The best basketball league in the world NBA, is increasingly benefiting from European talent. For Alba Berlin’s managing director Marco Baldi there is a catch.
Managing Director Marco Baldi from the German basketball champion Alba Berlin is committed to training compensation for German talents who switch to the North American Basketball League (NBA).
“The NBA generates more than eight billion euros in sales per season. But there is no money for the training of all these players who come from Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia? They are delivered free of charge. That’s a situation, um that I would like to take care of.” Baldi told the “Berliner Morgenpost”.
“It’s about power”
As an example, 60-year-old Moritz Wagner cites, who trained at Alba from the age of seven before moving to an American college and then to the NBA Orlando Magic. “We don’t get anything for it”says Baldi, “but supposing Orlando now dumped him onto their development team in the G-League because they don’t need him right now – which hopefully never will happen. If he wanted to move from there to Alba Berlin we would have to pay a set transfer fee.”
According to Baldi, this regulation was coordinated with the basketball world association FIBA and the NBA as follows: “So it’s not about any kind of logic and certainly not about sustainability. It’s about power.” In view of the numerous talents outside the USA, Baldi would therefore like to have this passage changed, also because the other leagues have caught up in terms of quality and attractiveness: “I believe that the NBA must also have an interest in continuing to supply players of this quality.”