With preseason winding down, the excitement is building for the start of the NBA season — for the players, that is.
The NBA preseason is a necessary part of the game as teams prepare for the long season. However that does not make it fun. If you want fun, think baseball Spring Training. Teams go to some wonderful part of the country for 6 weeks. The players move in, bringing their golf clubs and families. They ease into the season at a baseball pace. That is leisurely. The games are like tailgate parties with the fans enjoying intimate stadiums with grassy areas for picnicking. The entire Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues set up shop within 50-100 miles of each other. All of your “road” games are a short bus ride away.
The NBA preseason experience is a much different animal. The primary purpose is supposed to be getting the team ready for action and determining the final roster. Unfortunately for the players, marketing the teams and the league becomes more important. There are three primary strategies in play that are responsible for dragging players all over the damn place to play an exhibition game.
1. Protect your local market: This is a very common practice where teams will play exhibition games in areas that are within their broadcast territory but far enough away where fans don’t get to see live games (Example: The Knicks are playing the Bucks in Green Bay on Wednesday night). Plus it’s tough to sell a preseason game in your own building when you have 50 more coming that actually count. In my day with the Nuggets we would play in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Butte, Montana, or Laramie, Wyoming. We played the Sonics in Anchorage or the Jazz in Boise. While technically home games, travel was always a bear. This season fans can see games in Montreal, Jacksonville, and Sioux Falls to name a few.
Nothing beats a hot time in Sioux Falls or Fargo (been there).
2. Showcase a local hero: These are the homecoming trips to give that extra marketing push to the game by featuring a local star. My Denver Nuggets played a home game in Columbia, South Carolina for Alex English Day. Columbia is a beautiful city and they rolled out the red carpet for us. Alex didn’t get any sleep and I got to get my first experience with chitlins. They weren’t very big in Syracuse, but a must have in Columbia, South Carolina!
In other years the Knicks would play in Syracuse with Carmelo Anthony to a big crowd. This year it was the Jeremy Lin Tour in Taiwan and the Philippines. These games killed two marketing birds with one game. Not only did the Rockets get to expand their fan base but the league got tremendous international exposure as well.
3. Showcase the NBA oversees: These games are real love/hate experiences for the players. On the one hand they can be amazing trips to places you have never been, and on the other hand they can be “see the world in 48 hours” kinds of things.
I played in a preseason game in Rome, Italy one year that was a terrific trip, for the wives. We were there for 5 days. We had a long flight from Denver and practiced every day. Over dinner the families would share the stories of the amazing tours they got to go on while we were at practice. On the one off day we had, the families already seen all the best spots so my wife wanted to go shopping. Yay, my favorite thing!
I also went with the Orlando Magic when we played two games in Tokyo, Japan. This trip was fun. The owner of the team also owned Amway, the largest foreign company in Japan with 1 million Amway distributors. We sold out both games in minutes just with Amway folks. We were treated like rock stars everywhere we went as Penny Hardaway mania was in full bloom. There were so many Li’l Penny dolls around that I thought they were filming a horror movie. Horace Grant was also a favorite and all of the Japanese fans would yell his name: Ho-ass, Ho-ass! The Japanese weren’t very good at r’s.
Like the Magic trip, it is best if you bring an in-country favorite. This year the Lakers played in Beijing, where Kobe is huge. There were also games in Istanbul, Montreal, London and Bilbao, Spain. Plus no preseason marketer’s dream schedule would be complete without a trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil site of the next Olympics. That’s a helluva trip for one game.
While a boon for the league and the marketing types, they can be rough to recover from. In some cases, teams can be jet-lagged for weeks and have it affect their regular season.
The preseason is usually eight games with only one or two in your home city. Not only is the month filled with twice a day practices but usually major travel as well. And if the marketing geniuses get any more influence, the schedule will look a lot more like the Harlem Globetrotters’.
At least they haven’t scheduled any doubleheaders!
MORE FROM DANNY SCHAYES:
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10 PREDICTIONS FOR THE 2013-14 SEASON
WHEN ROOKIE HAZING WENT UNDERGROUND
CAN CHRIS PAUL LEAD THE NBPA BACK FROM THE DEAD?
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THE FRANCHISE PLAYER IS AN ENDANGERED SPECIES
WHY THE CHAMPIONSHIP FORMULA ALWAYS WORKS (UNTIL IT DOESN’T)
HOW DO HEAT COMPARE TO GREATEST TEAMS EVER?
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Danny Schayes is a retired 18-year-veteran of the NBA, a professional broadcaster and soon-to-be-published author now penning NBA columns for SheridanHoops. Follow him on Twitter.
Michael Jackson is definitely the king. Whenever i listen to his songs i feel as he is still alive. Certainly one of the most significant music celebrities ever been born!