Four teams, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Phoenix and the Los Angeles Clippers, will open training camps Sunday across Europe and play a total of 10 pre-season games against Euroleague teams from October 5-11.

NBA officials, ever eager to globalize their brand, say the event is an opportunity to build the popularity of the sport at the grassroots level in Europe, more than a first step toward outright expansion of the league.

"Really at the top of our list in this is just growing awareness of the game," said Terry Lyons, NBA vice president of international communications. "When you put it all together at the end of the equation, the important thing is just to try to get people to play the game."

"We've certainly been doing the groundwork as to what might be possible in the future," Lyons said, but he also echoed previous remarks of NBA commissioner David Stern in citing lack of suitable arenas as one stumbling block to locating NBA teams in Europe.

"What the commissioner has stated right from the start is that our main issue is arena infrastructure," Lyons said.

In announcing the Euro Live plans last December, Stern touched on the issue, noting that once the New Jersey Nets complete their expected move to a new home in Brooklyn, scheduled for 2009, "all 30 NBA teams will be playing in buildings that have been built or completely remodeled since 1987.

"It will basically be an entire new building infrastructure, and that is something we take for granted in the US, but it hasn't happened in Europe. It has happened in Asia to a greater extent than it happened in Europe, and I think Europe is now beginning to deal with the issue of arenas that can become entertainment venues ... and I think that they will begin to see how much they can do for a cultural life of a city."

Even isolated regular-season games have little economic appeal in most non-North American markets, with the exception of Japan, which has hosted official NBA games in 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1999 and 2003.

"It is difficult to generate the gate receipts necessary to, in effect, replace a US regular-season game," Stern said in December.

"The only market we have thus far been able to achieve that result in has been Japan."

One thing that Europe does have in abundance is basketball talent, with Stern saying the development of European players "has actually exceeded our hopes."

Germany's Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks, France's Tony Parker in San Antonio, and Spain's Pau Gasol in Memphis are just a few of the Europeans making their presence felt among the 82 players born outside the United States who were on NBA rosters at the close of last season.

The Toronto Raptors made Italy's Andrea Bargnani of Italy the top pick in the 2006 draft. The Raptors have also added veteran power forward Jorge Garbajosa of Spain, who like Bargnani is a tall perimeter threat.

Guard Vasilis Spanoulis of Greece, which ousted the NBA talent-laden US team in the semi-finals of the World Championships in August, will join Chinese superstar Yao Ming in Houston next season.

The increasing contribution of overseas players in the NBA has been hailed by most in and out of the US league as welcome proof that the standard of the game is rising everywhere.

But Turkey's national coach Bogdan Tanjevic complained during the recent World Championships in Japan that the NBA was treating other leagues "like a colony," luring away top talent and leaving a more barren basketball landscape.

"The feedback we've had has been the opposite," Lyons said, using as an example the immense boost Chinese basketball has received from Yao's emergence as an NBA star.

"We find that one player making it to the greatest league in the world can do more than anything for getting kids to take up the game, instead of say going out and kicking a ball." ¡¡¡¡