The NBA in Europe

Remember when all the talk in the NBA was about players going to Europe for exorbitant contracts, no taxes, cars and housing including, and lavish adventures with billionaire European owners? It started with Josh Childress leaving the Hawks to join the Greek powerhouse Olympiacos. Then Brandon Jennings skipped college to play professionally in Europe. Suddenly, the NBA's best were rumored to be heading across the Atlantic as well including Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.

Obviously, a lot has changed in those two years. The global economy has slowed, Kobe Bryant has one back-to-back championships, and we all know 'The Decision' LeBron James just made.

But one thing, in my opinion, that was very underreported two years ago, is the severe security problems that exist at European basketball games.

Josh Childress is now back in the states and headed for the Phoenix Suns after a sign-and-trade deal was worked out with the Atlanta Hawks (the Hawks still had Childress' rights).

Here's part of what he had to say in his introductory news conference after joining the Suns.


"So we go out to the floor and everybody’s coughing and their eyes are burning. Come to find out that the police had to shoot tear gas in the gym because the fans were so rowdy. So we’re on the floor, everybody’s hurting, their throat and everything so we had to go into the locker room for 20 minutes and wait for the arena to clear out a little bit. We get back out on the floor and we play the first half, five minutes into the second half a group of our fans, I’d probably say about six M80s, they kind of combined them into one and threw them at our rival teams bench. Their whole team was at halfcourt to kind of huddle up together and kind of protect each other and as soon as that happened they just started pelting them with everything you can think of. I mean, chunks of marble, they broke toilets in the arena. One guy I know said he got hit with a bottle of urine and crap. It’s just unbelievable man. It was unbelievable. That was the last game, so you can kind of imagine."


As exciting and innovative as it would be for David Stern to launch his 'European Division' A LOT has to come together in the next 10 years for that to be a realistic possibility. In addition to newer, state of the art arenas, working out scheduling conflicts, and fitting any expansion plans in to the new CBA that's coming next year, the number one thing the NBA will have to contend with is simple security. 


The Artest Melee was one of the darkest moments in NBA history in regards to safety and player-fan interaction, but could you imagine seeing something like what Childress described above occurring stateside? The angriest fan base in the country right now is the spurned Cavaliers fans. Could you imagine them throwing things at the Miami Heat bench when LeBron comes back to town? 


Talk about the m.W.o.! (God I love this video!)