Back to domestic diplomacy for the NBA

SACRAMENTO, California—After its lucrative global games, a.k.a. pre-season matches in several world cities including Manila, the NBA is back tackling diplomacy at home.

Outgoing commissioner David Stern, the league’s No. 1 roving “ambassador” is visiting some franchise locations torn by conflict in the past.

Stern, his 30 years as the league’s leader ending in February, will be here next Wednesday for the Sacramento Kings’ opening night against the Denver Nuggets at Sleep Train Arena.

The Sacramento Bee daily newspaper reported that Stern will be in California’s capital city “to celebrate the success of the franchise in terms of ticket sales and sponsorships.”

Under a new ownership led by majority stockholder Vivek Ranadive and includes former NBA center Shaquille O’Neal, the Kings are experiencing a new milestone in the Sacramento metropolitan region.

Die-hard fans, including Filipinos in Sacramento and the adjoining cities of Fairfield, Vacaville, Dixon, Davis, Roseville, Lincoln, Folsom, Placerville and Auburn, can’t wait for the new season to unfold.

Business support appears at an all-time-high, a trend not lost on the city officialdom led by Mayor Kevin Johnson, also a former NBA great himself.

Johnson, who had played a major role in averting a Kings move in the past, now leads an all-out effort to build a new downtown Kings arena that would be ready for occupancy for the 2016-2017 season.

During the Kings’ once turbulent relationship with the city, the team cited the lack of a modern arena to replace its antiquated home in the Natomas neighborhood as the main reason for its wanderlust.

Amid overtures from Anaheim, California, and Seattle, Washington, two major cities without NBA franchises, Johnson had looked far and wide for new investors to keep the team from leaving.

At one point in Johnson’s search, even Filipino business mogul Manny V. Pangilinan was reported to have expressed interest in putting up money in the Kings.

Plans for the new Kings Arena are “really going swimmingly,” Stern told the Sacramento Bee Wednesday. He touted the economic impact of the arena and said the facility would jumpstart an “urban renewal at the center of town.”

Forlorn franchises that are in Stern’s itinerary would also include those in New Orleans, Charlotte, Memphis and Milwaukee.

The commissioner was in Manila recently for an NBA pre-season game between the Houston Rockets and the Indiana Pacers— the first in the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

He called Filipinos “rabid fans in a wonderful way,” before declaring that the Philippines, “a basketball-obsessed country is an ideal host for NBA preseason games.”

Stern said that as the league’s epicenter in Southeast Asia, the Philippines leads the way as the NBA begins “to see activity around Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore.”

What Stern appears to be saying is that the NBA is on autopilot in the region.

In essence, the commissioner says the league would take flight with or without high-paid drum beaters, including a country representative in the Philippines who seems to ignore small-time reporters and chooses to run only with the big boys in media and advertising.