On Tuesday evening, a tight contest was playing out on a brightly lit basketball court in the New Delhi suburb of Greater Noida, with giant posters of Kobe Bryant, Stephen Curry and James Harden overlooking the action. On one half of the court was the Indian senior national team, which is preparing for next month's Asia Cup. On the other half was the home side - the kids of the National Basketball Association (NBA) Elite Academy, set up only a couple of months ago. As expected, the youngsters, the oldest of whom is still two years short of his nineteenth birthday, didn't win.
"We saw how big and tough they were. We gave away many turnovers and they made fast breaks," sums up 17-year-old Preshit Pawar. But the margin of defeat wasn't a disheartening one. "We will get bigger and stronger. Then we will win," says Pawar.
25-year-old Amjyot Singh, one of the stars of the Indian basketball team, doesn't doubt that possibility. "These kids have so much. We just didn't have those opportunities when we were starting out. I'm sometimes a little jealous of them," says the 6'8" forward. The Academy seemingly has everything a young player could want. There are four courts, high-level coaches from the United States, Playstation gaming consoles in dorm rooms, made-to-order meals and an all-day gym. Golden State Warriors All-Star Kevin Durant will be at the Academy on Friday, news the players found out about just a few weeks back. On the second morning of a three-day visit to the country, Durant will come over to Greater Noida and coach the 21 members of the Academy.
Beginning in 2008, when Dominique Wilkins, Sam Perkins, Ronny Turiaf, Kyle Korver, Pat Garrity and Linton Johnson made a first foray into India, as part of the Basketball without Borders program, a steady trickle of stars have made their way from the bright lights of the NBA to the basketball backwaters of India. None of the players, though, have had stardom close to that of Durant, who was voted the Most Valuable Player of this year's NBA Finals.
"It's great that we are getting a star player from the NBA over here but we don't even have a league of our own"
For Amjyot, now a self-confessed Durant fan, the visit is a reminder of all that his generation, among the last to be raised away from the all-pervasive shadow of the NBA, missed out on. Amjyot, despite being the son of a basketball player himself, began playing the game only at the age of 16. He learned the sport, as did nearly every other player from Punjab currently in the national team, from the late Sankaran Subramanian, a legendary, if largely self-taught, coach at the Ludhiana Basketball academy.
"I didn't really have an idea of the NBA until after I started playing the sport seriously. I can't imagine what it would have been like to have met someone like Durant when I was playing," says Amjyot.
"The younger fans cannot understand what it meant to be an NBA fan growing up in the nineties. It was an isolating experience," says Karan Madhok, perhaps the foremost authority on basketball journalism in India. While the NBA is undoubtedly the biggest and best basketball league in the world, it didn't really register for many Indians in the pre-internet era with few, if any, live games on cable TV. "Basketball existed in India outside the metros. There are schools and colleges where basketball is the most popular sport. They can break down a pick and roll as well as anyone else but even here the heroes and role models were mostly local players," says Madhok.
Few youngsters will say that today. Since 2011, the NBA has signed a broadcast deal for games with an Indian sports channel. About 14 live games are broadcast every week on cable TV at 6:30 AM India time. The league says the games and related programming attracted 70 million viewers last season. "When I tweet about matches that early in the morning, I find that I am not the only one anymore. When you see someone on the Delhi Metro wearing a Warriors jersey it isn't as strange anymore," says Madhok.
But the NBA isn't just working its way into the consciousness of Indian ball players. Over the past six years, the league has also worked hard at the grassroots level, spreading awareness and coaching. A Junior NBA program in 2013 incorporated basketball into the curriculum of 250 schools across two cities, reaching out to more than 3.5 million children from the ages of 6-15. Today, the program is available in 19 cities. In 2015, the league also launched ACG-NBA Jump, India's first national basketball talent search, which involved 32 of the country's best players. Palpreet Brar, the winner of the search, was drafted into the NBA's Developmental League, becoming only the second Indian to make it (Satnam Singh Bhamara, himself sent to the USA on a scholarship, was the first). And then there is the Indian national squad, which practices at the NBA Academy itself.
And while NBA India says they work hand in hand with "all stakeholders" for the sport in India, it's hard not to contrast the organisation's approach to running the sport with the Basketball Federation of India (BFI), the governing body of the sport in the country. It was less than a year ago that the conflict between dueling factions in the BFI was settled after a two-year-long dispute. During the intervening period, the growth of basketball in India had stalled. Even the IMG-Reliance group, which signed a 30-year contract with the BFI in 2010, had stopped all activities, including sponsorships, until the office bearers are recognised. That matter is still in mediation.
India still doesn't have a professional basketball league. When a short-term Pro Basketball League, organised by the United Basketball Alliance of India (UBA), was first launched a couple of years ago, the BFI termed it an "unauthorised competition" and banned all of UBA's participants from taking part in official Indian basketball events.
Faced with such impossible odds, India has punched well above its weight in international competition. India shocked Asia's top-ranked team China on their home turf at an International Basketball Federation's (FIBA) Asia event in 2014. Earlier this year, they did it again, and beat other Asian heavyweights to finish seventh in the FIBA Asia Challenge - the country's best international performance in 27 years. Anything above that seems next to impossible. "Forget competing with the NBA. We can't even compare ourselves with Japan," says Amjyot, who competed in the Japanese League last year.
"We are still part-time players over here. It's great that we are getting a star player from the NBA over here but we don't even have a league of our own," says Vishesh Bhriguvanshi, captain of the Indian team.
NBA India's managing director Yannick Colaco isn't enthused about the prospects of running a league. The bottom-to-top approach of running a grassroots programme and increasing the visibility of the sport seems a better bet to him. Bringing Durant to India fits in perfectly with those goals. "There are no short term fixes in building this sport. The key for India is access. One thing that inspires kids to play and get better are role models. And the best basketball players are in the NBA. In the past, access to the NBA wasn't there in India. Getting someone like Kevin Durant over here is essential to growing the game of basketball in India," he says.
While the kids at the NBA Academy say having Durant come and share the court with them is a massive boost, his appearance comes with additional pressure of its own. "There are so many of us (in India) who are passionate about the sport. But you can't say, 'I want to play' and not even have a ball to play with. At the Academy aise ekdum zameen aasmaan ka farak hai (there is a world of difference between the academy and what it's like outside in the real world). There is a responsibility that we feel. There are not many youngsters in India who have the kind of advantages that we do," says Shaurya Kohli, another 17-year-old at the Academy.
"These kids have so much. We just didn't have those opportunities when we were starting out. I'm sometimes a little jealous of them"
It's that drive, the desire to make good of their opportunity, that will push them. Last month, the Academy team went to China, where they competed against NBA Academy teams from China and Australia (there are currently a total of six NBA Academy teams in the world). "At first we were intimidated by them. But ultimately we realised the opportunity the NBA had given us. At first we were scared, then we learned from them. And finally in one game we played with our heart and we beat them. It was a great moment," says Pawar.
Unlike some of his teammates, Pawar isn't completely enamoured with the cult of Durant. Rather, it's two-time NBA all-star Isaiah Thomas of the Boston Celtics, like him a point guard, who is his favourite player. "He was the last pick in the (2011) draft. He is very small (5 foot, 9 inches) for a basketball player. When he started out, not many people took him seriously and no one expected him to do well. But he always believed in himself. And now he is one of the best players in the NBA. I think I can also be like that," says Pawar.
