Kendrick Perkins accidentally exposed the NBA’s biggest problem during ESPN’s ‘First Take’

Kendrick Perkins said the quiet part out loud during ESPN First Take on Wednesday.

The NBA analyst was discussing Victor Wembanyama after the San Antonio Spurs star once again reminded everyone that he is not a normal human (don’t call him an alien unless you want to). Stan Van Gundy will scold you).

The 2023 No. 1 forward had 27 points, 17 rebounds, 5 assists and 3 blocks to lead the Spurs to a Game 5 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves 126-97 on Tuesday night. The win moved San Antonio one win away from a trip to the Western Conference Finals.

Wembanyama is 6 feet tall, handles like a guard, shoots threes and blocks shots. He already looks like the best two-way player in the league. It’s unlike anything basketball fans have ever seen; He is arguably a better Giannis Antetokounmpo than Giannis Antetokounmpo.

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This led to Perkins having some problems. truly terrible sightings in the pastto come to an interesting conclusion.

The NBA belongs to international players.

“I thought American basketball was starting to pick up,” Perkins said. He argued that Antetokounmpo’s injury issues and Nikola Jokic’s slight decline this season (per Kins) provide an opportunity for the Americans to return to the spotlight against a pair of outsiders who have dominated the league in recent years.

Then came Wembanyama.

“Then all of a sudden Wemby came along at the end of this season and especially last night and showed us that no, it still belongs to the international players,” said Perkins. “International players have completely taken over our league.”

It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Perkins, but this is one of those times. But he couldn’t go far enough. He inadvertently identified one of the NBA’s biggest problems.

Perkins continued by praising the recent MVP winners: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, Jokic again, Jokic AgainGiannis Antetokounmpo and Giannis Antetokounmpo again. An American-born player hasn’t won the league’s MVP award since 2018 (James Harden). That seems unlikely to happen this season either, with SGA being the overwhelming favorite to claim the award for the second consecutive season.

The ESPN analyst later added that Wembanyama will be the best player on the field “on both ends” over the next decade and is likely to add his name to the list of foreign-born MVPs in the near future.

Again, he’s probably right.

And that’s a problem for the NBA in America.

ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins said international players have “completely taken over” the NBA, arguing that Americans have no hope of reclaiming the league’s top spot in the next decade. (Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)

It’s not because international players are bad. Quite the opposite. They added a ton of talent to the league and basketball in general. including college basketball. This is a great thing for the NBA worldwide. But that’s not good for the domestic league (though foreign money is filling up the bank account, so the league might not even care).

Americans love to support Americans. This isn’t complicated at all, although people in sports media aren’t that complicated. I like to pretend.

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Look at hockey. For decades, hockey has struggled to attract the average American sports fan because it has never felt like an American sport. It was dominated by Canadians, Russians, Swedes, Finns and Czechs. Great players. It’s a great sport. But for many casual American fans, it didn’t feel like ours.

Then Team USA beat Canada for the Olympic gold medal, and suddenly the whole conversation changed. Matthew Tkachuk, Jack Hughes, Connor Hellebuyck and other American stars not only won. They also made Americans feel that hockey belonged to them.

This is important.

The NHL didn’t fundamentally change overnight. The rules haven’t changed. The ice wasn’t any bigger. Tracking the disc wasn’t easy at all. But the sport took on a different feel when Americans saw American stars beat Canada at its own game. And TV ratings showed that the Olympics increased America’s interest in the NHL.

The NBA is dealing with the opposite problem.

For years, the NBA had a very easy domestic marketing formula: sell American greatness.

Magic Johnson. Larry Bird. Michael Jordan Shaquille O’Neal. Kobe Bryant. LeBron James. Steph Curry. Kevin Durant. Dwyane Wade. Charles Barkley. Allen Iverson.

Yes, there were international stars in the league and some of them were great players. But the face of the league was almost always American. More specifically, the NBA’s cultural power has been built largely through the superstardom of black Americans.

LeBron James has been the face of the NBA for more than 20 years, but that run is about to end. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

So one of the laziest narratives in basketball has always been that the NBA or the NBA media secretly wants more European stars because some of them are white.

This is clearly false and is not supported by any evidence.

Do people really think that American fans prefer Nikola Jokic over LeBron James, Steph Curry, Kobe Bryant, Allen Iverson or Anthony Edwards because he is white? Come on. This is easy to refute because when Jokic’s Nuggets won the NBA Finals in 2023, it was one of the lowest-rated franchises ever (excluding COVID-impacted years). While Curry’s Warriors dominated the league, the NBA Finals were watched by an average of nearly 20 million viewers.

Additionally, some of the best international players in the league are not white. Wembanyama is black. Giannis is Black. Embiid is black. Shai is black. This is not a “white European” takeover. This is an international takeover.

Second, American fans have always connected more with American stars, regardless of race. Black American NBA stars (in fact, all elite black athletes) have been among the most famous, popular, and marketable athletes in this country’s history. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods are two of the most well-known names in American pop culture.

The issue is not race.

The problem is connectivity.

Wembanyama, Jokic, Luka Doncic and Giannis are incredible athletes.

But they don’t feel like American sports heroes. Because they’re not.

This might bother some people. It shouldn’t be. It’s just the truth.

Greek-born Giannis Antetokounmpo has won two NBA MVP awards, and no American-born player has won the award since 2018. (Chris Gardner/Getty Images)

Sports fandom is tribal. Regional. It is national. Very emotional. In the US, fans are still looking for a reason to feel like the league belongs to them.

Perkins put it in one sentence: “our league.”

He didn’t say “league”. “It’s our league,” he said.

For many American basketball fans, the NBA increasingly doesn’t feel like “our league” at the top. It appears to be a global league that plays most of its matches in the United States.

Maybe the NBA is okay with this. Maybe Adam Silver and league executives look at international growth, global merchandise sales and streaming numbers and shrug their shoulders. Perhaps they believe losing some of the allegiance to American culture is worth gaining a larger footprint around the world.

It’s a business decision.

But don’t act confused when the average American sports fan doesn’t feel the same loyalty to a league where top player conversations are dominated by a Serbian, a Slovenian, a Greek-Nigerian, a Frenchman, a Cameroonian and a Canadian.

As good as they are, they are not American-born.

And this is important in the United States.

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“We have no hope of taking over our league,” he said. “We have no hope of getting our league back for at least the next 10 years.”

That’s a crazy thing to hear from an ESPN NBA analyst.

This is also true.

Wembanyama is not the NBA’s problem. From a gameplay and skill standpoint, it could be the future of basketball.

But if the future face of the NBA isn’t an American star, then the league needs to accept the consequences.

Global relevance may increase.

There may be no American emotional investment.

And for a league founded in America, that’s a bigger problem than many are willing to admit.