Thanks for reading my first post here

So it is Sunday evening here in the cold be beautifull Netherlands, normally I would be watching a basketball game with my beloved league pass. As we all know that won't happen anytime soon.

Despite the lock out there was a little bit of NBA for me this week. Last Wednesday Deron Williams and Besiktas came to town to kick kick some local team's ass. Initially I though that would be fun but when I thought about it and looked at everything surrounding the game I came to the conclusion that NBA players coming to Europe is bad for European basketball.

Normally basketball gets the same amount of attention in the media here as the new Steven Segal movie. Now with Williams coming this changed, there were highlights on TV and the arena was sold out. Don't get me wrong even team USA couldn't rival the Dutch national soccer team for attention but basketball mattered for a little bit.

Somehow after the game I got a negative feeling about it. Reading Facebook posts and Twitter messages afterwards got me thinking this can't be all good. Everybody talked about Williams as if the other players on the court didn't matter. For years European basketball has tried to establish it's own identity in basketball. I can't support this with statistics or science but my gut tells me it can't be good. What happens when the lock-out ends and all NBA players have to report back home. What happens to the Deron "Besiktas" WIlliams team? Like I said I can't prove it or predict what will happen but my guess is the lock-out in the long ru will hurt European basketball too.

Let me know what you think.