Dec 27, 2007, 18:21 GMT
Los Angeles - For NBA commissioner David Stern, 2007 was both a dream realized and a nightmare come to life.
Stern's stewardship of the NBA dates to 1984, several months before star player LeBron James was born. His goal of taking the league global has morphed from laughable to lauded, with the next frontier the vastly untapped market of China.
While basking in the unprecedented glow of European players holding the MVP awards for both the regular season and NBA Finals, however, Stern was sideswiped by an FBI investigation that referee Tim Donaghy - one of the NBA's better officials - had been betting on games, severely threatening the integrity of the league.
Donaghy was arrested and labeled a 'rogue' by Stern, who later ordered an investigation of all referees - and found that many of them like to gamble now and again, although none was found to have bet on basketball.
It remains to be seen whether the competition has been compromised in the eyes of the fan. Stern has presided through a handful of conspiracy theories - some alleging whether referees were carrying out the league's bidding - but none with the teeth of a government probe.
'My reaction was, I can't believe it's happening to us,' Stern said this summer.
Having held All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas earlier in the year - opening the very real possibility of the gambling mecca eventually hosting an NBA team - Stern loosened the restrictions on what referees could do with their disposable income and hired former referee Bernie Fryer for oversight and development of current officials.
The games couldn't start soon enough, and the players returned to the court for exhibition contests in England, Spain, Turkey, Italy and China, where the league has opened a new department that will try to grow the NBA in a basketball-crazed country of 1.3 billion people.
Over 200 million of those people awoke in the wee hours to watch multiple live broadcasts of a November game between superstar Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets and rookie sensation Yi Jianlian of the Milwaukee Bucks.
It served as an extension of the NBA's global reach, which already has thoroughly impacted Europe and South America.
The 2007-08 season began with 74 international players on NBA rosters, or roughly one-sixth of the league. That means if your favorite team doesn't have an inernational in its starting lineup, he's probably the first guy off the bench - like Sixth Man Award winner Leandro Barbosa, the 'Brazilian Blur' who plays for the Phoenix Suns.
The Toronto Raptors put together a roster of internationals players and ended a five-year playoff drought with their first division title.
James and the Cleveland Cavaliers reached the Finals for the first time but would not have done so without the contributions of Lithuanian Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Serbian Sasha Pavlovic and Brazilian Anderson Varejao.
The regular season belonged to Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks. Led by the German juggernaut, the Mavericks shook off an 0-4 start to win an astonishing 67 games, matching the sixth-most in NBA history.
Nowitzki became the first European to win the MVP. But by the time he received the award, the Mavericks were out of the playoffs, the victims of a stunning first-round upset by the Golden State Warriors.
'It's still a little hard for me to be happy because of the way this season ended,' Nowitzki said upon receiving the award. 'But this is an award for the regular season. That's how I've got to look at it and be proud.'
With the Mavericks out of the way, that made the path to the title a bit easier for the San Antonio Spurs, who had six international players from five different countries on their roster, including superstar Tim Duncan and Argentina's Manu Ginobili.
But emerging from their shadow was Tony Parker, the 'French Flash' of a point guard who sped unimpeded through the defence of the Cavaliers, leading the Spurs to a four-game sweep and their fourth championship in nine years.
'European basketball is improving every year,' Parker said after the clincher. 'You've got Dirk Nowitzki the MVP for the first time and now the MVP Finals. There's going to be more.'
The NBA championship wasn't enough for Parker, who - after marrying actress Eva Longoria - played in Eurobasket 2007. He and Nowitzki made the all-tournament team but saw their countries bounced in the quarterfinals.
The tournament MVP Andrei Kirilenko of the Utah Jazz, who led Russia to a 60-59 victory over 2006 world champions Spain in the gold medal game and a berth in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
Stern and the rest of the basketball world will be there, continuing the globalization of the game.
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