Basketball: The NBA arrives in London

Last night the Chicago Bulls played the Utah Jazz in a much-hyped basketball 'friendly' in London which was primarily about money, above all else.

The ultra-slick NBA, with its all-American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of the greenback, has made no secret of the fact that it openly envies the riches generated by English soccer's Premier League.

Certainly there will be some in the UK who take nationalistic pleasure in hearing the NBA Commissioner, David Stern, describe his organisation as "unapologetic imitators" of the Premier League. For others, however, the increasingly close relationship between the two financial behemoths of the sporting world is a source of unease.

There are essentially two areas in which the NBA would like to emulate the Premier League, in both of which discussions between the two bodies are believed to have already taken place. The first is the latter's popularity beyond its own shores, particularly in Asia, seen by marketeers as a potentially vast income source they have barely begun to tap.

In that respect, the Premier League's recent decision to choose Disney/ESPN as its secondary broadcaster to BSkyB/Fox is an interesting one. The NBA is also part-tied to the former, though as yet only in the US.

In most other countries it has individual deals with broadcasters, but as Stern acknowledged recently: "The Premier League's ability to negotiate their [media] deals and the way they split their packages [of media rights] is something we can learn from."

Secondly, the NBA badly wants more international owners. The recent acquisition by a Chinese consortium of a minority shareholding in the Cleveland Cavaliers appears about to be followed by the first foreign takeover of an NBA club, with a Russian billionaire called Mikhail Prokhorov agreeing to pay $200m (£125m) for 80 per cent of the New Jersey Nets.

There are 30 NBA franchises (it would be stretching a point to refer to them as clubs, which implies they are all to some extent rooted in the community in which they operate), so the organisation has some way to go to match the Premier League, in which 10 out of the 20 clubs are now under foreign control. With a number of those franchises feeling the financial strain, how Stern would love to attract the sort of interest from foreign investors which results in a medium-sized football club like Portsmouth changing hands three times in six months.

But tell all that to the crowd making its way to the 02 in Greenwich last night. Despite prices which the Premier League would dearly love to be able to charge - courtside seats £250, floor seating £150, minimum price elsewhere £35 - every ticket was sold, with many young, baggy-shorted Brits there to see the Sudan-born Londoner Luol Deng in the flesh.

Given Deng is something close to seven feet tall - one former coach remarked that any boy can be a basketball star when he grows up, and up, and up - there's a lot of Deng to see, but there had been a question mark over his fitness.

Nevertheless, although a stress fracture in his right leg had prevented him representing Great Britain at the European Championships this summer, and his recovery since had been understandably carefully managed by the Bulls, there was no way that the Brixton-raised Deng was not going to make some sort of appearance.

And tell it to the media, which turned out from all over Europe, and were generously accommodated in the end zone, a few yards from the court.

Back in 1993, Charles Barkley, a basketball legend who saw through the hype, made an advertisement for his latest shoes. The script read something like this. "These are my new shoes. They're good shoes. They won't make you rich like me, they won't make you rebound like me, they definitely won't make you handsome like me. They'll only make you have shoes like me. That's it."

- INDEPENDENT