The NBA launched a new initiative designed to highlight youth basketball in 2018, as the league held the inaugural Jr. NBA Global Championship. The tournament looked to determine the best 14U team in the world, as 16 American teams and 16 international squads faced off in Orlando. Ultimately the boys and girls teams from the U.S. Central region, both of which were from Kansas, won the whole thing.
On Tuesday, the league announced that the Jr. NBA Global Championship wasn’t a one-time thing, as it is slated to return for a second year. Following the success that the league had with the tournament in 2018, David Krichavsky — the NBA’s Vice President, Head of Youth Development — noted a few ways that the Jr. NBA Global Championship will expand this time around.
Most notably, NBA and WNBA teams and players will have the opportunity to get more involve. The domestic portion of the Global Championship will include local tournaments hosted by teams, with the winning squads earning automatic entry into the regional tournaments that determine the 16 American squads that make it to Orlando for the finals.
“We invited all of our NBA and WNBA teams to host local tournaments that will feed into our regional tournaments, as of this point, 14 NBA teams and three WNBA teams have taken us up on the offer to host a tournament,” Krichavsky told Dime. “What’s really awesome for these teams and players participating is that by winning one of these tournaments hosted by an NBA or a WNBA team, you get an automatic bid, automatic entry into one of our regional tournaments. That’s an exciting connection point, and it really builds on the deep investment and significant programs that all of our teams have in their communities promoting youth basketball and the sport at the grassroots level.”
The 14 NBA teams are Boston, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Golden State, Memphis, Minnesota, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Phoenix, Sacramento, San Antonio, and Washington, while the Lynx, Mercury, and Mystics are joining the festivities from the WNBA.
Naturally, this sort of arrangement isn’t possible for international squads, but the NBA has a plan for that. With the caveat that these announcements are coming in the future, Krichavsky says the league wants to connect international teams with players from their countries. That’s not the only international expansion — last year’s South American region will now include Caribbean countries and get classified as Latin America, while the Asia Pacific region will expand to include Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. (The other six regions are Canada, Mexico, Africa & Middle East, Europe, India, and China.)
To make sure things run smoothly, the NBA tapped into its partnership with USA Basketball to implement on-court standards for the tournament. Teams won’t play more than two games in a day, coaches will have to be certified by USA Basketball, and standards the organization established last year will be used. Additionally, the NBA will use USA Basketball’s already existing tournaments to give youngsters another path to try and qualify.
“In addition to the NBA and WNBA team hosted tournaments that are taking place at the local level, we’re also gonna be accrediting a select number of third-party tournaments,” Krichavsky said. “These are existing youth basketball tournaments that are taking place around the country that, similar to our teams, agree to adhere to our standards, USA Basketball will accredit those events and the winning boys and girls teams to those events will, again, receive an automatic bid to our regional tournament.”
It’s a major undertaking, which makes the fact that it’ll take months to determine a champion understandable. Local tournaments will kick off in January, region tournaments for domestic and international squads go from the start of spring to June, and from Aug. 6-11, the 16 best boys and girls teams from both the domestic and international pools will head to Orlando.
Beyond basketball, the tournament looks to help kids off the court. Krichavsky saying players who were involved in one way or another last year were impressed with how the tournament thought the Jr. NBA Global Championship “felt different,” commenting frequently on how there was an emphasis on making sure the children were taught things like the importance of living a healthy lifestyle and how to make good decisions on social media.
“We believe that it’s incredibly important in terms of creating a better model for how the sport should be played at the grassroots level, which is what we’ve set out to do and what we’ve begun to accomplish through this first year,” Krichavsky said. “We’re really focused on giving kids the opportunity to play at the highest level, but the focus is not just about achievement on the court, but also developing as individual off the court with a focus on life skills and player health and wellness. We see a great opportunity for this event and expect it to continue to grow in the years ahead.”
