June 23 promises to be the buzziest day of the year for professional basketball, as fans huddle around their screens or crowd into Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for the NBA draft, when the 30 American and Canadian teams claim the top amateurs coming into the league. For decades the primary source of talent has been US colleges, but in recent years teams have increasingly been looking abroad, hoping to find the next Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), or Serge Ibaka (Congo). A former NCAA player hasn’t won an MVP award since 2018. With that in mind, the NBA has been trying to expand its overseas reach, and nowhere has it been more ambitious than in Africa, where it’s started an entirely new league. This spring, 12 teams from as many countries battled it out for the championship of the Basketball Africa League, the new centerpiece of the NBA’s international ambitions.
The BAL is a joint venture between the National Basketball Association and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA), the sport’s global governing body. Last year’s inaugural season was crammed into two weeks because of Covid‑19 concerns. This time around, the dozen squads played 38 games at freshly built arenas in three countries, from March through May. Games aired on NBA TV and a range of broadcast partners, such as ESPN, Canada’s TSN, and China’s Tencent Sports, reaching more than 200 countries in 14 languages.
One early game, between Senegal’s Dakar Université Club Basketball and Tunisia’s Union Sportive Monastirienne, the eventual league champion, made it clear how far the BAL has already come. By the final minutes there was little question that Dakar, the home team, would come up short. And yet the raucous crowd remained rapt, sending a roar through Dakar Arena as DUC star C.B. Diallo blew by the Tunisian guards to score a meaningless basket. While the shooting guard dribbled down the sideline past ads for Wilson sports gear and Hennessy cognac, his courtside audience included Instagram influencers, investors, bankers, diplomats, NBA officials, and scouts from the US and Europe. Win or lose, Diallo and his teammates were on the global stage, playing in a competition sanctioned by basketball’s superlative and most lucrative league. “All the ingredients are already there,” says BAL President Amadou Gallo Fall, who was also sitting on the sideline. “All we need to do is to bottle it up.”
