An edited version of this feature was first published for SLAMOnline on October 3, 2019. Read the original version here.
It truly hit me when
I saw the promo on a national TV channel. A digitally altered Mumbai. Supersized
balloon floats of Myles Turner and Harrison Barnes hovered over city’s iconic skyline.
Young people gathered on the streets to watch. Kids jostled for space between
the
kaali-peeli—black-and-yellow—local taxis for a view. A massive Kings
flag unfurled over the excited crowds, and a Pacers banner flew overhead. A
cricket player stopped in his tracks to watch, in awe.
I watched in awe,
too.
A day later, at a
family function, my Maama—mother’s brother—asked me, for the first time, about
work.
“So, the NBA is
coming here in a big way, aren’t they?”
I smiled. In India,
the ‘NBA’ and ‘basketball’ are buzzwords for the youth. People of my uncle’s
generation would never “get it”, we thought. The game was too niche, the league
was too far away from everyday Indian concerns for any of them to bother. There
were a thousand other distractions in mainstream Indian culture.
But even he
had heard about it. The Sacramento Kings and Indiana Pacers were coming to
Mumbai for first ever NBA India Games in early October. A mere blimp on the
NBA’s calendar, a preseason exhibition between two non-contenders But
for India, a giant leap in its basketball history. The jump-ball start to a new
era.
*
As an Indian child
in the 90s, I knew of the NBA’s existence only in the peripheries. I’d heard of
Michael and Magic. I knew that the “Chicago Bulls” meant something good. I’d
seen Space Jam half dozen times.
But back then, I
didn’t quite understand the value of the world’s greatest basketball league.
No, back then, my Lord Almighty of Sports wasn’t Michael Jordan, but an
unathletic 5’5” Indian cricket player with the voice of someone who had been
skipped over by puberty: Sachin Tendulkar. Like every good Indian boy, Cricket
was my Bible and Tendulkar was my God. The NBA was too far away, across oceans,
across continents, a sport that spoke in a different accent from the
post-colonial cricket commentators, a game that moved in a faster pace than I
have ever been accustomed to.
Around Middle
School, however, that began to change. Space Jam helped, of course. So
did the friends who brought home NBA trading cards and copies of SLAM Magazine
from abroad. My school in the Indian Himalayas was obsessed with basketball,
and, in every moment of our free time, that’s all we did: stand around a rim
shooting baskets, talking shit. I overheard names like Jordan and Malone, and
Ewing and Shaq and Kobe. I began to see more basketball games on TV in India:
broadcast live only a few times a week, and at the ungodly early morning hour,
awake only with the chokidaars and the roosters.
In 1999, the new
hobby became an addiction. I followed the playoffs closely, especially because
of this underdog eighth seeded team in the East—the New York Knicks—that
overcame all odds and beat all favourites to make it to the NBA Finals. Sure,
they got whooped by the Spurs and the Twin Towers of Duncan and Robinson once
they got there, but I was already in love. Houston, Sprewell, Camby, and SLAM’s
first-ever cover-boy LJ had become my favourite team.
Later, out on the
courts, my friends and I would re-enact these Finals, with each side assigning
themselves the Spurs or the Knicks. I chose New York, of course, and worked day
and night on my baseline turnaround fadeways, hoping to emulate Allan Houston’s
devastating midrange shots.
Fast-forward the
next two decades, and my NBA fandom went in the opposite direction of the
Knicks’ credibility. From over thirteen thousand kilometres away, I watched the
Spurs become an annual threat, the Lakers become a dynasty, the Suns change the
pace and size of the game, LeBron change everything, Kobe make 81,
Iverson step over Lue, the Heatles, the Warriors, and more Knicks
embarrassments than the word-count of this entire piece. At least we had
Linsanity.
For most of this
time, the NBA and its biggest stars felt like as alien to me as the Monstars.
They were from a different world, a different time-zone, stars in the sky so
dominant and charismatic that they felt almost unreal, as if they were
fictional characters living in a world I could never access. They might as well
have been the Avengers. Some definitely had superpowers.
Over the years, the
NBA superheroes began to feel a little more mortal. I visited the USA, attended
my first game (Knicks at the Garden, of course), and later, interacted with and
interviewed many stars professionally. But despite the cynicism that comes with
age over most of the world’s magic, the NBA remained something pure and
special. Something shudh, as we would say in Hindi. Something that, back
home to us in India, was still a beautiful galaxy far, far away.
