Why NBA commissioner Adam Silver wants to tap into the European basketball academy pipeline

Editor’s note: This story is part of a multi-part series examining the issues and concerns about the current NBA.

PARIS — There is untapped marketing potential for the NBA in Europe, a possible pipeline of cash, if you will, which is the reason NBA commissioner Adam Silver often cites when he discusses his interest in starting a new league in the old countries. 

But another motivation is perhaps more important and certainly hits closer to home for Silver, the 30 team owners he works for in the U.S. and Canada and the future of the world’s biggest, best and most lucrative basketball league he already oversees.

As the NBA has evolved in recent years, with increased scoring and more 3-point shooting across the league, it’s also seen an influx of international talent. About a quarter of all NBA players this season are foreign-born. Roughly 58 percent of those players come from Europe. For six seasons running, and very likely a seventh, the league’s Most Valuable Player has come from outside the U.S. A Frenchman has gone No. 1 overall in the draft for the last two years, and seven times since 2013, the top player selected was not born in the U.S. Going back to 2010, at least 10 international players have been selected in every draft. 

The pro teams overseas, the ones Silver wants to lure from the EuroLeague to join his new venture, all run “academies” for players as young as 13. The NBA even said it would “dedicate financial support and resources to the continued development of Europe’s basketball ecosystem, including club team academies” in its news release formally announcing Silver’s plan to start a new league overseas.

Silver wants direct contact with the NBA’s European pipeline.

“I assume this is one of the highest interests of the NBA,” said Marco Baldi, vice president and chief executive officer for Alba Berlin, a German EuroLeague club that could be a candidate for Silver’s European league and runs an expansive youth academy. 

“Players who have the time to mature will be of great benefit … and finding an ecosystem that, let’s say, guarantees that the most players with the potential end up at their potential, is a common task that cannot be solved by the NBA alone,” Baldi said. “So the ideal thought is to collaborate on this.”

Sports for teenagers in Europe, especially basketball, are nothing like sports are for their peers in the United States.

Kids don’t play for their school teams because there aren’t school teams. Many play for clubs and for the good players, the ones with a chance to play professionally, their clubs are run by the pro organizations that set up their programs wholly different from the AAU format that dominates in the U.S. — where teams seldom practice and instead play four to six games on the weekends. 

This model for player development is how household names such as Victor Wembanyama, Luka Dončić, Nikola Jokić and Giannis Antetokounmpo all molded their games as teenagers before being drafted into the NBA. The Athletic spent time this year sitting with the men who run some of the top academies on the continent.

This model, which can be found in the picturesque town of Chalon-sur-Saône, nestled in the heart of Burgundy, France to the gritty, urban cultural center of Germany in Berlin to the edge of the Danube River in Belgrade to the historic plazas and sweltering summer heat of Madrid, explains the mass influx of foreign-born players into the U.S.

Why wouldn’t Silver want to gain direct access to such a system? 

“The European development of the kids, especially in the Yugoslavian area, especially in terms of fundamentals, is 10 times better than in the States,” said Miško Ražnatović, the former head of Mega Basket, Belgrade’s pro club, and current Serbian-based agent for Jokić. “This is the reason you are getting more and more players from Europe.”

Copying such a system in the United States, a country with 330 million people where virtually every middle and high school has a basketball team, would be impossible. Chris Paul, a 12-time All-Star and future Hall of Famer who was the product of the AAU system, has run his youth program since 2009 and is now Wembanyama’s teammate on the Spurs. Paul said the “lifestyles” of the players in the European academies are too different for Americans to copy their program. 

“It’s been really cool playing with Victor this year, getting to know him and hearing about his childhood and how he was playing professionally and living alone at age 14,” Paul said. “Having a 15-year-old son of my own, I can’t imagine him living on his own, so it’s definitely a little different.”

Team CP3, Paul’s AAU team and summer training academy, has a success rate similar to a powerhouse European academy. Thirteen NBA players, including the Utah Jazz’s Collin Sexton and the Chicago Bulls’ Coby White, to name two, played for Paul’s AAU team, and numerous others (stars such as Jalen Brunson and Trae Young) attended his summer camp. 

Paul said his program takes care not to enter tournaments where the players are on the court for three or four games in one day. He agrees the European system has accelerated the flow of NBA talent from overseas but said there are enough elite AAU programs in the U.S. for the top American players to go to for training.

