For the past few years, the UBA India has introduced an exciting new avenue for Indian basketball players, launching short competitive seasons of their growing UBA Basketball League, helping India's top players improve the level of their game, and even roping in NBA legend AC Green as their new director of sport. Now, with ambitions to secure the services of their top players for the long term - before the Indian basketball bubble expands - UBA has handed multi-year professional contracts to 30 of their top Indian basketball players. This is the first time that basketball players in India will get guaranteed contracts of this length.
Earlier this month, the UBA signed Satnam Singh, the first Indian drafted into the NBA, to a contract with the league. Satnam had spent the past two seasons playing with the Texas Legends of the NBA's G-League and is set to join his home state's Punjab Steelers with the UBA. Now, they have followed up the big news with the announcement that 29 more players will be signed to contracts into seven of the eight UBA teams.
"I still remember the day I signed my first professional contract in the NBA," said AC Green. "It left a huge impression on my life. Now these players get to experience that same feeling that I once had upon signing my first contract. We are excited about our upcoming season and the future of Indian basketball."
The contracts range from three to five years for a combined total of more than Rs 16 crore. In addition, the signed players will also receive basketball and fitness training from top experts in the USA, along with nutritional guidance to help them maximise their potential.
Apart from Satnam, the players signed to these contracts include several with past or present Indian national team experience, such as Palpreet Brar, Rikin Pethani, Anil Kumar Gowda, Muin Bek Hafeez, Yadwinder Singh, Jagdeep Singh Bains, Prasanna Venkatesh, and TJ Sahi. India's top three players - Vishesh Bhriguvanshi, Amritpal Singh, and Amjyot Singh - are absent from this list, even though all of them participated in the UBA's last season. Bhriguvanshi is recovering from an injury and has been signed by the NBL's Adelaide 36ers as a reserve. Amritpal has become the first Indian to play in the Australian NBL after he was signed by the Sydney Kings. Amjyot was drafted by the NBA G-League and is currently playing for the OKC Blue.
List of players signed with UBA to multi-year deals - via SportStar
Pune Peshwas: Siddhant Shinde, Arshpreet Bhullar, Ajinkya Mane.
Punjab Steelers: Gurvinder Singh Gill, Sagar Joshi, Harmanpreet Singh, Taj Sandhu, Kaushal Ravi Kumar, Satnam Singh, TJ Sahi, Vikas Mor.
In India, where there is no full-time professional league and the top basketball players are semi-professionals that usually have other jobs, multi-year contracts are a major step forward in helping top talent get job security. Hopefully, this translates to better play on court and more competition in players aspiring to play and star for the UBA.
The Mumbai Challengers won Season 4 of the UBA League in March earlier this year, led by their foreign imports Alex Scales, Jimmy Scroggins, Inderbir Singh Gill, as well as experienced Indian veterans Bains and Venkatesh. The new guaranteed contracts, inclusion of Satnam in the fray and AC Green in the management side, plus the continuing improvement of the players, should help in another great season of basketball when UBA returns for Season 5.
Through a 16-year career in the NBA, big man AC Green made a reputation for himself as the ultimate 'Ironman' of the league. He played in 1278 out of 1281 games in his career (99.8%) and made the record for most consecutive games played in NBA or ABA history (1,192). His efforts bore him great fruit, as Green won three championships through the course of his career with the Los Angeles Lakers and even made the 1990 All Star Team.
Now, Green will hope that his experience and tenacity will brush off on to a new generation of athletes - all the way in India.
After conducting four iterations of their trail-blazing basketball league in the country, UBA India (United Basketball Alliance) announced on Friday that they will be appointing Green as their Director of Sport. Green will help to continue develop the league with his experience and become the most famous international face attached to UBA's efforts in India.
“Today, we continue our commitment to India and the game of basketball by adding a key member to our team who brings the game’s highest level of professionalism to the UBA," said Tommy Fisher, UBA Chairman. "We’re excited to have A.C. as part of our team and look forward to continued growth of basketball in India.”
Green is no novice to India. He visited the country first in 2009 for grassroots programme and to inaugurate an NBA donated basketball court in Mumbai.
