OLY - Stankovic: on how modern international basketball was born

LONDON (Olympics) – With Team USA cruising through to the Final of the London 2012 Olympic Basketball Tournament, the comparisons with the Barcelona Dream Team – which is celebrating its 20th anniversary – will continue.

The Dream Team that graced the world 20 years ago has been talked about at length these past weeks.

What hasn’t been talked about is how it came to be and why.

What few media have addressed is why the first ever international team of NBA players came to be and how.

It all started with the coming together of two men: then FIBA Secretary General Borislav Stankovic and NBA Commissioner David Stern.

On the eve of another meeting between FIBA’s Secretary General – now Patrick Baumann – and David Stern, we talked to FIBA Secretary General Emeritus Borislav Stankovic about the broader meaning of bringing professional basketball players to the Olympics.

FIBA: Mr Stankovic, can you tell us why you pushed for professional athletes and more specifically NBA players to compete at the Olympics?
Borislav Stankovic: Everyone was so-called amateur began to believe the world had changed, that the world of top amateur sport was very close to the professional world.

There was a period of hypocrisy where there were on the one side professionals under contract, who had insurances and so on, and on the other side so-called amateurs who received money under the table from various parties.

That is when we decided that something needed to be done. We stopped this just in time.

FIBA: What were the first steps that you took?
Stankovic: We waited for the IOC – the highest ranked sporting organisation - to make the first move towards professional sport. But the federations were already prepared for this.

Everyone was actually already professional. But the true sense of the word professional means a lot more than just earning money. It is about going to practice, having proper training conditions, about taking responsibility for the health of athletes.

The solution was found in a discussion I had with David Stern at the time by chance. After that, we continued to talk, we had other meetings.

FIBA: What were the main challenges?
Stankovic: In the beginning the issue was not so much with FIBA, but between the NBA – the professional leagues – and the colleges or universities, who were considered amateur but who had big scholarships and a lot of other things on offer for their top players.

We agreed things pretty quickly with (David) Stern, but of course the American federation (USA Basketball) did not have any NBA representative on its board. Then eventually, with some political and governmental pressure we got there.

The question of women’s sport was of course also very significant as far as this issue was concerned. At the time there was no professional league for women. The highest level was college. It allowed us to give similar conditions to women’s basketball, top leagues and so on.

FIBA: How did you and David Stern, two men with very different objectives, manage to see eye to eye?
Stankovic: David Stern is first and foremost a friend with whom I have worked for many years. There always was a respect between us, a respect of the rules. There was a common idea that we needed to work together for the good of basketball in spite of having very different interests. His was that NBA become a global movement and, of course, to make money.

FIBA wanted a bigger and better basketball throughout the world, being played at a high level everywhere. And we managed to find common ground. The result is that basketball is one of the most important Olympic sports.; not only in terms of spectators, but also in terms of atmosphere.

FIBA: Has bringing professional athletes to the Olympics improved international basketball?
Stankovic: I can tell you that my idea had always been, on a technical level, that you can only get better by playing against the best. The results against NBA teams have proved this to be true. By playing with them you improve. There have even been cases when the Americans have not won the top international tournaments or the Olympics.

All of this is proof that you need all the top basketball players. They attract spectators, they attract media and press, and at the end of the day, they attract money. Not money for me or for FIBA, but money to develop and improve the sport of basketball worldwide.

FIBA