Even for a guy who grew up in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, accessing NBA content halfway around the world wasn’t nearly as easy then it as it is now.
There was no House of Highlights, no Wob. Yes, the internet was humming along fine, but YouTube and streaming were, at best, in their infancy.
Instead, 15 to 20 years ago, in order to follow the NBA, a young Jonah Bolden had to do things the old fashioned way - he would watch the limited number of NBA games available on Australian television live, or catch the replays.
More often than not, the Melbourne native ended up going to the houses of friends who had cable. He’d stay over, wake up the next day, and tune into games early in the morning.
Melbourne, after all, is 16 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
“The NBA wasn’t broadcast as much as it is now over in Australia, but I always loved the NBA, playing basketball, being around basketball,” said Bolden, whose father, Bruce, was an Aussie professional. “As much as the NBA is on now over there, it wasn’t that much then.”
These days, if you want NBA content - whether it’s in Australia, Asia, Europe, Antarctica, wherever - you can get it, provided access to the web or a mobile device. Between Instagram, Twitter, League Pass, and international TV rights deals all over the world, there are plenty of platforms pushing out content for what is arguably the most universally popular American pro sport.
In Europe, for instance, the NBA once again curated for this season its ‘NBA Saturdays’ and ‘NBA Sundays’ primetime television packages that are distributed across the continent. ‘NBA Sundays’ has been airing for five seasons, while ‘NBA Saturdays’ was introduced in 2017.
Few NBA head coaches have witnessed first hand, or contributed to, the explosive global growth of basketball like Brett Brown has. His 17 years coaching basketball Down Under not only made him a fixture in the Australian hoops community, the experience also took him just about everywhere on Earth that basketball is played.
Brown has a host of theories as to why basketball - and specifically the NBA - has gotten so big on the international level.
“I think it’s an entertaining game in relation to speed,” said Brown.
The Sixers’ sixth-year head coach also believes the accessibility of basketball has something to do with it.
Think about it. What do you really need to start a pick up run, aside from a little creativity and resourcefulness?
If you’ve got the bare essentials, you’re pretty much covered.
“The fact that you need a basketball and a goal - overseas they would call a rim a goal - it could be on a tree, a driveway, you don’t need a bunch of equipment to play,” Brown said. “The simplicity of basketball advances the sport as well.”
Technology, however, has changed the game, so to speak. Like almost everything else in life, it’s made the world a smaller, more connected place.
On the business side of the Sixers’ franchise, the team goes to great lengths to ensure it’s reaching - and creating - as many fans abroad as possible.
The interest is there, and, more than ever before, so are the means to tap into it.
“Whether it’s Ausia, Europe, the South Pacific, Africa, [basketball] is a global game,” said Brown. “You have to give [NBA Commissioner] Adam Silver and [former NBA Commissioner] David Stern a ton of credit. It’s really become an amazing sport globally.”