By Sean Gregory | Time Magazine NBA commissioner David Stern has already executed a beautiful pivot move into China, where, thanks in part to Houston Rockets center Yao Ming, hoops is hotter than Sichuan cooking. There’s still work to be done in Europe, even though it is now a source of many NBA players, including seven Frenchmen and six Slovenes. Before the season, the Philadelphia 76ers and Phoenix Suns played...

By Sam Dolnick | The Associated Press 7/12/2008 - 7/13/08 NEW DELHI — Could LeBron James or Shaquille O’Neal catch on in the Hindi heartland? The NBA certainly hopes so as it plans a major push to introduce basketball to India and expand its already formidable global reach into a country with a soaring economy, a growing appetite for Western tastes, and, most importantly, 1.1 billion potential fans. The NBA has...

1985, the popularity of basketball in China was similar to what it is India today. Recognizing that China had the world’s largest potential fan base, many grass roots efforts were made by the Chinese government, local organizations, and the NBA, to promote the game of basketball. Today, largely accelerated by the international pop star success of Yao Ming, - NBA China is a 2 Billion-dollar organization, according...

Railways guard Prakash Mishra, fished out of Indore – a fast-developing basketball nursery – highlights the hazy spotlight that falls on his sport. “In the cities, they are unwilling to give us even a first look, though NBA-popularity is at an all-time high. In villages, they confuse us with volleyball. We’ve never really got our own audience. It is a team-game, and there’s not much in it right now. But...

With Sikar as his starting point, Ramkumar, one of India’s best known shooters who hails from Kota, and is now the Indian Railways Coach, has taken it upon himself to go across the country scouting for the big boys. What Ramkumar has done through his champion Railways squad is to: hunt down talent from India’s remote interiors, polish their skills, and throw them into the exhibition ring, where the city-spectator...