On improving the standard of basketball in India… Trideep’s suggests that first and foremost, it is the infrastructure in India that needs an overhaul. “We play on outdoor courts and with rubber balls most of the time, and are expected to get used to indoor wooden courts and leather balls in a short period before any international tournament,” he says, “Every city in India needs at least a good indoor court.”

He speaks about the tension between the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) and its players, too. “The players blame the federation, and the federation blames the players, but the fault needs to be shared: the players don’t work as hard as they should at the most competitive level, and the federation doesn’t provide us with the right facilities.”

“There needs to be more transparency in the system,” he adds, “The federation often makes perplexing personnel decisions which leave a lot of its players angry and dissatisfied.”

Trideep speaks of several talented basketball players who’ve quit a career in the game or have been seriously hindered by the federation or the service that employs them. There is widespread depression amongst many professionals who just don’t believe that they’ll have the support that they will need, even as pro athletes.

Another major push is needed in the early development of youngsters. “We don’t usually learn the basics here in India till we’re a bit older,” feels Trideep, and this feeds into a later comment he makes on “pro players getting disillusioned and disinterested in the game after a certain level.” Basketball, even for those who are in love with the game, remains just that – a game. If a love and the basics for the game are instilled at an earlier age, the older players would go out and enjoy it without losing their focus, no matter the level or the competition.

And picking up from that point, Trideep adds that there is definitely need for more incentive for the players to continue playing. “After a certain point, when players make it to the highest service/semi-pro level (which many believe to be at the ONGC), players run out of further ambition. They need to think higher…”

On Transparency… “The international team’s successes need to be advertised more, but it isn’t done so because then our failures, which are much more frequent, would be advertised, too. This is okay – as long as we can build an interest amongst the media.”

On Physical Competency… “It is true that the physical level of Indian players isn’t naturally at par with those in America or Europe, but this is no excuse. Countries like Kazakhstan, who we used to thrash, have brought in the right facilities to improve physically, and now they are able to beat us. We have all the right skills but are just missing out on the physical standard.”

“We need to prepare a lot to get to the level of other Asian teams,” he adds, “We have no physical trainer, no dietician – it is no surprise that we keep lagging behind!”

On the future… “The future isn’t looking too good,” he says frankly, “Our position has fallen down amongst Asian nations over the last few years. I must commend the Federation for trying to give us more exposure, but the team performance hasn’t improved and morale is low.”

Trideep has voluntarily pulled out of the team in recent competitions, and low on confidence, he ponders if he will return to the squad in time for the Commonwealth Games next year, which will be held in New Delhi. There are many others like him, disenchanted by the sport and disinterested in ambition after the never-ending whispers of corruption, short-cuts, and unfair advantages in the entire system.

At 26, he may not even have hit his prime yet, and is already been slowed down and dogged by the same things he warns others to beware of.

Low on confidence and ambition, his story is a cautionary tale for youngsters hoping to make it into the game here: it is very possible to lose faith in the system, but the love for basketball should rise above the external crises.