With an increasing number of foreign players making to the top in the professional basketball league, National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner David Stern today said an Indian hoopster could be seen playing in the league in the next five years.
"We already had a woman (Geetu Anna Jose) try out for WNBA and we would expect to have men and women showing up for each of our professional leagues. If you need a specific answer, I would say five years," Stern told reporters here on his maiden visit to India.
"If we get our grassroot programmes going bigger and kids across this country start bouncing the ball rather than kicking it or hitting it with a strange paddle, there will be an enormous influx of very good and talented athletes into our game.
"If you had asked me 20 years ago, I would have said I don't know. Now 85 out of our 400 players are born outside the USA. It depends on individual athlete and how they are going to go about. The one thing we do is to work as close as possible with the Basketball Federation of India through grassroots and other events to make it as easy as possible for elite Indian athletes to spend more time playing basketball," he added.
Stern has been the NBA commissioner for nearly three decades and said India would have to wait for a few years to have its own professional league.
"I think that (professional league in India) is couple of years away at least," he said.
There was speculation about the NBA signing a deal with Mukesh Ambani-owned IMG Reliance to start a pro-basketball league in India.
IMG Reliance has a 30-year partnership with the BFI to develop basketball at every stage, from grassroots to a professional league. The BFI had granted IMG Reliance the commercial rights, including sponsorship, advertising, broadcasting, merchandising, film, video and data, intellectual property, franchising and new league rights.