“Basketball is such an important part of my life and I am happy to be heading to India once again to help further the growth and development of the sport I love," said Green. "The UBA has made great strides in the last two years and I look forward to building upon that success.”
Green was drafted by the Lakers in 1985, where he won two championships as part of Magic Johnson's "Showtime" squads as a youngster. In the mid 90s, he played for the Phoenix Suns and Dallas Mavericks, before returning to the Lakers for one more championship in 2000 with Shaq and Kobe. He retired after a final season with the Miami Heat in 2001.
The UBA held the first season of the UBA Basketball League in Hyderabad in July 2015. Ever since then, the league has held three more seasons, expanded their events to more cities like Pune, Chennai, and Bengaluru, broadcast games live on Ten Sports, welcomed a number of celebrities to promote the league, and took their elite players for coaching to the United States. This year's Season 4 was UBA's biggest one yet: in addition to incorporating more foreign imports into the league, they were also able to secure the talents of India's best players in their teams, and thus significantly raise the level of the game. Green's involvement adds yet another facet to their development plans for basketball in India.
After a season of individual historics, we are finally on the cusp of the playoffs. To preview the post-season, Hoopdarshan's hosts Kaushik Lakhsman and Karan Madhok bring on board Ekam Nagra, the CEO and Founder of popular international media outlet 'Ball Don't Stop'. Nagra speaks to us about the most-intriguing storylines ahead, the impossible MVP race, and being awestruck with Allen Iverson.
Ball Don't Stop is one of the fastest-growing basketball media outlets in the world. They cover NBA, High School, Pro AM basketball, and have a performance training branch too. They have over 300,000 fans worldwide. Nagra is from Vancouver Canada, where he organised the 'Battle at the Border' basketball event in Vancouver featuring Jamal Crawford and India's own Satnam Singh.
Hoopdarshan is the truest voice of Indian basketball, and since we're such hopeless fans of the game, it will become the voice of everything basketball related we love, from the NBA to international hoops, too. On every episode of Hoopdarshan, we will be inviting a special guest to interview or chat to about a variety of topics. With expert insight from some of the brightest and most-involved people in the world of Indian basketball, we hope to bring this conversation to a many more interested fans, players, and followers of the game.
The Mahindra NBA Challenge, the largest, multi-city, community-based basketball league in India, tipped off an adult league in Mumbai and Delhi on Saturday as the programme continues to expand in India during its second season.
In Mumbai, 38 teams of men and women, ages 19 and over, will receive world-class basketball training in a fun environment and have the chance to compete against each other over the course of six weeks at the Indian Gymkhana and the Ghatkopar YMCA. The same programme will be held in New Delhi, where 44 teams have been registered to participate. The Delhi course will be held at the Oxford Secondary School (Vikaspuri).
The league, conducted in partnership with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI), will culminate with a weekend-long celebration of basketball from Feb. 24 to 26 that will engage the community with NBA-style entertainment, musical and dance performances and oncourt basketball contests where fans can win prizes from the NBA and Mahindra.
The weekend will feature an All-Star Game, semi-finals and finals, along with appearances from an NBA Legend and a current WNBA player in Mumbai and Delhi who will be on hand to crown the champions on Feb. 26. The players will interact with fans and join in the weekend-long celebration.
Season two of the programme, which is visiting a record five cities, tipped off in Nov. 2010 with youth division leagues in Mumbai and Delhi. The programme will return to Bangalore and Ludhiana and launch for the first time in Chennai later this year.
To date, participation in Mumbai has increased by 25-percent this season as the program has expanded to four divisions, up from two in season one: sub-junior for ages 12 to 13, youth for ages 14 to16, and junior for ages 16 to 18 and adults 19 and over.
The inaugural Mahindra NBA Challenge, held from April 2010 to September 2010, included leagues in Mumbai, Ludhiana, and Bangalore and attracted thousands of participants, including members of India’s Men’s National Basketball Team. Current and former NBA and WNBA players traveled to India to run clinics for participants of the Mahindra NBA Challenge, including NBA All-Stars Pau Gasol of the Los Angeles Lakers and Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic, as well as NBA Legend AC Green and WNBA Legend Teresa Edwards.