Once the NBA opened
its first office in India, in Mumbai, in 2011, the pace of the game’s growth
here took a mid-2000s-Suns-esque boost. NBA and WNBA players of the past and
present visited multiple times a year, peaking with Kevin Durant dropping in
2017 for hyped-up visit, freshly minted with his first title and Finals MVP.
Meanwhile, the
stream had flown the other way, too, and some of India infiltrated the NBA.
Most prominently, Vivek Ranadive became the first Indian-born person to become
a majority owner of the NBA when he bought the Sacramento Kings. Immediately,
Ranadive began to share his vision of one day taking the Kings back to his birth-city—Mumbai—for
an exhibition game.
For those of us
watching and covering the sport from back here, this idea barely seemed
feasible. India didn’t have the infrastructure or the market ready for an NBA
game—even a mere preseason matchup. Ranadive’s vision, I had thought, was stuff
of science-fiction.
*
And then, the stars
came within reach.
Early in the 2018-19
season, the NBA officially made the surreal announcement: The first-ever NBA India Games would be held in Mumbai
on October 4-5, 2019 in Mumbai between the Kings and the Pacers. One team,
owned by an Indian-American. The other, interested in reaching out to the
Indian market—and, of course, it doesn’t hurt the Pacers to have ‘India’ in
their name.
The news was a pataakha
for us Indian NBA fan, blowing our minds like fireworks. The long-foretold
day was near.
The NBA had, of
course, been holding preseason (and some regular season) games around the world
for years, all over Europe, South and Central America, Asia, and the special
Africa Games. In Asia alone, the league had become a preseason staple in the
rabid China market, as well as in Japan, Philippines, and more.
The league’s landing
in India had seemed both inevitable and impossible—before it became a reality.
Mumbai—formerly
Bombay—is the perfect choice to host the event. It is the country’s financial
capital, of course. But it is also seeped in local hoops history, featuring some of the country’s most iconic courts,
tournaments, and legends of the game. It’s India’s largest city, densely traffic-jammed
with the country’s diverse population, and the home of Bollywood, readymade for
all the drama and action that the NBA promises to present.
*
Basketball existed
before the NBA, and India was a colonised country and collection of states
hundreds of years prior to that. But coincidence married these two histories
together. The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was founded as the BAA in
June 1946, and its first season was held from November 1946 to April 1947. In
August 1947, India won its independence from British rule.
Two years later, the
BAA and National Basketball League (NBL) merged to form what is known as
today’s NBA. During the course of the first ‘proper’ NBA season in early 1950,
India’s constitution went into effect, officially forming the Republic. This
was also the year that India’s own governing body—the Basketball Federation of
India (BFI) was born, and independent India’s first basketball team, captained
by the late Ranbir Chopra, participated in the 1951 Asian Games.
But ever since,
India’s has merely remained a reserve on world’s basketball’s roster, barely
able to register a blimp in hoops history. While the NBA eventually became the
most popular and powerful basketball league in the world, India had to settle
for fragments and scratches of success. We finished fourth in the FIBA Asia
Championship once, in the 70s. In 1980, our men’s team took part in the Moscow
Olympics, only because the USA and a number of its allies pulled out of
participating in Russia. A few of our players got to play in low-tier pro
leagues around the world. In 2014, we defeated China on their home soil at the
FIBA Asia Cup.
Yet, India remained
a potential pot of gold for the NBA, with its rising youth population and the
prevalence of basketball around the country, albeit as a much smaller sport
compared to the awning shadow of cricket and others. The NBA continued to
increase its India presence, and we had our big moment of cheer when Satnam
Singh became the first Indian to be drafted—by the Dallas Mavericks—in the
2015. The 7-footer never played in the NBA itself, but we felt that it was the
beginning of something big.
Soon, the NBA
launched an elite NBA India Academy to hone more talented prospects, and
eventually, take the next big leap after Satnam.
