Some people might not be aware of this, but there's another professional basketball league in the United States and Canada. The North American Premier Basketball League started play recently, fielding 8 teams in season one. The Kentucky Thoroughbreds, Ohio Cardinals, Kansas City Tornadoes, Albany (NY) Patroons, Rochester Razorsharks, Nevada Desert Dogs, Yakima Sun Kings, and Vancouver Knights. What makes this league interesting to me isn't just providing players with another platform to prove themselves NBA worthy, but the opportunity for cities that haven't had, used to have, or will never have, a professional basketball team to call their own a chance to have just that. Notice anything on that list of teams? Vancouver used to have an NBA team. Kansas City is one of those zombie expansion cities that always pops up, (And used to have a team) Kentucky loves the sport everywhere, and used to have a successful ABA team. And we haven't even talked about their upcoming expansion cities: Tampa Bay, Raleigh, Bellevue, WA and San Diego. The NBA is never going to Tampa Bay, doesn't seem interested in San Diego, and the Seattle area has been dying for a team since the Sonics moved. And Raleigh is a huge city that won't ever be in the NBA thanks to the Charlotte Hornets.
The NAPB is a unique position to provide decent quality, affordable basketball games to fans in cities with no hope of the NBA, like Albuquerque, NM or Omaha, NE. And they're building the league with a smart plan, adding teams close to each other to keep travel costs low. Won't be at all surprised to find out that St Louis and Omaha will be adding teams to the league. And these teams are different from the G League. They won't be Austin Spurs or somebodies little brother. These are independent teams, locally owned and operated. It's the difference between Triple A baseball and independent teams. Players move around, yeah, but nowhere nears as much. And with these teams being completely locally owned, with no help from a big brother NBA team, these teams will have to go above and beyond to connect their teams and players with fans and sponsors. The future is looking bright for basketball here. I, for one, am excited to see what the NAPB can bring to court to make basketball even better.
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