India's untapped potential for a basketball revolution has long been realized around the world - a country of nearly 1.2 billion people must surely have at least a respectable starting 5 to step out on any court and face any opponent, right? Surely? But potential is one thing, its realisation another. India is still a country where most sports, excluding cricket, aren't taken too seriously. While other Asian countries like China, Iran, South Korea, and Kazakhstan have improved their level of basketball dramatically over the last decade, India still lay 52nd on the last Men/Women combined FIBA rankings.
But there is the potential, and although it may be difficult to make a change overnight, there are several who are chipping away every day, hoping one day to carve out a space for basketball in this cricket crazy country. After spending several years holding training camps and coaching in India, American basketball coach JD Walsh recently teamed up with Dr. Bob Baker (Head of Sports Management at George Mason University) and Craig Esherick (former head coach of Georgetown University) to hold combined coaching clinics and youth basketball camps in South India. The initiative was sponsored by the International Sports Initiative grant, awarded through the SportsUnited Division of the US state department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Walsh, Baker, and Esherick spent around 10 days in India, holding basketball clinics and camps in Chennai and more intriguingly, getting a chance to work with a few members of the Indian Men's National team in the city of Bangalore. Only seven of the 21 total members of the Indian squad, nicknamed 'The Young Cagers', showed up for the training camps, but they were accompanied by dozens of interested basketball coaches from around India who came to pick up coaching skills from the American coaches. I was lucky to speak to all three of them before they boarded their flight (and beat volcanic ash) to get back to the US last week. "Some of the boys we worked with were pretty good," said Esherick, who helped in organisation practice drills for the players that attended, "But it will take a lot of hard work and organisation on the part of the basketball federation here to make a decent team."
Esherick should know - currently the assistant professor of sports management at George Mason, one of the highlight's of Esherick's coaching career was playing the role of assistant coach and scout of the US Men's Basketball Team that won bronze in the 1988 Olympics in South Korea. The trio of American coaches also worked with Alexsander Bucan, the Serbian head coach of the Indian team. "We have tried to help Alexsander demonstrate basketball fundamentals to the players," Esherick added, "This is a young team with a good nucleas, and their hard work will pay dividends later on. They need to play together, train together, and stay together to form a good squad. They must travel together and get some more exposure. But all these things won't be possible without a stable structure and the right amount of financial assistance from the federation." The current national team is indeed a young squad, with most of their players under the age of 24. At the recently concluded South Asian Games in Bangladesh, India was captained by 18 year old Vishesh Bhriguvanshi. Vishesh is one of the brighest young Indian talents, first making his name when he won the MVP award at the Basketball Without Borders (BWB) Asia camp two years ago. He also won praise for his hard work at the camp in Bangalore. "He's a good shooter and has a strong inside game, too," says Esherick. Walsh adds, "Vishesh has good size and he works hard - but more importantly, he really wants to be a better player." Apart from Vishesh, Walsh had warm words for a few other Indian guards too, particularly praising their shooting ability. I take special, biased pride in Vishesh's successes - he is one of the many hoop talents rooted from my hometown in Varanasi. A city known more for its spirituality than its sports, Varanasi has surprinsingly been able to produce talent after talent for both the Indian men and women's teams. I interviewed Vishesh for the first time when he was just 17, fresh after his BWB MVP award - in two years he seems to have build on that potenial. Potential. And it seems like that word never seems to leave my mind when I think about Indian basketball. No, potential isn't good enough. Far from it. Bob Baker, who also spoke about his experience and welcome so far in India, agrees that the country can do a lot more in the world of hoops. "It is important for India as a big player in the global community to make a strong commitment to the sport of basketball," feels Baker, "There needs to be a strategic approach to the whole organisation of basketball here. The federation and other organisers need to work on how to keep the players together, what other things to teach them, how to get them to play more games..." "But I'm confident that these players will develop," he adds, "That is the best way for the sport to be visible to the audiences and popular in Indian culture." Baker was also encouraged during this camp by the enthusiasm of the attending coaches from around India. "The coaches really cared about developing their knowledge of the game," he said, "They absorbed our teaching, asked great questions, and we spent a lot of time discussing basketball teaching and strategy with the coaches. It was neccessary to talk to both the coaches and the players about the importance of fundamentals." Walsh added: "The coaches were really interested and asked a lot of questions. We worked with them on various offensive and defensive sets - motion offense, press, etc. It is disappointing that only seven players of the team showed up, because we would have obviously liked to see the entire team. I would love to come and work with the national team on a more regular level."