The announcement of
the NBA India Games brought the two varying histories into confluence. A couple
of days after I saw that TV commercial and spoke to my uncle, NBA-India
relations took another unexpected, surreal step. At a reception event for
India’s Prime Minster Narendra Modi in Houston, US President Donald Trump
jokingly suggested in front of the thousands gathered that he could show up to Mumbai for the historic
preseason games. A couple of
questionable world leaders had used the NBA’s moment to inflate US-India
relations—and suddenly, everyone from my local samosa-wallah to my other
uncles and aunties understood that this ‘NBA’ thing—whatever it was—was a
pretty big deal.
*
And then, there’s
the matter of the Games themselves. Remember, that after all this shor-sharaba
and hoopla, this is a mere preseason contest. In true sporting terms, it
counts for nothing. In the absence of the injured Victor Oladipo, there will be
no All Stars on the floor. In a country where casual fans only know names like
LeBron, Curry, Durant, and—like everyone else—are learning to pronounce
Antetokounmpo—there is little global name-recognition that the Pacers or the
Kings can offer.
Nevertheless, both
these teams are going to be stacked with exciting, young players, and even the
easy-preseason flow will offer a brand of basketball far higher than ever
witnessed in India. Fresh out of the FIBA World Cup experience, Bogdan
Bogdanovic, Nemanja Bjelica, Myles Turner, Harrison Barnes, Domantas Sabonis,
and Isaiah Pineiro will all likely feature at the games. Barnes is already
familiar, having spent a week in India earlier in the summer to promote the
upcoming contests. Bogdanovic, in particular, was one of the breakout stars of
the FIBA WC, and will hopefully continue his momentum in Mumbai.
Additionally,
several other enticing players from both teams like De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield,
Marvin Bagley III, Harry Giles, Malcolm Brogdon, TJ Warren, and more will potentially
suit up in the two matchups. The Kings’ young core in particular is being
slated for a major leap, and the games in Mumbai could be their first chance of
stating their intent for the upcoming season.
Expectations will be
high for these games from the in-arena crowd at the NSCI Dome in Mumbai, as
well as all those around the country who will watch the games on live TV; but
we’ll have to remember that most preseason games are duds, rarely producing
moments of magic or note, and rarely showcasing a team’s true form or shape
before the start of the regular season.
But even these
‘meaningless’ exhibitions will mean a lot to the players who participate:
they’ll get to be a part of history, and stake their flag in unchartered NBA
grounds. Those Indians unaware of the NBA—my uncle-types—will hear about Fox
and Turner long before James and Curry. Who knows, maybe impressionable young
minds—like my friends and I—will re-enact Pacers and Kings like the way we did
with the Spurs and Knicks twenty years ago.
Some of the most
intriguing action will take place on the sidelines and off-court. Being in the
heart of the Bollywood film industry, the game is sure to be star-studded with
some of the biggest Indian celebrities. Indian athletes, including national
basketball players, coaches, and more will be in attendance, too. Every bigwig
industrialist or sponsor present will co-opt this moment for their own. And
true fans are coming from all over the country to have this unlikely dream come
true.
The players and
teams are going to participate in off-court charity and fan interaction events
around the city. The league’s commissioner, a handful of NBA legends, and
international media will gather. And Mumbai’s returning native son—Kings owner
Ranadive—will get to shine in the spotlight of helping make this possible.
*
It's pretty surreal
for me, personally, to see how far things have come since my childhood. NBA
fandom in India had felt like a secret society, a code with which only those
‘in the know’ communicated. Living in smaller cities in India isolated me even
further. Behind the hazy of the night sky, the stars were barely visible.
But the haze has
cleared away now, and the entire galaxy is shining brightly above us. Although
basketball remains a smaller sport in relative terms, the NBA’s popularity is
already something that a younger-me could’ve never anticipated.
Of course, the
league still has a long way to go to catch up with other sporting brands, like
Cricket’s IPL or even foreign football/soccer leagues like the EPL or La Liga. The
media in India often talks about waiting for our own ‘Yao Ming Moment’, for the
day that an Indian player makes an impact in the NBA, and thus, propels the
market back home. India, of course, still doesn’t have its own full-time pro
basketball league and our national team still isn’t making any waves in the
global game.
And yet, with the
upcoming NBA India Games, we’ve taken a historic step forward. If it’s just a
preseason game, if it doesn’t really matter, then it’s just about to become the
most meaningful meaningless game ever.
