How a professional basketball league could revolutionize hoops in India

This article was first published in my column on Ekalavyas on February 18th, 2014. You can find the original post here.

A scene from the Kerala Senior State Championship 2013 held at the Sree Kerala Verma College, Thrissur. In the absence of a national league, this is just one of India’s many autonomous tournaments. Copyright: Ekalavyas

Sure, there’s some power to positive thinking. If you say something enough times, it can come true, or at least, you’d start to believe that it’s true. But until the day scientists refine our genes to give all of us psychokinetic powers, no amount of thinking or talking will equate to any physical results, till something is actually, physically, done.

For years now, I’ve closely followed the developments and talk behind the launch of India’s first professional basketball league. When the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) and IMG Reliance signed a 30-year partnership agreement in 2010, one of the highlights of their agreement was the development of this pro league as a long-term plan. A couple of years later, it was reported that the NBA’s commissioner David Stern had held talks with IMG executives about establishing such a league. In May 2012, BFI’s CEO Roopam Sharma updated that the Federation was definitely ‘planning a league’.

But nearly two more years have passed since without any clear further development. Every year, we seem to be nearly there, only to discover that there is at least another year to go. The best-case scenario as we stand is that the league has taken some theoretic steps into existence behind closed-door meetings between IMG Reliance, BFI, and with the NBA chiming in. But without any official work of the progress, we still might as well be stuck on square one.

Those invested in the progress of basketball in India have many dreams. They dream of seeing an Indian play in the NBA. They dream of watching the Indian national team rise up the ranks in international competitions. They hope that the sport can catch the imagination of the nation’s mainstream which otherwise sleeps, eats, and dreams cricket. And they envision a day when a profession in basketball in India – as a player, a coach, a referee, a technician, consultant, scout, physiotherapist, journalist, and countless more – will reap real rewards.

All of these dreams are connected, and none of them can be possible without the professional league. For years, India’s best players, from Geethu Anna Jose to Vishesh Bhriguvanshi, have stressed the importance of such a league, of how it could change their lives and the lives of future players around the country. But as their careers cross their peak and new names replace them, there is still no sign of their vision coming to reality.

That reality – when it finally comes – will change everything. No, the pro league won’t become the new IPL and have millions of fans investing their lives around it. No, India won’t suddenly become a basketball-first country with every hoop star getting celebrity status like our cricketers do. We won’t be finding NBA talent or shooting up FIBA Asia rankings overnight.

But what we will see is a goal, a bulls-eye, for every young ball player around the country, to realistically aim at.

At this point, India’s most talented players are still semi-professionals, working in banks, railways, or state government, and taking part in small basketball tournaments either organized by the BFI itself or by local sponsors around the country. Their basketball ‘income’ is usually the measly sum they earn and divide after participation or a first, second, and third place result at any of these tournaments. The travelling basketball circus goes from Chennai to Mumbai to Delhi to Punjab with the same teams playing the same opponents. Without the professional incentive or discipline, many players cruise on their talent instead of striving to get better.

The best amongst them are invited to national camps, receive decent training from high-profile coaches, and are selected for the Indian national teams before major FIBA tournaments. The results at the international level have been more or less the same for the past few decades. India dominates against South Asian opponents (Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, etc.) to qualify for FIBA Asia’s top competitions, but are rarely able to compete with super-powers are China, Iran, Japan, Korea, etc. Even the international circuit and expectations become ‘routine’ until things become static, unchanging.

Every once in a while, a player breaks cycle and aims higher. Geethu Anna Jose – the finest Indian player (of any gender) of this generation – has played professionally in Australia and Thailand (her Southern Railway teammate Anitha Paul Durai joined her in Thailand, too) and was even invited for trials with three WNBA teams. But Jose’s successes have only been an anomaly to that static energy around basketball in India.

Our top players need that extra push, that incentive to break out of their cruising altitudes and aim higher. This is where a league would revolutionize things.

Let’s say that the theoretical professional basketball follows the format of the IPL: held for around two months annually between 8-12 teams. For several years already, the BFI and IMG Reliance has been holding school and college leagues in various cities which have laid the groundwork amongst the youth. The same eight cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Ludhiana, Chennai, Bangalore, Indore, Hyderabad, and Kolkata – can serve as the flagship franchises of the basketball league, too. Each team can feature top local talent with a ‘draft’ (or IPL-like auction) for the top players. It would be difficult to attract foreign players to this league in the beginning, but if the money is decent, there are more than enough basketball vagabonds around the world looking for a two-month gig.