“There’s a lot of people who bash AAU,” Paul said. “You can’t put everyone in the same category, and I’m not in the NBA if not for AAU travel basketball. Everyone runs their program differently. Some teams play way too many games in a given day, running kids into the dirt, in it for the money.

“I’m grateful my program has been about the kids, teaching and seeing their growth.”

As in the U.S., from AAU program to program, there are differences in Europe from academy to academy, including how they’re funded, whom they recruit, how many players are under their care for any given season and what counts as success.

But the fundamentals of most programs are the same. European academies practice four to five times a week, for about three hours a day. The first hour to 90 minutes is on individual skill, and the last 90 minutes to two hours is a full team workout. Players are all taught to pass, to move without the ball, to defend in space and up close. They all play one game a week — on the weekends — and maybe two, depending if a particular player is good enough to play up an age group, in addition to playing with teammates his age.

If the program is big enough, with enough funding, there is a “B” team for players who are too good for juniors (ages 18 and under) but not quite good enough for the EuroLeague. There, they can play in front of paying customers and learn to perform under some pressure without the glare from the bright lights of Europe’s best leagues.

And, if the player is a Jokić or a Dončić or a Wemby, they advance to the EuroLeague pro team — this is how each of those Euro stars was already an established pro before ever setting foot in the NBA.

“At the age of 15 you get Jokić, you get Dončić, that kind of player, if you don’t teach them how to play basketball, don’t develop their skills and don’t develop their IQ, they will score zero points because based on their athleticism, their quickness, they cannot score anything (in the NBA),” said Ražnatović, who still consults for Mega Basket. “That’s the reason that the guys from this area are getting more skill and a better basketball IQ.”

“The American philosophy is, it’s very important to be able to play one-on-one, but our philosophy is to understand how to share,” added Alberto Angulo, director for Spanish power Real Madrid’s academy, who signed Dončić, a Slovenian, after watching him play in an Italian tournament at age 12.

“The difference between the American philosophy and European mentality, the Real Madrid mentality, is we don’t think individually,” Angulo continued. “I don’t care about ‘individual.’ It is the group, it is the team. and we change your mentality.”

And Himar Ojeda, a former international scouting director for the Atlanta Hawks who is now sports director for Alba Berlin, said the academies are how European players have caught up to American counterparts.

“I think so,” Ojeda said. “I really believe in working individually with the players to improve your game, but this is not more important than the team practice. The team practice is the most important thing because this is how you learn to play the game.”

As a 19-year-old in 2018, Luka Dončić was named the EuroLeague Final Four MVP with Real Madrid. (Andrej Isakovic / AFP via Getty Images)

The entire Real Madrid basketball program, from the EuroLeague club to the U-13 academy team, is underwritten by the multi-billion-dollar Real Madrid FC soccer franchise. There is also a Real Madrid soccer academy, so teenagers who are learning to play either soccer or basketball and are not from Madrid all live together in the same dormitory. They are taught at the same school, all have individual Spanish tutors if they do not speak Spanish, are fed by the same cooks and lift the same weights in the same weight room.

Angulo said it was impossible to separate the cost of his basketball academy because of the soccer club’s influence, but there are between 53 and 55 players in Real Madrid’s basketball academy — one of the largest in Europe — and a percentage of each class includes foreign players.  

Academies in France receive public financing. An international federation supported by public dollars serves as a clearinghouse for the top young players in the country. They host tryouts each year, and the academy directors for the pro teams in France attend those tryouts to scout players for their own programs.

French academies are often smaller than programs in Madrid or Barcelona (which has a similar setup and funding model to Real Madrid). Elan Cholet, the pro team in wine country, near the Swiss border, which has produced NBA talents Thabo Sefalosha, Joffrey Lauvergne, Clint Capela, Matthias Lessort, David Michineau, Kyshawn George and Hugo Besson, has between 20 and 22 players for two teams.

Chalon runs its academy on about 500,000 euros (about $540,000) each year. The Gautier Academy for Cholet, another French League team on the other side of France from Chalon that produced talents such as four-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert and 2024 lottery pick Tidjane Salaun, has 19 players in its academy on a budget of about 380,000 euros (about $410,000). The academy directors for these two French clubs said they mostly recruit in France and French territories, though Chalon has produced three NBA players from nearby Switzerland.

“Every pro club has to (carry) an academy, so we are, in a certain way, forced to play the game of development,” said Romain Chenaud, director of the academy in Chalon. “It’s not the best business plan, but it’s a good way to find the right balance between the culture we try to create and the financial aspect, which is pretty interesting. 

