When Satnam Singh was picked by the Dallas Mavericks in the 2015 NBA Draft, there was a feeling that it could finally open the doors for Indian basketball players to make a Jordan-esque jump to the NBA. 10 years have gone by and four Indians, including Satnam, have played for the NBA G League but none has made it to the NBA. None managed to stick around for long in the G League either.
The start of India’s first-ever international 5×5 basketball league, the Indian National Basketball League Pro (InBL Pro), comes after years of waiting for an international league to take roots in the country. A sport that has been relegated to the state, national and a dwindling international level, has, for long, needed the bare essentials. The InBL Pro aims to address at least some of the problems facing Indian basketball, starting by creating a base for finding and grooming Indian ballers.
Currently, a national team player gets roughly 10-15 competitive games a year. The rest of the year is spent practicing in gyms or being a part of the national camp – a luxury only few can afford. And even within that system, growth isn’t a given.
Thanks to the revamped InBL Pro, a league for players under the age of 25 (with certain exceptions for foreign players), which began in New Delhi in February, many young Indian basketball players get the opportunity to almost double the number of competitive games they get to play in a year. They play with international players a rung or two above them and are under the tutelage of foreign coaches who have been part of serious basketball leagues in the past.
“What we’re trying to do is showing that there’s something else there, we’re providing an extra avenue for competitiveness” Parvin Batish, CEO of InBL Pro, told The Indian Express.
Rough start
While the intent of the league may be for the betterment of Indian basketball, it doesn’t mean that problems haven’t cropped up.
The league’s formation itself was in doubt after the Basketball Federation of India (BFI) and InBL were duking it out in the Karnataka High Court and the Supreme Court. A settlement was finally reached between both over the running of a new league in India late last year.
But the hasty organisational nature of the league has led to the first season being termed as a ‘showcase season’ by Batish.
In the first couple of days of the league, the 24-second stop-clock at the Thyagaraj Stadium, where all matches are taking place, broke down. In one match the large screen display on one side of the court stopped showing the match altogether. Other than technical issues, the league has not been able to attract steady crowds, despite tickets being sold for free online. Batish put it down to the league getting only four months to organise itself – an act that meant corners had to be cut and one of those cuts had to be marketing the league.
There is also the issue that the INBL is currently running all six teams in the league – an act that is meant to grow the teams as businesses and then hope for corporate suitors to enter the arena.
More games for players
In order to distribute players evenly on a talent differential across six teams, the INBL held a nine-day combine (essentially a talent showcase) and had three groups of thirty players that came through. Former Los Angeles Lakers scout Gary Boyson handled the combine and was responsible for grading all the players. According to Batish, some Indian players who were unknown and hadn’t made the national team were found to be playing better than some of the established names.
One such player is Prince Tyagi, who has been part of India camps before but has never played for the national team. A Ghaziabad-native, who played for Kirori Mal College and Jamia Millia Islamia University before representing Uttar Pradesh at the state level, Tyagi has found the step to the next level tough due to the lack of ‘competitive’ games in the Indian basketball ecosystem.
Now Tyagi feels that the induction of international players and coaches has had a net positive effect on young Indian players who are yet to break into the national team. “If we play in India and play at the national level, then we have plays. But it is up to us to follow those plays or abandon that play and play ‘freelance’. But here, only a set pattern is played,” the Gujarat Stallions player says.
Another aspect of the league that’s welcome has been the lack of obsession with finding a Yao Ming-type player. Ming revolutionised basketball in China and was an over-seven-foot giant who towered over even Shaquille O’Neal. But what’s often ignored in the commentary of Ming was that he wasn’t just a giant but a centre who could play basketball at the NBA level. The search for India’s very own Ming led to the hype over Satnam Singh and has led to an ecosystem where size was often prioritised over skill.
Alex Robinson Jr, an undersized point-guard from Texas who has played across multiple NBA G-League teams and has been one of the best players in the INBL Pro, feels that the physicality of Indians isn’t really the issue and that the size of Indian players is not where the problem truly lies.
“For smaller guys like me, there’s a couple of things that you just have to be able to do. You have to
be able to shoot the ball. When I mean shoot the ball, it doesn’t mean shoot it a lot. But you have to be able to make it when you’re open. Take care of the ball. And you have to be a great defender,” he says.
Hyderabad Falcon's point guard Alex Robinson in action at the INBL Pro in New Delhi. (Credit: INBL Pro) 
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