NBA Commissioner Adam Silver Solidifies Commitment to Youth Sports Business by Establishing Jr. NBA World Championships

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has taken an interest in getting the NBA involved in grass roots basketball, which is set to mirror the Little League World Series.

The league will sponsor a Jr. NBA World Championship, which will take place in August at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex at Orlando’s Walt Disney World Resort. The event is a basketball competition that will feature the top boys and girls players, ages 14 and under, from across the globe.

The competition will be broken down into boys and girls divisions, each of which will be made up of 16 teams– eight from the United States and eight international teams– that advance through preceding regional competition.

Round robin competition, followed by single-elimination games, will determine the champions.

“I think what we were focused on was developing a new model for this kind of basketball events,” Kathy Behrens, the NBA’s president of social responsibility and players programs, said. “As you know, we worked with USA Basketball over the course of the last 18 months to develop a set or standards and guidelines for youth basketball and so this tournament represents in a way nothing else that we’ve done before does.”