After China, NBA sets sight on India to promote basketball

LOS ANGELES - The National Basketball Association of the United States (NBA) appears bent on promoting and building the sport in India, saying rising incomes and media-savvy youths could fuel a market.

After its runaway success in China, the NBA has turned its sights on India. The NBA is hoping to find an Indian version of Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6-inch Houston Rocket center who jumpstarted the Chinese game? His signing led to lucrative broadcasting and sponsorship deals, skyrocketing apparel sales and millions more fans.

Take the case of 14-year-old Satnam Singh Bhamara. At size 22, he is already seven feet tall and weighs 250 pounds. To say that he stands out from the other boys in Punjab’s Ballo Ke village, which has a population 463, is like saying that Everest is a rather tall mountain.

From Ballo Ke, local scouts dispatched Satnam to a regional basketball academy where, over the last four years, he worked to develop skills to match his height, leading some to call him India’s best young player.

This month, the young giant will head to the IMG Basketball Academy in Florida, which is sponsored by a U.S. talent agency.

“If God keeps blessing us, one day he’ll play on the Indian national team, even the basketball world cup. “He’s putting our village on the map,” village elder Aatma Bhamara said, his unfamiliarity with the name “NBA” suggesting that the Americans have their work cut out for them.

NBA officials say they’re determined to build a sport that was introduced to the country by missionaries in 1903, and today is played, enthusiastically if not always well, by a few million Indians.ctivity).

They maintain that India, with its emerging middle class, rising disposable income and media-savvy youngsters, has the raw ingredients to take off as a basketball market.

“We see great opportunity in India,” said Akash Jain, the league’s director of international development for India.

Jain adds: “Sometimes you find a diamond in the rough if you’re lucky…. But our focus is long term.”

The state-funded Ludhiana basketball academy, which Satnam attended, is among the best in the country. On a recent Saturday, potential recruits, several taller than 6 feet, did sprints, dribbling exercises, layups and defensive drills with reasonable skill.

The NBA has vowed to make basketball India’s second-most-popular sport after cricket within four years, leapfrogging over soccer and field hockey. (ANI)