A Better Option than Mexico City for Expansion

[WildArkieBoy]

Yes, the support in Mexico for futbol(soccer) is extraordiary, but basketball interest in Mexico is tepid at best.  Pushing for NBA expansion into Mexico City seems like a recipe for failure.

I've lived on the border(Brownsville) since 1966.  Our local high schools, with Mexican Nationals enrolled, are always in the hunt for national championships in soccer whereas basketball is secondary at best.

Although travel logistics would probably never work, Manila is a basketball hotbed.  

While the United States is number 1 is basketball interest in the world, the Philippines is number 2.  Canada, by comparison, is number 4.  Mexico is number 65.

Metro Manila has a population of 21,300,000.

I was in the Philippines as recently as 2018 and basketball courts are everywhere and being used for serious competition.  At the Ayala Mall I bumped into a lifesize cardboard cutout of Stephan Curry.  Unlike the United States, NBA game coverage is massive with games typically on several channels.

[SleepingHero]

If Seattle loses their team to Manilla that'd be the biggest twist of 2022/23.

[MrGoat]

No one would want to play for Manila with the travel schedule they would have. They'd be how many thousands of miles away from the nearest team?

[Arioch]

No one would want to play for Manila with the travel schedule they would have. They'd be how many thousands of miles away from the nearest team?

13-hour time difference from Dallas with a ~12-14 hour flight.

I travel to Taiwan/Korea/Japan from Dallas fairly regularly, and there is no way a team could make the trip and still compete at an NBA level without a couple of days to recover from the jet lag (and then the same when they came back). The Manila team would be playing every home game against a team on the equivalent of the 5th game in 7 days.

[dynamicalVoid]

Didnt know basketball was a thing in Mexico...as in popular.  Doesnt seem like a thing to me but I could be wrong.  But I know nothing about Mexico.

Manila?  How?  Seems like Austin would work better than Manila because of logistics.  Actually...I dont see any non-northwestern hemisphere country working with NBA.