Desi Manifesto Blog: The Forum for South Asian American Men

NBA superstar Kevin Garnett at the Taj in 2006.

[Blogger: S.I.] Basketball is my favorite sport to such an extent that, when visiting India, I’d often wake up around 5:30AM in order to catch the games being played in the US at that moment. Despite the garbled transmissions, occasional lost signals, and incessant commercials for cricket (which hilariously was made to look rough-and-tumble), I enjoyed it, because this was one of the few connections India had to basketball and the NBA.

Things are changing. Across India and the world, there is more love for basketball than ever. You see it in the public hoops being set up (though they remain few and far between). In the kids’ fashions. The commercials.

And soon, those of you in New Delhi will see some basketball firsthand, as the NBA is coming to India for Basketball Without Borders.

Aside from discovering our own 7-foot Punjabi Yao Ming wandering the countryside (Dalip Singh Rana aka The Great Khali just wasn’t built for bball), this is one way to better our chances of having someone in the NBA someday.

But of greater concern for David Stern and the Association: will this initiative even work?

Time wrote an excellent article on the current state of basketball in India a couple years ago. While popularity has undoubtedly increased since that time, it paints a still-accurate picture of the sports pecking order in India. Basketball languishes at the bottom.

An intelligent reader of basketball blog Le Basketbawl had this to say in response to a post about the NBA’s fledgling expansion into South Asia and Basketball Without Borders:

Anonymous said…

the nba first needs to talk to their tv partners. we get just 2 games per week on tv. one friday early morning and one saturday early morning. at 5:30 am. not much of an audience at that time, eh? if they at least show the west coast games, they would start at 8 am and more people would watch. and the plan about putting emphasis on health and hiv aids? guys, this isn’t africa. basketball in india is mostly a sport for the privileged with only the high end schools having basketball courts. if they are expecting to see a lot of poverty at these camps and planning on educating young “poor” players on HIV etc., they are in for a shock. most kids who play basketball in india are from the well-to-do families getting good education… the nba needs to get in touch with reality

Certainly in the US, basketball is the everyman’s sport. Yes, very few players are any good, and you’ll get mountains of arguments about the racial politics of hoops, but it’s still the sport people play year-round, indoors or outdoors, from terrible players to competitive studs, with both genders and all races all over the US. It’s always somewhere in the public consciousness.

But with India, what Anonymous said jibes with my observations in Bangalore. How could the league hope to grow its base when players interested in hoops are few and far between (and generally wealthy), and NBA telecasts and public basketball courts are even fewer?

Then, of course, there’s the culture shock. The NBA’s ventured into poorer regions of Africa and South America, but India’s not the same as anywhere else because of its conflict of brilliant people and technological advances abutting astounding poverty. How will the NBA’s American staff handle the expansion and be able to ply their game in a country that is far removed from anything they know? Kevin Garnett toured Asia and India in 2006, and his words describe what a warm-hearted and open-minded individual feels (older posts at the bottom). But is this how most of them will react? No one will want a foreign league coming into the country with their judgments and notions, even if a few of them are right.

I’d assume the Basketball Without Borders program will go well, but their goal is to teach “basketball fundamentals and life skills.” Exactly what kind of life skills are these guys going to teach a group of Indian kids who may or may not be well-to-do to begin with? Probably to play hard to achieve your goals. Most likely non-bball goals, you short Indian children.

And on another note, as many of the players are very religious, I wonder how this will play out. Kyle Korver in particular is very Christian. That’s all good. But he also just happens to do a lot of the international programs where the NBA reaches out to groups of poor kids to offer guidance. Just how would Jesus dribble, Kyle? Please note that I don’t actually have any proof that he’s dropping proselytizing tidbits into his “life skills,” but it’s a hunch.

Would basketball be accepted as a mainstream sport in India? The league would like to set up their own NBA China league because of that nation’s steady supply of players and basketball fever. Could we get our own Indian league going, or perhaps join a federation of international regional play (India, Iran, Pakistan, China, etc.)? Or does the NBA see us as a way to sell merchandise and TV rights? Perhaps they’ll slowly expand based on what interest they find. As many of these articles said, having a brother in the NBA now certainly would boost appeal in the motherlands. I wouldn’t be totally shocked to see it happen. Major League Baseball is searching for pitchers in India because of the nation’s love for cricket, a member of the same sports family (thanks Uber Desi).

As for the first desi to make the NBA? My bet’s on a Southie point guard (the math skills + mostly short people) or a Punjabi big man.

I look forward to rooting for him, even if it’s just to say “Please don’t suck” (that’s about as much as I could encourage him if he ended up on a team like the Spurs…).