With the motivation to play in a league that offers a steady, assured contract, India’s top players can start thinking about becoming full-time professionals with focus on basketball alone. There will be greater competition once foreign talents start trickling in, raising the overall skill-level. And most importantly, young Indians seriously considering basketball as a career will have a goal to shoot at. Thousands (if not more) quality players are lost every year because they quit basketball for (what the typical Indian parent would call) “real life”. With a league, basketball can become the “real life”.

The league will eventually give rise to more jobs to coaches, referees, scouts, trainers, broadcast personnel, and more. Once things are privatized and taken out of the government’s hands, the competitiveness between teams and competition for jobs will raise everyone’s aptitude. More importantly, now with real repercussions for success and failure, everyone from the players to the trainers to the scouts will work harder in the training rooms. Young players will be groomed from an earlier age. The right training and right diet will start becoming a factor.

In the US, the biggest professional league (the NBA) wouldn’t be where it is if it wasn’t for the most-organized High School and College athletics programme in the world. That is why it is important to continue developing the structure at those levels in India, too. The BFI-IMG Reliance leagues have been a positive start.

Infrastructure in India is a big stumbling block and will need major upgrades. In recent years, new stadia have been built or upgraded in various major cities in the country. We are not looking for NBA-quality arenas; just something to start things off. At this point, every basketball event in India is free, and it will be a challenge to fill the seats in the arenas for a lesser-known game. But if the product is packaged and promoted right, I’m sure people will eventually start to pay a small fee to cheer on their hometown squads.

None of this would be possible without the right broadcast partnership. The league would be meaningless without decent Television viewership, which will also require at least half-decent productive value (unlike the basketball tournaments shown on DD Sports in the past). Neo Prime took an important step forward last year when they became the first to broadcast Indian basketball on cable TV in India. Sony SIX already broadcast tonnes of hoops – from NBA to Europe and NBA India events – and could be interested too. Counting all the channels associated with Star Sports, Ten Sports, Neo, and Sony, there are a lot of potential partners for such a league in the future.

Let’s be honest here: Indian sports fans are generally an impatient bunch. That is why T-20 cricket catches all the eyeballs while Test and (increasingly) One-Day Cricket falls behind. Basketball is a fast-paced, all action, and energetic game. It’s simple to understand for the newcomer and is relatively-short, perfectly suiting the modern viewership mentalities. Vivek Ranadive, the Indian-born owner of the Sacramento Kings, has often stated that he believes basketball can be sold to India easily because it is fast, simple, and accessible. Apart from creating better opportunities and organization in the basketball world, a pro league would give birth to a whole new set of fans looking for an exciting new sport to follow.

India is a complicated country, and nothing that works elsewhere can work here the same way. Sports are a dark alley beyond cricket. But in recent years, the development of other pro leagues has been a positive sign. Joining the popular IPL, India now has leagues in Football, Hockey, Badminton, and even in American Football.

Creating a basketball league would obviously not just be a quick fix that makes Indians into NBA stars and Asia champions. But it would be the most important project yet to improving the game in India, and could open doors to many other projects in the future. Basketball is one of the biggest sports in the world which Indians are familiar with; a pro league here should be the next logical step.

One small step for Indian Basketball on cable TV...

On August 2, 2013, India's Men's basketball squad played against Thailand at the Preliminary Round of the 27th FIBA Asia Championship in Manila (Philippines). It was the second game for both teams at the championship, and both were coming off losses. The game tipped off late, at 10:30 PM local time, and at the primetime hour of 8 PM for fans back in India who were checking in on an otherwise fairly regular Thursday night. India, under coach Scott Flemming, came out motivated and blew Thailand out the gates, running away to a 89-65 victory.

For those who have closely followed the course of Indian Basketball in the past years, or even the past decades, there was nothing unusual about this night. India have played in 22 FIBA Asia Championships around the continent in the past, and dozens more if you count the Women's, Junior, and Youth divisions. The national teams have played in hundreds of more games around the world in various other tournaments and competitions. Domestically, Indian basketball players take part in scores of national-level, state-level, district level, or club invitational tournaments annually.

But there was something truly special about that Thursday evening game on the 2nd of August.