“We are very focused on the technique,” Chenaud continued. “We try to find the best way to teach kids, and when they leave our academy, I would say my pride and my goal is to have very good basketball players with good technique — technique is our identity.”

If you’re wondering, Wembanyama did not play at Chalon or Cholet. He grew up near a French pro club in Parisian suburbs — Nantarre 92 — and played both in its academy and for its pro club as a teenager before moving on to two other French league teams before the San Antonio Spurs made him the No. 1 pick in 2024.

Mega Basket, in Belgrade, covers the costs for its 30 to 35 players, beginning at age 14, at a cost of about 1 million euros per year — paid for out of team revenues and private, corporate partnerships. Most of the players are from Belgrade; if they are from out of town, Mega Basket gets them an apartment not far from school and the basketball gym.

Jokić grew up about two hours outside of Belgrade and was 17 when Ražnatović read a box score in the newspaper that said Jokić had 29 points and 26 rebounds in a game for a small club in a low-level Serbian league. When Ražnatović noticed Jokić’ in the paper the following week with a stat line of 30 points and 27 boards next to his name, Ražnatović ordered his local scout to invite Jokić to Mega Basket without ever having seen him play.  

Jokić and his brothers moved into an apartment in Belgrade, where the Joker went through the upper levels of the Mega Academy before playing for the pro team.

“We don’t want big men standing under the basket. They also have to dribble and shoot,” Ražnatović said in describing Mega Basket’s basic teaching philosophy. 

To hear him talk is to envision Jokić with the ball in his hands for the Denver Nuggets, grabbing a defensive rebound and initiating the fast break or whipping a pass from the 3-point line in one corner to an open teammate on the other side of the floor. Nikola Jović of the Miami Heat, Ivica Zubac of the LA Clippers and Goga Bitadze of the Orlando Magic are also Mega products. 

“They grow up with the same principles, and when they come to the (pros), they just continue,” Ražnatović said. 

There is no academy in the world quite like what Alba Berlin is doing in the German capital city.

Alba employees work in 100 elementary schools in Berlin, a city of 3.4 million people, and operate youth basketball leagues at the schools on the weekends. The pro team is monitoring every child with a basketball in their hands, teaching the game to children who otherwise would only know soccer, and as the better players emerge when they go from 12 years old to teenagers, they are invited to join Alba’s actual academy — which includes teams spanning three age groups for both boys and girls and counts about 100 players, total.

The entire program, including the youth leagues, in-school work and the academy with at least three teams, costs 5.5 million euros and is funded by a mix of federal and state money, private donations from corporate sponsors and Alba Berlin’s basketball revenue.

Baldi, vice president and CEO for Alba, said the organization has produced 70 pros, either in Europe or in the NBA. That number includes Franz and Moritz Wagner, two Berlin natives who now play for the Orlando Magic.

“One of their big missions is not just creating like really good basketball players but also just getting more people into sports and having kids move and stuff like that,” said Franz Wagner, who joined Alba’s youth league at age 7. “My brother was just in PE class basically, and they said you’re probably going to be tall, why don’t you come one time? And then I went to his game. So that’s how I started.”

Franz Wagner, now 23 and averaging about 24 points per game for the Magic, competed at every level for Alba Berlin, including the pro team. He lived at his parents’ house, ate his mother’s cooking and remained at the schools in his neighborhood, while otherwise getting the full academy experience. Individual workouts in the mornings before school. Back to the gym downtown after school for practice, four or five days a week. And a game or two on the weekends, up until he left for the University of Michigan in 2019 for two seasons.

“I didn’t play pick-and-roll until I was, I don’t know, maybe 15, 16, but I learned spatial awareness,” Wagner said. 

In the Alba Berlin program, which, when it comes to player development, stresses fundamentals, practice and understanding basketball concepts with similar vigor and intensity, Wagner felt a foundation was laid that not only launched his pro career but better prepared him for the NBA than at least some of his American colleagues.  

“Once you have that spatial awareness, now you can solve the little puzzle that a pick and roll is,” Wagner said. “I think we just learn those basic, bigger skills that you can just apply to anything. I think I learned those from probably a young age.”

Silver wouldn’t mind if all of the next generation of NBA players learned those basic, bigger skills that translate in the pro game at an earlier age, the way Wagner, Wemby, Jokić, Dončić and Antetokounmpo did in Europe.

— Reporting for this story was also conducted in Geneva and Berlin.

(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen/ The Athletic; Jason Miller/ Garrett Elwood / Andalou/ Getty Images)

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