Digital Sports Desk

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NBA Basketball School

Dateline | Abu Dhabi

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By TERRY LYONS, Editor of Digital Sports Desk

ABU DHABI – Greetings from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. The city is hosting a pair of NBA Preeason games between the New York Knicks and the Philadelphia 76ers. Abu Dhabi is the capital city of the UAE, and the largest and most populated of the seven emirates. It is quite an amazing place.

Is it hot? Yes, like Las Vegas during the prime heat of the NBA Summer League (July) or USA Basketball training (August), but it doesn’t have the “strip.” It does have the Grand Mosque, one of the most spectacular sights ever seen. Photos do not do it justice.

Here’s an attempt to help set the scene:

Grand Mosque exterior (file photo)

Grand Mosque, Abu Dhabi (photo by T. Peter Lyons)

While the Knicks vs. 76ers game was certainly the marquee event of the trip, as with most NBA international preseason games, there is a whole other ancillary program working all around the games. Here in Abu Dhabi, there’s:

  • The NBA Experience – It used to be called “Jam Session”
  • NBA House – The highlight of the NBA Experience
  • NBA Store – Great, 5th Avenue-like NBA Store in nicest Mall ever
  • NBA Basketball School – Tournament

The NBA Basketball School tournament is HUGE. It’s run at three venues, all world class level training facilities with multiple courts, one of which is on site at New York University (NYU)’s Abu Dhabi campus. There are competitors at the U-15 and U-17 levels for both boys/young men and girls/young women. There are teams from all over the world: Australia, Dubai, India, Poland, Italy, Lebanon and a “combo” Europe team. There’s also start-up NBA Basketball Schools here – without team – all learning from the experience for future beginnings, and that includes a great program that just began last week in Tiblisi, Georgia (former USSR). Tbilisi is near and dear to this writer’s heart as it was one of three cities (Moscow, Tbilisi and Vilnius (Lithuania) the Atlanta Hawks toured in 1988, but that is a column for another day (the stories are endless).

The reason your roving reporter/columnist is here this week is to assist/advise NBA Basketball School – Türkiye, via a very longterm relationship born on the basketball court at the 2002 FIBA Worlds in Indianapolis (Türkiye played quite well, the USA did not). That tournament was sponsored by Turkish Airlines and that airline later became the title sponsor for EuroLeague Basketball.

My friend and contact is Devrim KIVANÇ who coaches basketball for many, many years and then started his own “MVP” camps for youth. It is quite a successul program, based mostly in Istanbul – a city that is even more amazing that Abu Dhabi, and that’s a pretty serious statement.

Coach Devrim also ran some great camps in conjunction with the Philadelphia 76ers going back a decade but it came to an end because of COVID-19 and trouble getting USA visas for students/campers. Coach Devrim and I have been working with the NBA to plan for an NBA Basketball School to begin in Istanbul very soon. More to come on that.

Team Boxscores: (surf around on “other games, too) —> HERE

This column is being written anout 60 … countdown to 45 minutes before a scheduled Team Türkiye meeting (5:00pm Saturday) in advance of a 5:30pm team bus to compete in the championship/Finals of the event.

To that end, the U-17 team (4-0) – the players are playing together for the very first time. They’ve run a fluid offense, played hard with a tough defense and have the results to prove it. The good news was winning games – the bad new, the event schedule called for the U-17 Finals to be held at 7:00pm tonight, the same time of Game 2 of the Knicks vs 76ers gme at Etihad Arena – a great facility in which the NBA has played multiple years and USA Basketball played leading up to the 2024 Paris Olympics. It’s great, and thankfully VERY well air conditioned.

Time zone differences, time constraints pre-game and post game will not allow for While We’re Young (Ideas) to report the results of the tournament, but this is the important part:

Every team of the NBA Basketball School program has already won. In fact, they’ve all won – Gold, Silver and Bronze in the most important aspects of such an experience. I’ll rattle off just a few of an endless list, and I’ll do it via stream of consciousness.

Here we go:

  1. The experience of playing ball, working within a team structure and learning the key life lessons that basketball can bring to the youth of the world has been accomplished in ways I couldn’t even dream of in 1980 when I started at the NBA in New York. I couldn’t even dream of it post-1992 when the Dream Team captured the world’s imagination and allowed athletes from all over the world to experience the very best the NBA had to offer. Post 1992, the NBA hit a springboard for global growth, and I was asked to switch from NBA Media Relations to International Communications, beginning in February of 1993.
  2. The players from each country were given ample time to interact with each other and learn even more about different nations and cultures. That was the best take-away from this event.
  3. The NBA has created an unbelievable program and its “back of the house” is so well planned, produced and offered to potential new schools (and the existing ones, of course) and it includes handbooks and software programs to allow for cohesive sign-ups, communications and sharing of information primarily for the individual camp, but also to share with the league and the other schools. In the biz world, they call it “Best Practices.”
  4. The teams/players getting to see the NBA game was probably a “once in a lifetime” experience for the players. Although preseason games can be a bit rough around the edges on the front end of October (they’re quite better when we used to take Texas teams to Mexico City on – say – October 30/31), the spectacle of an NBA game, music/game operations, dance teams, mascots and all the ancillary programming is quite amazing for the kids – and the adults.
  5. (Side note) – It wasn’t until I sat down in the arena with a “premo” center court seat that I realized it was the first NBA international preseason game I ever attended when I could sit in the stands and have fun (rather than be working and worried about every second and every activity – including my No. 1 concern back then – NO INJURIES, please). PS: The cold Amstel Light wasn;t bad, either.
  6. The competition was very good, pretty high level and well coached. The traveling parties from all the different countries operated like pro-level event companies. The players were polite and respected each other and their chaperones.
  7. A good handful- especially from Australia – travlled with parents of the players who all shared the unbelievable experience. We had a small handful of parents for Türkiye, but actually are doing a conference call with the parents as a surprise “pre-game motivational talk” for the guys at the meeting – now only 20 minutes away.
  8. I could list another 100 things, but will stop now because of the fact, it’s time to freshen up, get the game face on, grab my pass (I always hung my credentials on my hotel room door knob or door lock during my days with USA Basketball at the Olympics so I’d never forget the pass), and I’ve been doing it here – a HUGE throwback in my mind’s eyes to the Olympics and 120+ international preseason games I worked between 1985 and 2008.
  9. It’s GAME TIME!

HERE NOW … No MORE NOTES!

We’ll be back next week wit your regularly scheduled programming.

Go Türkiye. 🇹🇷

This event has been one of those “pinch me!” Is this actually happening – moments of my life and I hope I’ve shared just a small glimpse of that experience with you.