Apart from their camps in Chennai and Bangalore, Walsh, Esherick, and Baker also got a chance to see another side of basketball in India when they visited Subhash Mahajan and his Sumpoorna camp at the village of Tumkur. Mahajan has been working for several years to support India's grassroots basketball movement. After deciding to synchronise their efforts, Walsh and the others visited Mahajan during their trip where they interacted with young hoop lovers. Many of the kids who play in the village camps are from underpriviliged backgrounds, sent from an NGO called Shishu Mandir in Bangalore. "The kids here are now gaining more awareness about basketball now that JD has been visiting and helping out," said Mahajan, "They were just awestruck just to see the tall Americans! Some of them asked the JD and the others if they could pass on LeBron James' e-mail ID!" Mahajan admits that cultural challenges in India make it difficult for people to take sports seriously, but he was glad that the children got to know that there is more to the game than just casual shootarounds on the court. "They have to learn about a serious world of basketball, that they have to persist regularly and practice hard to make a life out of it."
The USA's assist to aiding basketball in India has continued in another form - NBA-India has recently launched the Mumbai edition of the Mahindra-NBA Challenge, which features a recreational basketball league and training camps for hoops enthusiasts in the city. Laker legend AC Green was in town along with former WNBA player Teresa Edwards to tip-off the tournament. Green has since been to Bangalore to help out in an Indian national training camp for under-18 girls. This iniative was taken in the form of a pact that the NBA has entered with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) to provide world-class training to the Indian players and coaches. Green said at the event: "Indian women players have lot of potential and they are no less than anyone in the field. What they need is an opportunity to prove themselves." Potential. There seems to be hell of a lot of that going around our 1.2 billion isn't it? There is still a long way to go to fix the untailored and casual culture towards sports in India. Federations have to be organised, players have to be provided incentives, accountability has to be asked for, media hype to be created, and most of all, the game has to be loved. But basketball, if anything, is a hell of a lovable game. There are various efforts offering the game an assist here - let's just hope that we can finish the play.
The Mahindra-NBA Challenge was tipped-off on April 17th at Mumbai by none other than NBA legend AC Green. Green, the former Los Angeles Laker, is known for holding the record for most consecutive games played in NBA history has been to India before, when almost exactly a year ago he inaugurated the same Nagpada court that will be host to some of the Mahindra Challenge this year. Green, a Power Forward / Center, won three NBA Championships with the Lakers (1987, 1988, 2000) and was an NBA All Star in 1990. Green was also accompanied in Mumbai by former WNBA player Teresa Edwards, who played for the Minnesota Lynx and represented USA Basketball in five Olympics. The Mahindra NBA Challenge will be held in Mumbai from April 17-June 6, in Bangalore from July 24-September 18, and Ludhiana from July 31-September 25. It will feature a recreational league will run for seven weeks in two divisions: Youth division - ages 14-17; Adult division - 18 and above. The league will comprise of co-ed teams. The Basketball Federation of India (BFI) has worked with the NBA to implement and oversee league operations. The programme also includes a coaching clinic open to both boys and girls from the age of 14-17 and another category for players aged 18 and above.
About 961 participants have registered for the event and nearly 50 coaches will be trained by NBA's Troy Justice over the six weeks. "I am very much appreciative and excited about being back here again. Thank you to the Basketball Federation of India for continuous support of basketball and promoting the game," Green said. "I don't want these kids to just be good players; I want them to be good students of the game. I want them to be team players," Green said. "I can't wait to get the clinic and the league itself started, to see the beginning and hopefully see the end of it and hopefully some games in between," said Green, who will be in Bangalore on Monday to train with the Indian basketball team.
