One hundred thirty years ago, the first basketball game played outside North America was held in Paris, France, the first step in a global movement recently celebrated with World Basketball Day—one that Philadelphia now has a unique tie into thanks to its very own Batman, the 76ers’ French swingman Nicolas Batum.
Even though baseball is the dominant sport in Taiwan and its neighbors, basketball offers up interesting lessons in how sports diplomacy can be used to promote greater gender equality.
That’s a bit of a provocative question, but one that lent itself well to a workshop I co-directed with Dr. J Simon Rofe last week at the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy, SOAS University of London.
Hello there, and welcome! I’m glad you stopped by.
This space is designed as a general catch-all for my ideas and what inspires me across the international sports-, history-, and communications worlds.
Why focus on these three “hats”? Many people silo these off into individual industries. But in fact, from my professional experiences as well as what I’ve learned in the field, today’s sports, communications, and history worlds are in fact intricately intertwined.
I learned more on women's football at the Upfront and Onside #HiddenHistory conference in 48-hours than you can possibly imagine. And I'm struck by many similarities and differences to both the men’s game as well as other global sports like basketball. Here are a few key take-always as I continue to process the vast quantities of information and ideals downloaded:
Instead of suffering the post-Olympics blues, I’ve been crazily inundated with global sports. From the second window of FIBA World Cup qualifiers, where France secured their berth in the next round of playoff competition, to the start of the She Believes Cup, it’s been a big week, one that’s not yet over! Sunday Les Bleues play the USWNT here in the New York area, conveniently setting my mood to finish a paper I’m giving next week—more on that soon. But before I dial back into women’s football, I’m eyeing the West Coast Conference in Las Vegas today and its 2018 Hall of Honor inductees, including one French basketteur, Ronny Turiaf (congrats!).
The annual extravaganza kicks-off tonight with the Rising Stars Challenge where New York Knicks’ Frank Ntilikina will make his debut with Team World. It’s yet another ‘first’ for the 19-year old rookie Frenchman, who is starting to settle in to the league—helped possibly by the echoes of French in the locker room (teammates Joakim Noah and Emmanuel Mudiay are both fluent). Like generations of other ‘Frenchies’ in the NBA (who have similarly arrived more or less fluent in English), Ntilikina still has an aura of starry-eyed optimism surrounding his desire to succeed.
As you’re getting ready for today’s Super Bowl spectacle, it’s a good time to recall that #EverythingHasAHistory. Including American football which, as Ben Halls at VICE Sports reminds us, is a much closer cousin to rugby than many Americans likely realize. In fact, the changes that occurred as American football developed in the late nineteenth century leads to one of the earliest, surprising, and fascinating stories of transatlantic influences in French sport.
Women from North and South Korea will compete together as a unified ice hockey team at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games, the latest example of sport’s power to unite. It’s a triumph for sports diplomacy, an illustration of how people can learn and better understand each other despite divisions through people-to-people interactions. And while everyone will be watching the team, for many other elite athletes, sports bridges cultures on a daily basis.
