NEW YORK (AFP) - Even though National Basketball Association teams will play pre-season games in Europe for the third year in a row next October does not mean regular-season games are coming there any time soon.
NBA commissioner David Stern said Thursday that the league's latest set of European pre-season games - involving the New Orleans Hornets, Washington Wizards, Miami Heat and New Jersey Nets - will be staged in London, Berlin, Barcelona and Paris.
Stern said they do not herald regular-season games but Stern said new arenas like those in London and Berlin and the US dollar's fall compared to European currencies provide an economic base that might someday set the stage for regular-season NBA games in Europe.
"Playing 'friendlies' is a historically known format outside the US. It puts less stress on us economically. Fans get to know us," Stern said.
"Now that we have arenas like the (ones in London and Berlin), we have the economic base to support regular season games. With the changes in the economic environment, particularly the dollar to the European currency, we might have the support for regular season games. But we're happy with the friendlies."
Miami will tip-off the NBA European tour October 9 at Bercy arena in Paris when the 2006 NBA champion Heat, featuring Dwyane Wade, play the Nets. The same teams will meet three days later at the O2 Arena in London.
The Hornets and Wizards will meet at Berlin's O2 World arena on Ocober 14 and meet again three days later in Barcelona's Palau Sant Jordi.
Having a mellower atmosphere with training games rather than the increased intensity of regular-season NBA matchups serves the NBA's purposes for now, Stern said, saying he would not rule out European regular-season games one day.
"We might. We might not. But that's not a goal in and of itself," Stern said. "We like the opportunity for our teams to have a more relaxed setting for their training.
"We will get to regular-season games eventually but we don't hold that up as better for us or our fans."
Stern said there will be no training camps by teams in Europe as some teams have done in past years but there will be more community events in Europe.
"They didn't seem to achieve the desired results for us so we're cutting back to just the games," Stern said.
Euroleague teams, which have been involved in past years, were ditched this year by promoters but could return next year.
"It was decided in these cities it was time to try it with NBA teams alone," Stern said. "My guess is a year from now will be doing something different involving Euroleague teams. This is hopefully the third year of a much longer approach."
Not showcasing Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki in his homeland, Germany, goes to Stern's idea that the NBA need not use home-nation stars to hype games.
"We're not unhappy to move away from the notion of pushing players in their nations," he said. "We have lots of teams. We'd like to demonstrate that basketball is basketball."
The matchups will mean NBA clubs have played 48 games in 18 European cities over the past 20 years, with seven European games last year drawing more than 75,000 spectators, more than 10 million television viewers and sponsor support.
NBA teams played last year in London, Rome, Istanbul, Madrid and Malaga, Spain and in 2006 in Rome, Paris, Moscow, Barcelona, the French city of Lyon, and Cologne, Germany.