St Dominic Savio School (Andheri) and Mastan YMCA (Nagpada) will host the Mumbai leg of the competition.
"This initiative is a joint effort of the Basketball Federation of India and the NBA to promote basketball and make it the No 2 sport in India," said Akash Jain, NBA director, International Development, India. Elaborating on why the NBA picked only the above mentioned cities for the clinic, Jain said, "We did a small study before starting this project and we realized from that that basketball has a huge following in Mumbai, Bangalore and Ludhiana and that is why we have targeted these three cities in this program."
Well, thanks Mr. Jain - that kinda answers why the NBA chose Ludhiana of all people. Except that I have a different theory. And welcome back to India, Mr. Green. It's great to see that Green is also training with the Indian national team in Bangalore following the training sessions held for the team by JD Walsh, Craig Esherick, and Dr. Bob Baker. It's cool that Green is back and hopefully the NBA's initiative gets more coverage and hype to popularize the game in India. I'm hoping that we'll get a current NBA star at the conclusion of the league.
Here is an article of mine that was recently published on SLAMOnline.com. It is an extended of my earlier post NBA.com/India(!!)
While researching for any recent news concerning the NBA’s growing interest in India, I discovered a short video on YouTube, where a bumbling journalist for NDTV (one of India’s best-known news channels) finds Shaq in Phoenix, and asks him a thing or two about NBA in India. Shaq stoically answered superficial questions about promoting the game in India, adding sometime along the lines of India and the NBA needing each other… “We need to come out there and have a couple of games…”
Soon after, the interviewer dropped a gem of a question, which started off with, “Now, you know in India, you’re known as much for Space Jam as you are for your slam dunks…”. And a few seconds later, adds, “Now again, you have a lot of rap fans, a lot of fans in India. Do you want to do a little rap for your fans?" Shaq’s ‘rap’ went something like this: “I just wanna say I love you / See you / Peace.”
I laughed for a few long minutes after this, took a deep breath, and then laughed some more. This is the knowledge of NBA in India, through one of the countries ‘best-informed’ media houses: Shaq was in Space Jam (apparently, nobody else but me tuned in during that July afternoon back in 2006 when HBO-India showed Kazaam. But what the hell, even I tuned out when Shaq started to rap in that Aladdin costume.
I may be picking cynically over one or two simple mistakes by that journalist, but the general mainstream awareness in the Indian media about the NBA isn’t too far from this. Except for the fringe population of basketball nerds, most NBA fans in India don’t know the Chris Bosh from the Chris Paul, the Baron from the Ricky, and wonder why the NBA sent a 65 million year old Triceratops named Mutombo to inaugurate basketball courts here.
Despite the ignorance and disinterest of the Indian audiences, it would be fair to say that, so far, the NBA’s efforts in India haven’t been commendable, especially in the last two years. It all really got into gear in July 2008, when Dominique Wilkins, Sam Perkins, Kyle Korver, Ronny Turiaf, Linton Johnson and Pat Garrity toured India as part of a Basketball Without Borders program to promote basketball and oversee an Asian youth camp that was held in New Delhi. Wait, did I say Dominique Wilkins? Dominique Fr*ggin Wilkins came to India, and yes, Dominic Fr*ggin Wilkins left after nothing but a minor whimper of fanfare. I guess we were too busy watching Shaq dunk over Bugs Bunny, huh?
There was an even bigger star that visited the Indian shores in recent years… Back in the summer of 2006, an adidas sponsored event landed none other than Kevin Garnett here, as part of KG’s promotional visit to India and China. His whirlwind tour touched several parts of the country, and I was lucky to crash his visit to a school in New Delhi and ask KG (then unsettled at the Timberwolves) to join the Knicks. He laughed.
In April this year things started to heat up – the NBA started to webcast live playoff games in India by offering free previews and specialized subscription packages. Around the same time, world famous virgin and three-time NBA champion AC Green was sent to India by the NBA to feature in court dedications in Mumbai. When interviewed, Green called for a professional league in India.
