“The NBL is the second best league in the world”

It’s a comment we’ve heard from numerous Australian basketball personalities, most employed by the NBL, but is it really?

It’s a hard statement to measure, especially when you have to consider things like style of play, player salaries, local talent, and rules related to import talent which all differ from country to country and are often difficult to find.

Then does the term “second best” apply to the talent within the league? The on-court product and presentation? The money it generates via major sponsors? The second best could apply to a lot of different things. It’s really a subjective statement. But when it comes to the actual talent of each country’s national league, what would be the best way to measure it, and where would Australia sit?

Albeit there is no exact way to measure this, we’ve taken on the challenge to do so. While the leagues that pay the most money aren’t necessarily the best competition, otherwise China would be a much stronger league.

While FIBA rankings give a good indicator as to the talent within a country, when many players compete in overseas leagues, the rankings of the country in international competitions don’t directly correlate with the strength of its national league. Australia is a great example of this, where only three players from our last Boomers squad to compete in a major FIBA tournament currently play in the NBL, but as a nation, we rank 3rd in the world.

To answer this question, we started with the following beliefs.

• A top-ranking basketball league would generally correlate with a country that does well in FIBA competition. Therefore, it’s fair to assume that a country which has the best national league would be at least competitive in FIBA competition, so we reviewed the national leagues from the countries ranked in the top 15 of FIBA rankings.
• Outside of America, which is home to the clear number one league in the world, the majority of the best basketball players in the world play for their national team. Where the best basketballers in the world who aren’t in the NBA play would correlate to the strength of that national league.

Below is a list showing where each player who plays for a country ranked in FIBA’s top 15 played during the 2022/23 season.

Note: Based on the national team’s roster for their last major FIBA tournament ie. Olympics (2021) or Eurobasket (2022) / Americup (2022).

While the USA is a clear number one, which we all know, this method also shows Spain as a clear number two in terms of national leagues—another well-known fact among basketball fans.

From here, the gap is much smaller, and according to these numbers, we see Germany, Italy and France round out the top five, which seems fairly accurate. These leagues have a great mix of talent from both their local talent and outside countries. The importance of this is that these leagues not only retain their countries’ best talent but lure the top talent in the world from other countries to play in their league.

Germany, for example, not only have eight of their national team players playing in their country’s national league but have also managed to lure players from Serbia, Croatia, Brazil and Canada’s national teams to play in their league.

Another indicator these rankings are fairly accurate is that the only players from Germany’s national team that chose not to play in the national league of their home country are playing in Italy, France or the NBA. Only countries ranked in the top five national leagues by this method, which makes sense. Most basketball players wouldn’t choose to play away from their home country unless it were to play in a better league (NBA) or close to an equal league with better pay (Italy and France).

In comparison, Australia doesn’t manage to retain a lot of our national league players, even those who aren’t playing in the NBA. Nicholas Kay (Japan), Duop Reath (Lebanon), and Dante Exum (Spain) are all playing elsewhere. We have as many players on the national team choosing to play in NBL as we do choose not to play in the NBL. If we were the second-best league, retaining more players than we lose would be expected. After all, it’s what the countries ranked in the top five generally do.

Another data point to look at is players from countries ranked in FIBA’s top 15 must be among the world’s best, but where do they play if they represent countries with weak leagues due to that country’s financial position or geographic location, like Canada and Argentina? Where does a top-tier player go when their national league isn’t good enough?

55% of Argentina’s national team currently play in the Spanish national league. 27% chose to play in Lithuania or Serbia. Canada’s players who aren’t playing in the NBA chose to play in Germany and Montenegro.

If Australia was even a top-five national league, should we be able to entice some of the Argentinians or Canadians to play here? Even when players, where it isn’t reasonable for them to play in their home countries’ national league, aren’t generally deciding to play here.

While Australia sits 13th on this list, the difference between Australia and the sixth-best league is a mere five national team players. Beyond the top five leagues, which seem fair to say are the best five leagues in the world, the data becomes too small to predict accurately where these teams rank exactly on the list. It’s fair to say Australia would sit somewhere between the 6-12 in terms of national league rankings, with unranked countries like Turkey, Japan and Israel surely to sit among the top 15 leagues in the world also (considering Canada and Argentina would not be in there).

While Australia’s national league is rapidly becoming one of the best in the world, and if we consider all factors, ie. Player Salaries, Climate, English Speaking, Lifestyle, NBA Exposure, Total Games/Season Length, etc. it would be fair to say the NBL is among the top two leagues in the world.

But in terms of talent, we’ve still got a ways to go.