The NBA

The National Basketball Association of the USA is the supreme expression of basketball as a professional sport, and one of the most successful sporting organizations in the world.

Success can be measured in many ways: by the phenomenal amounts of TV rights and advertising money it commands; by the efficiency of its franchise system; by the unending series of sell-out games by most teams, despite the length of the NBA season and the number of games shown on TV; by the quasi-religious following some of its stars have; but most of all, by the sheer quality of the NBA teams’ and athletes’ sporting performances season after season after season.

One of the most exciting features of the NBA must be how it manages to evolve and remain popular – in a world where most things pass very quickly indeed – without losing touch with its traditions, and by sticking to a set of playing rules which remain remarkably stable over the years.

A sign of the times: even this most American of professional leagues is partaking of globalisation. Today, alongside the myriad of sensational US players, you find on court great players from Argentina, France, Germany, Italy, Serbia, China, Spain etc.: as of today, 83 foreign players from a record 36 different countries. The world’s the NBA oyster….

And the NBA is great for statistics: just link up to http://www.nba.com/history/records/index.html and discover how NBA fans are as numbers mad as we are!!