The Denver Nuggets this week won their first-ever NBA Championship in a basketball league that in recent decades has gone global.
Teams of the National Basketball Association have regularly done exhibition game overseas, where they can measure their strengths by playing against a non-NBA team. According to United Language Group, the first-ever NBA exhibition game was played in Israel in 1978.
That year’s champion, the Washington Bullets, played a game against Maccabi Tel Aviv. The Israeli team beat the NBA champions 98-87. The first-ever overseas NBA game had the most unbelievable outcome.
Since that day, the NBA has continued the tradition of sending teams overseas to market the league and help children and people from other cultures to get to know basketball.
GENDER INEQUALITY IN BASKETBALL
There’s also gender discrimination between the men’s and women’s professional basketball leagues in North America: WNBA teams very rarely play overseas games.
Coming from a European country, I can state that not having any WNBA teams come over for an exhibition for us to watch has been very disappointing. That said, there are other ways for women to watch the world’s best basketball players. Many come over and play in a European club team during their offseason.
Probably the most well-known WNBA player in the past year has been Brittney Griner: She was detained in Russia for months for an alleged cannabis possession.
Women’s basketball teams should be able to market themselves the same way as the men. If it only influences one little girl to get to know the beauty of sports and basketball, it’s worth it.
HealthDirect.com even states that playing a sport can teach kids how to lose. This way, they learn how to get back on the horse after a failure.
It’s like life: There are difficult times during our lives when we need to acknowledge that something didn’t go how we imagined or wanted to. Getting back and helping ourselves up is also very important.
EMOTIONAL AND SOCIAL BENEFITS
Sports has also emotional and social benefits. Socializing as a team could be one of the easiest ways to find new friends and to meet new people.
In every culture, sports mean something different. In some places it means home; in other places it could mean passion and friends.
Cultural fluidity is huge in sports to be able to have fun and compete in many different different levels and places. Sports also brings people together: National teams get to know other people from a different country’s national team.
In conclusion, sports in general can help people develop many many skills as well as show the importance of being unique.
