President Barack Obama ordered relations with Cuba to be normalized in December and the NBA will be the first U.S. professional sports league to take advantage. The NBA has been working hard to expand globally, playing both exhibition and regular season games all over the world including countries like Mexico, China, Brazil and more. Now they will host a basketball development camp in Havana later this month.
Official press release:
The National Basketball Association (NBA) and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) announced today that they will host their first joint basketball development camp in Havana, Cuba April 23-26.
Two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash, NBA Global Ambassador Dikembe Mutombo, and WNBA Legend Ticha Penicheiro will lead the four-day camp with the Cuban Men’s and Women’s National Teams, and community outreach projects in association with the Cuban sports ministry, INDER, and the Cuban Basketball Federation (CBF). …
“We’ve seen the bridges that basketball can build between cultures,” said NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum. “We look forward to sharing the values of our game with Cuban youth and learning together through the common language of sports.”
It seems like a great program and it’ll be interesting to see if the NBA ever adds an international team (aside from Canada), which country will be the first one.
