International NBA Playoffs Coverage

Basketball is an international sport, arguably one of the most widely played sport in the world and growing all the time. Media coverage of the National Basketball Association continues to grow, especially during the playoffs.

This report is just a sample of how different newspapers from different countries have covered the NBA Playoffs.

France

France is the birthplace of several notable players in this spring’s NBA postseason, including Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, Joakim Noah and Washington’s  Kevin Seraphin but the extent of its NBA coverage varies from paper to paper. When I first checked Le Monde, one of France’s more popular newspapers, on May 9, the most recent NBA item was a four-day old story on Stephen Curry being named MVP and the second-most recent story was a six-day old recap of Parker and the San Antonio Spurs being eliminated from the playoffs. Since then all of the paper’s NBA coverage has been standard  recaps of the various playoff games, with the notable exception of a May 28 story on the rapper Lil B’s “curses” placed on various NBA players.

The newspaper L’Equipe, on the other hand, covered the NBA much more extensively, not surprising for a newspaper whose name literally translates to “sport.” During the first 10 days of May, L’Equipe featured a column on the resurgence of Derrick Rose, a profile of Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers and an item on Chicago Bulls guard/forward Jimmy Butler being named the league’s Most Improved Player. During the past two weeks, topics have included Stephen Curry’s daughter stealing the show at her father’s postgame press conference after Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals (complete with video and tweets from players and media), a story on the NBA draft lottery, including the full list of the draft lottery and a piece about the Orlando Magic hiring Scott Skiles as their coach. The recaps are still fairly basic but unlike Le Monde, they include video highlights.

Great Britain

Over on the other side of the English Channel, The Guardian has provided fairly extensive NBA coverage, with articles on a controversial in-game video the Cleveland Cavaliers recently retracted, a profile of Clippers guard Austin Rivers, Stephen Curry winning the MVP award and an interview with Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green.   The Daily Mail and the Guardian have made a heavy push for the international market, setting up separate editions in both the U.S. and Australia and many of its writers on American sports are American. If you view the site in its UK edition, the NBA is listed much less prominently under the category of “U.S. sports” instead of receiving its own section as it does on the U.S. version of the website and the focus is much more on “football”.

The Independent, a centrist newspaper, has very muted NBA coverage. As with the British edition of the Guardian, the NBA is listed as a subsection under “U.S. Sports.” But when I visited the site on May 10, a day after two prominent playoff games, the U.S. sports section was placed far down the main sports page with most of the headlines reserved for soccer and none of the top U.S. sports stories listed were NBA related.

The top NBA story on the U.S. sports page was an item from April 18 about a mascot stunt from the first-round series between Portland and Memphis. The second NBA story listed was a profile of Portland point guard Damian Lillard, whose team was eliminated weeks ago.  The subhead made sure to reference one of the few British NBA players, longtime bench player Joel Freeland. Since then, the only other notable NBA story they’ve run was about LeBron James urging Cleveland residents to support the Cavaliers and remain calm in the wake of police officer Michael Brelo’s acquittal on charges of voluntary manslaughter.

Italy

Interestingly enough, the Italian sports-oriented newspaper La Gazzetta Dello Sport actually has separate sections for “Basketball”, focusing on the sport’s Italian league and “NBA. ”   Certainly  a sign both of the sport’s  popularity in Italy compared to the U.K. as well as greater interest in the NBA itself. The first thing most readers notice on the paper’s NBA page is the detailed scoreboard showing every single playoff game for the day, as well as a live blog of the game currently in progress with links to highlights from the game. The day I first visited, the site also featured highlights from various other recent games, several detailed articles and a video comparing Derrick Rose’s game-winning shot in Game 3 to Michael Jordan’s legendary shot against Cleveland in the 1989 playoffs.

 Israel

Haaretz-the spotlight on the sports section this Israeli site is firmly on the NBA for one reason only: David Blatt. The Cleveland Cavaliers’ coach is U.S.-born but has coached in Israel, lived in the country for many years before the Cavs hired him.  Blatt’s family still lives in Israel.

So while Haaretz doesn’t seem to have  many stories on the rest of the NBA playoffs, focusing instead on soccer, one of the most frequent  sports stories on the site for the month of May was on  Blatt and his  popularity in Israel:  “Our Man in Cleveland” with links right under the headline to two other stories on Blatt from the course of the season and a link to a poll asking readers whether the Cavs would make the NBA Finals.

Australia

Sydney Morning Herald-this paper’s NBA coverage has actually been fairly extensive, largely because of the presence of Australian players on two of the league’s biggest playoff contenders. While the paper’s basketball page does have a couple stories on the country’s own league, most of the headlines as of May 27 focused on Andrew Bogut of Golden State and popular and controversial Cleveland shooting guard Matthew Dellavedova. Article subjects include Dellavedova inspiring a rap song, recaps of each conference finals game, Dwight Howard avoiding suspension for elbowing Bogut and the controversy Dellavedova has attracted for his physical playing style. The Herald also has a Twitter feed mostly filled with NBA-related tweets and a poll on who will win the title.

China

Xinhua-curiously, despite China’s reputation as one of the NBA’s fastest-growing foreign markets, this year’s Chinese media coverage of the NBA playoffs doesn’t appear all that extensive. The People’s Daily, one of China’s largest newspapers, doesn’t have any headlines about the NBA playoffs in its sports section.  Its one tangentially NBA-related story is actually about Stephon Marbury, a veteran of both the NBA and China’s own professional league, being named a “Beijing Environment Protection Ambassador” by the Chinese government.

Xinhua, China’s official press agency, has given the NBA postseason slightly more attention. The basketball page of its sports section includes short recaps of each playoff game, as well as items on NBA awards and coaches being fired.  This page  lists  links to each story, but  without  pictures or photo galleries, video, social media or any content beyond AP-style recaps.

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Alex Holt is a 2014 graduate of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s Masters program. He lives in Baltimore.