{"id":481096,"date":"2026-01-27T21:03:37","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=481096"},"modified":"2026-01-27T21:03:37","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:03:37","slug":"nba-europe-mark-tatum-opens-the-door-to-two-teams-in-italy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/nba-europe-mark-tatum-opens-the-door-to-two-teams-in-italy\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Europe: Mark Tatum opens the door to two teams in Italy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"249\" data-end=\"448\">Mark Tatum, the right-hand man of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, spoke to <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Sportico\/status\/2015907604258521249?s=20\"><em data-start=\"322\" data-end=\"332\">Sportico<\/em> <\/a>about the NBA Europe project. Italy could be home to two teams in the new competition, according to his statements.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"450\" data-end=\"1081\"><strong data-start=\"450\" data-end=\"473\">Mark Tatum\u2019s words:<\/strong><br data-start=\"473\" data-end=\"476\" \/>\u201cIf you\u2019re a fan, it\u2019s difficult to follow professional basketball in Europe. It\u2019s easy to follow the NBA, but it\u2019s hard to follow European basketball. The highest level of the EuroLeague is missing some of Europe\u2019s biggest commercial markets. There is no top-level team in the United Kingdom, which is Europe\u2019s largest market. There is no first-tier basketball team there: not in London, not in Manchester. There is no stable top-level team in major leagues in Paris, Berlin or Rome. As a result, they are missing the biggest commercial markets, and that\u2019s why they struggle to commercialize basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1083\" data-end=\"1461\"><strong data-start=\"1083\" data-end=\"1106\">Two teams in Italy:<\/strong><br data-start=\"1106\" data-end=\"1109\" \/>\u201cOur idea is to create this league, with between 12 and 16 teams, where the most important countries will have permanent franchises. We\u2019re talking about the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Italy and France. Two teams in each of these markets, which we know for sure will have franchises, and then we will open the project to the rest of the ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NBA Deputy Commissioner outlines the vision for a new European league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":438091,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[187],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-481096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba","typology-video"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2025\/04\/GohZ3_2WwAAVICv.jpg","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438091"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481096"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=481096"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=481096"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=481096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}