I remember when I came into the NBA, eighteen years ago, there were maybe nine to twelve international players playing in the NBA. Today we've got more than 85, so that tells you how our game has grown at that level.
T20 is the vehicle to make cricket a truly global game.
The NBA is becoming a global game.
I have to give credit to the NBA, because they've done an unbelievable job of taking our game global and putting us in a position to be able to come here and other places in the world and see how big the game of basketball is. If you have never been here, you might not really understand how amazing and how big basketball is. These fans in China love the sport, and they have more players playing than we have people living in the US.
I think the international players, in general, show how basketball is global now. There are players from all the countries.
There are going to be some teams in Europe. There are going to be some teams in Asia. And they're all going to be a part of the NBA umbrella, eventually.
The important thing for me was that the World Cup should travel round the world.
When I came in the NBA, it was more a U.S. game. Now you can watch the NBA anywhere in the world.
I think it is high time that Europe starts to understand that we do not rule the world anymore, and that some former European imperial powers can no longer impress their will on to others in far away places, and we must accept that football has moved away from being a European and South American sport: it has become the World Sport that billions of fans are excitedly following every week, everywhere in the world.
Why is UCLA and Georgia Tech in China to play a basketball game? Missing all that school, and then force-feeding their fans the idea of 'student-athletes.'
I notice that teams are now more interested in Japanese players than when I first went to Europe.
Globalization really is a concrete, fundamental fact in everybody's lives, and you really see that come to life in soccer stadiums.
Mixed martial arts was invented by Brazilians, whose families had been trained by the Japanese. Those Brazilians came to the U.S., where their invention was bought out, gussied up and presented to the world, which found it good.
