Basketball Has So Much More Potential, but the NBA Is Limiting It

It’s frustrating that professional basketball is so heavily dominated by the NBA. Because of that, international competitions have relatively little significance. Basketball essentially has one league that truly matters the NBA while other professional leagues struggle to grow. Basketball has far more global potential, but the NBA’s monopoly limits its development. The NBA prioritizes its own business interests, which is understandable as a league, but it often comes at the expense of the sport’s global growth.

Basketball fans around the world mainly watch the NBA rather than support their own domestic leagues, so those leagues receive relatively little attention which isn’t great. And It would be best if national teams were supported by the whole country, but in basketball, even many basketball fans don’t support their own national team. As a result, national team basketball feels weak. I also think Olympic basketball could become by far the sport’s most prestigious competition, while continental national team tournaments could become meaningful competitions in their own right.

Another problem is the lack of pro/rel. Because basketball is USA sport, many leagues have been influenced by the NBA’s closed franchise model, just as many soccer leagues around the world were influenced by Europe’s pro/rel system. Pro/Rel helps build local identity, creates passionate and loyal fan bases, and gives lower division clubs meaningful goals because there is always something at stake. It also helps the sport’s popularity spread more broadly by giving more communities clubs they can support globally. If the NBA also lost its monopoly position, more fans would likely follow their own domestic leagues. Basketball may face an additional challenge because it is a low variance sport(and one player has huge influence on the team in basketball), meaning talent tends to have a greater influence on results. If wealthy teams were able to stockpile most of the top players, Pro/Rel could become less competitive, with far fewer upsets than in soccer. On the other hand Dynasties attract massive attention and boost a league’s popularity and viewership. If basketball had more meaningful competitions, one team winning the league every year wouldn’t matter much.

The NBA season also has too many regular season games. The league could shorten the schedule and introduce more meaningful competitions. However, because the NBA attracts almost all of the world’s top talent, tournaments involving clubs from other countries would usually be one sided(This could be changed if NBA loses its monopoly position tho).

Regional competitions, such as an Eastern and Western Championship, could become meaningful tournaments if the regular season were reduced. Rather than separating conferences during the regular season, every team could simply play each other twice, while the East/West Championships would exist as separate competitions. That would give fans more meaningful tournaments than something like the NBA Cup, which doesn’t seem like it would be a thing even in the future if you look at how nba cup works.

Overall, basketball is too fragmented and lacks a strong global structure. I know it’s unrealistic, but I believe the entire system would need to be rebuilt from the ground up for the sport to reach its full global potential.
And this is also unrealistic because the NBA has no reason to voluntarily give up its dominant position, other leagues would have to figure out how to close the gap

I want to here your thoughts on this