Section 113 S5 E2 - Making The Sausage

But what I've seen a lot of is, well, why do the Blazers even play this game? What's your take?

Well, my take is I think it's a bigger picture view.

I think it's great for the league who's trying to expand to become more global and to open up the opportunity for teams like the London Lions to be able to compete and get on this type of stage.

I think it opens up the NBA to a different pocket of the world, which I think is a good thing.

But more importantly, it gives you a chance to give these younger basketball players or players who may not get a chance to compete on the NBA level to get a taste of that competition.

So I think it's really good.

And it's the time when you can do it.

The preseason, you've got the freedom to be able to schedule those type of games.

So why not? I don't know what how much actual value you get from a game like that.

I only know what Mike Inouye said before the game, which was it's not about the London Lions.

We did a little bit of scouting.

We know what type of defense that they typically go with.

But really it's about us, our approach, our process, and continuing to improve as we move forward in the preseason.

I was talking with someone from the London Lions maybe 15 minutes ago on my way in here.

This is a really, really big deal for them.

Huge.

So you think about this.

Think about if the Timbers – went over and played a british premier league team that would be a huge deal for the timbers it'd be a huge deal for timbers fans there was a watch party over in london watching the trailblazers game uh they were supposed to have our audio up and i think they did for part of it there were some things that cut in and out but this is a really really big deal for those other teams it was the first time ever that a british professional team played against an nba team And as we watch the Blazers go through their thing, they took it very seriously.

And we took our jobs very seriously today.

And that's how you have to approach these things, because to your point, the NBA is a global brand.

Is anybody over on the other side of today's game going to play in the NBA someday? Probably not.

They had Maxwell Lewis, who has played in the NBA.

They've got another young man who is not even NBA draft eligible for a few years.

But when you think about the foreign impact in the NBA...

England, Great Britain are not a huge part of it the same way that France and Spain are.