Things looking up? The NBA began looking to open an office in India, and a blink of an eye later, December 2009 falls upon us, and here comes Deke! Mount Mutombo, in all his prehistoric glory, was next, inaugurating basketball courts in Mumbai and Chennai a couple of weeks ago.
But the biggest news followed just a few days later: The NBA formally launched its India website: NBA.com/India, and all of a sudden, I was watching the NBA Commish greeting Indian basketball fans, expressing joy, hope, delight, etc…
The website is a humble, low-maintenance version of the NBA’s official website: its designed to target new or emerging basketball fans, with features such as video highlights, basic NBA rules, and Basketball 101 about things that most fans may find obvious: How to shoot the perfect free throw? What the hell is a ‘Sixth Man’? Court Dimensions? Etc, etc… The website even has some material in Hindi, although there have been complaints about inaccuracies with their usage of the Devanagiri script.
Another feature will be the Point-Counterpoint Blog, kept by two of my favorite NBA PGs, Steve Nash and Baron ‘I’ll forever make Andrei Kirilenko’s descendants shiver’ Davis. I know, information overload, isn’t it?
What really interests me is the feature of Thursday Live Game Webcasts, which began with the Wizards playing the Kings (my friend’s supposedly ‘excellent’ broadband connection couldn’t pick it up though, so instead I followed Live Box Scores on Yahoo! Sports. Sad, yes, I know.) If this venture is eventually successful, real NBA fans here will be able to watch an additional live game every week, adding to the measly two we get Friday and Saturday mornings.
The potential is great… But will the Indian media and fans embrace it? Why should they embrace a game where non-Indian cities take on other non-Indian cities with non-Indian players, anyways?
Well, because, firstly, China did it. And secondly, there’s the English Premier League…
I like to compare the “coming of the NBA” to the outrageously over-the-top coming of the English Premier League (EPL — football to the uninitiated, soccer to the American) to India: not only do ESPN/STAR Sports show five or six EPL games a week, they also have several talk shows, magazine shows, and highlight shows talking about the EPL matches in great depth. These shows are regularly directed at the Asian/Indian audience which makes them even more fun to watch for the football fan here.
The EPL was always on its way here — teams like Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea easily have large audiences in India, and players like the (now departed) Cristiano Ronaldo, Steven Gerrard, Wayne Rooney, Frank Lampard, Cesc Fabregas, etc., etc., etc., give our audiences icons to look up to. The excitement has spilled out including fan-followings of the star-studded Real Madrid and Barcelona teams in the Spanish Primera Liga.
But it’s not like the NBA has a lack of potential icons — as a matter of fact, it is literally TEEMING with it. You could play like LeBron or Kobe, like Wade or Dwight or Chris Paul, or Kevin Garnett or Duncan. There are flashy dunks, no-look passes, game winners, and old-school entertainers/favorites like Iverson or Shaq (I cringe and feel archaic as I say that: Shaq and AI are OLD SCHOOL?)
But the final goal, at least the way I see it, shouldn’t be just commercialization of the NBA, but popularization of basketball as a whole in the country. I recently contacted JD Walsh, the founder of the JDBasketball movement who has spent the last three years in India as a coach, talent scout, and a promoter of basketball in India. “I do hope that the NBA [site] will provide a new introspective to cultivate NBA fans in India,” JD said, “I do think the internet in India will need to grow some before its really significant — which it will. A good litmus of the trajectory of increasing basketball popularity in India will be not only be seen on NBA blogs but on the sites of others writing about the grassroots play of India–and more kids playing the game.”
The website will have to become a stalwart to accelerate the slow integration of basketball in Indian culture. The Basketball Federation of India (BFI) had this to say (source: Techwhack): “There is a great appetite for basketball across India and the sites will offer Indian fans the opportunity to learn more about the NBA and basketball in India. Basketball is one of the fastest-growing sports in India.”
That it is, and in typical NBA.com style, we can expect a lot of fluffy, everything-about-the-NBA-is-awesome reporting from the India site, but hey, it’s a start. The NBA has appointed two featured India bloggers: Experienced DNA sports journalist Ayaz Memon and Hindustan Times correspondent Sahil Sharma. Here’s to hoping that their efforts help the awareness of the game blossom here.
