India will have a player in NBA in five years: David Stern

Saving an approving nod and some kind words for young Amritpal Singh,India’s near-7 footer centre from Punjab,the top boss of America’s most famous league – National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner David Stern,said in the city on Monday,that he would be pleased to see a young talented man like him playing in their starry basketball league. “I’d love for him to be part of the NBA,” he said. Emphasising on the fact that a steady grassroots development programme would eventually culminate in an Indian cracking the NBA code,Stern who retires next year,also made some expansive and ambitious crystal gazing when he decalred that India could have a player in NBA in five years.

“To be specific,we can look at an Indian in the NBA in five years,” he said. “If we get our grassroot programmes going bigger and kids across this country start bouncing the ball rather than kicking it or hitting it with a strange paddle,there will be an enormous influx of very good and talented athletes into our game,” he guffawed,clearly accepting the challenge his sport faced in India in the form of cricket. Stern who arrived in a cavalcade of three Mercs,sneaking its way through the narrow lanes of Mastan YMCA in Nagpada,said that the chances looked bright for such an eventuality since NBA has increasingly gotten global in its constituent player profile. “If you had asked me 20 years ago,I would have said I don’t know. Now 85 out of our 400 players are born outside the USA. It depends on individual athlete and how they are going to go about. The one thing we do is to work as close as possible with the Basketball Federation of India through grassroots and other events to make it as easy as possible for elite Indian athletes to spend more time playing basketball,” added the longest tenured commissioner in professional American sports.

Though speculation has been rife that the NBA would attempt to push through an Indian – fast-track him – into the league to make the most of the Indian market by playing on such a sentiment,Stern was careful to not inflate hopes unnecessarily.

“It is entirely dependent on talent,” he stressed,adding that the leagues (both NBA and WNBA) would always look for good players,and not ease their standards just to accomodate an interesting ethnic profile. “We already had a woman (Geetu Anna Jose) try out for WNBA and we would expect to have men and women showing up for each of our professional leagues try-outs. If you need a specific answer,I would say five years,” Stern said.

An interesting observation made by Stern however was NBA’s continued engagemnt with China,long after Yao Ming’s career’s wound down. “No doubt Yao aided the acceleration of the league in China,but I’d say we’re doing even better now. Most jerseys sold in China now are of Kobe Bryant and the likes,” he said,adding that NBA had achieved what it set out to do in the biggest target market. Getting the distant Chinese hooked onto the American superstars,well past the exit of their talisman and posterboy.