Ryan Schmidt has twin goals on his mind as basketball in Britain takes centre stage at Wembley tonight.
The London Lions host Hapoel Tel Aviv in the EuroCup, having already become the first British team to win home and away in the competition.
Head coach Schmidt is charged with turning the well-funded Lions into an international force but his aspirations don’t end there. The American wants success for his team to shine a light on the sport as a whole in the UK and finally give it a profile to match the numbers playing it.
“Basketball is the second most popular sport in this country behind football among young people,” said Schmidt, whose club sold out London’s CopperBox Arena for last month’s visit of Paris.
“Yet the relative lack of media coverage and funding is pretty troublesome and something we’re trying to bring attention to and help with.”
777 Partners, the Miami-based investment firm which owns the Lions, also forked out an initial £7 million in return for a 45% stake in the British Basketball League.
Their opening salvo was to recognise a lack of support at all levels of the game has a “disproportionate and inequitable impact on underprivileged and minority communities that stand to benefit from its potential”.
They believe they can help unlock the “huge untapped potential” last seen when the sport was brought to its knees by successive TV companies going bust after committing to the broadcast rights 20 odd years ago.
The stark facts are that Team GB last played in the Olympics in 2012 and the side has lost 12 straight since beating Greece in 2021, not helped by being stripped of its UK Sport funding post-2012.
But Schmidt senses change for the better is coming, likening the sport in England to Canada in the early 2000s.
“London is a city that reminds me of Toronto,” he said. “Canada is a [ice] hockey country, England a football country. There are cult similarities.
“The [NBA side] Toronto Raptors got started in 1995 and by the early 2000s they started to see a big growth in interest in the sport. You see where basketball is in Canada now. It’s pretty remarkable.
“We’re hoping to be at the forefront of building the game here and I think we can do it.
“When kids can turn on the TV and see top quality pro basketball in their own country, perhaps their own city, it gives them something within reach to aspire to and dream about.”
