The NBA announced today that two preseason games will be played in Europe this fall: The Chicago Bulls and the Utah Jazz will meet in the O2 Arena in London on October 6th 2009. Additionally, a second game is scheduled but the exact date, teams and place have not been revealed so far.
As the International Herald Tribune reports, David Stern said that
We’re in discussions with a couple of potential venues. It would be better for us to have either (Chicago and Utah) play each other or even one of the teams play a team based outside the United States.
So there is the possibility to again see a matchup between a Euroleague team and an NBA team, which would be way more interesting than the sloppy games we saw in Europe last fall. If both compete against each other, just in another venue, the favored cities would probably be Moscow or Istanbul, in order to keep the local fans happy by showing them their national heroes Andrei Kirilenko or Mehmet Okur. We will see and keep you updated about this.
Oh, I almost forgot to tell you: Stern also announced that a NBA regular season game will be played in London within the next three years.
I’m running out of runway. I said we’re going to have a regular season game in London before the 2012 Olympics, so that means … a game projected either in 2010, 2011 or possibly 2012.
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Unfortunately the second game is to be played by two NBA teams also. So probably nothing interesting will happen in the upcoming NBA Europe Live Tour, just like the last one. I also heard that the second game is to take place in Madrid or Berlin… Maybe the tour will not happen at all, because the main sponsor, EA Sports, is said to be strongly affected by the crisis…
It seems only London exists for NBA….
It is ridiculous to play NBA basketball in London. It is like holding a cricket test in Athens or a skiing world cup in the Sahara!
The British national team is probably amongs the worst in Europe and British teams dont even compete in European competitions!!
I wonder who the idiot is, who makes these decisions for the NBA!
i need 2 know when & where the 2nd date for the European tour is? Ne ideas`s when it will be released?
I don’t think so that it is ridiculous to play NBA Basketball in London. I want to sure that NBA is getting popularity in European country and they have great players of basketball.