When India's Men's Senior National Basketball squad took on Thailand in Manila on that day, it became the first ever Indian basketball game - domestic or international - to be broadcast on cable TV in India. The Neo Prime channel, part of the Nimbus Communications Limited family, bought the rights to broadcast a live feed from FIBA TV of the games from the 2013 FIBA Asia Championship. FIBA has been feeding games live in various tournaments for years, but never before has a cable channel in India taken the risk to show Indian hoops. Since the advent of cable television in the country, channels like ESPN, Star Sports, Ten Sports, and SONY PIX/SIX over the years have shown NBA basketball, NCAA tournaments, or basketball from the European leagues. Indian basketball, including domestic tournaments or rare international matches, were limited only to state-owned Doordarshan and shown on DD Sports. The coverage on DD Sports (as many watchers will attest) is amateurish, the production value cheap, and commentary unreliable, and the chance of a live fourth quarter humdinger getting randomly replaced by last night's Ranji Trophy highlights highly probable.

Since the first game against Thailand, Neo Prime has been showing more of India's games at the tournaments and a few of the other games as well. It is obviously not the most watched sports channel in India, but it is at least another option. It's a small step for Indian hoops, but it may pave the way forward for further mainstream alignment of the sport to the Indian audiences in the future.



Whenever I've posted information about Indian basketball events - domestic or international - the most common question has been by fans has been "Where will it be broadcast?" Fans in the country here about India's best players often - the Vishesh Bhriguvanshis, the Geethu Anna Joses, the Satnam Singh Bhamaras, and the Anitha Pauldurais often - but they rarely get a chance to watch them in action. The result is that Indian basketball fans base most of their knowledge of the game on the NBA, which has been easily available on TV for years and now, on the internet too. News of Indian basketball is only limited to box scores and text recaps and the live performances of our stars has to be left only to our imaginations.

This hurts both long-time hardcore fans and potential new fans of the game. Hardcore fans who truly want to dedicate a career either playing basketball or being connected with the game in another way rarely get to see the workings of the system and the ability of Indian players in action, and thus, find it difficult to find something to aim for in India. They are left with forlorn fantasies of the NBA instead of even taking a look at the level of the game in their own backyards. Most of the people who watch basketball games in India are the participating players themselves, players who attend a tournament become the audience to the other games at the same tournament. To the rest of the world, the tournament passes by unseen. Legendary comebacks, game-winning baskets, heroic individual performances, and emotional victory celebrations have all taken place numerous times year and year on basketball courts around India, or by Indian players in basketball courts around the world, and virtually none of us have been able to watch them.

Secondly, every day, young people turn on the sports channels on TV to find something to watch. They find cricket (a lot of cricket), they find tennis, they find football (mostly from Europe, but fortunately, now from India too), they find hockey, and they find increasing coverage of NBA basketball, too. A slew of other sports which don't earn advertising rupees on cable TV find their way in the darker halls of DD Sports. These include domestic Indian basketball tournaments, for which, the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) actually has to pay the channel to cover them. Outside of those who are actively seeking to find these games, very few other TV watchers in India come across the action on DD. A whole generation of potential new fans are lost year after year. They start supporting the Lakers, Heat, Celtics and the Bulls. They rarely ever get the chance to cheer for India. Many of them aren't even aware that India has a team.

The FIBA Asia Championships are the most important basketball tournaments for India's Men and Women teams, so it is a no-brainer to prioritize them for broadcast. The FIBA feed has been decent, with good commentary and better production value than anything you'll find on Doordarshan. But there is other potentially exciting news ahead: for years, the launch of India's first-ever professional basketball league has been on the horizon. When the league eventually comes into existence, it will not survive without a growing supportive audience, and such as audience will not exist without regular, exciting, and well-programmed cable TV broadcasts. In the past, TV channels have been rightfully hesitant to invest on domestic basketball for the national audience, but if early experiments like the current championship on Neo Prime can be mildly successful, it may help pave the way for more channels to be interested in promoting the game further and supporting any future broadcast plans of the pro league.

Neo Prime's coverage has the potential to slowly (very slowly) start making a difference. From the moment it was announced by BFI that the games from the FIBA Asia Championship will be shown on Neo, a number of fans have been checking in daily to support those in the Philippines proudly sporting 'India' jerseys in action. Our players might not be the world's best or most exciting basketball stars, but they still represent our country several times a year. They need our support and we want to support them.

It's a win-win situation, just as long as the economics of broadcasting these shows can keep the TV channel happy. This is no charity case, and every programming decision is eventually about the bottom line: profits. So hopefully, the more fans tune in to watch the games, the more advertisers will support the broadcast, and in turn, the channels will be more likely to keep showing more games. Basketball audience in India is still quite young, so the process above is going to be a lot tougher than it sounds, but we must keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best ahead.