NEW YORK - The basketball business in Europe is far from living up to its potential, NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum told Reuters, as the league explores launching a new operation in the continent to take advantage of the sport's skyrocketing popularity.

Commissioner Adam Silver said last month that it was looking into launching NBA Europe with world basketball body FIBA as its partner, with the initial plan to have a 16-team league.

The league is intended to harness the explosive popularity of the sport in the continent, where Tatum said basketball is second only to soccer, as well as the deep pool of talent, with roughly 15 percent of all NBA players today from Europe.

"There's an opportunity to continue to accelerate the growth of basketball in Europe and to close the gap between the affinity for the game of basketball and the commercial viability of basketball in that market as well," he told Reuters.

Organizers of the Euroleague, the continent's existing premier club competition, balked at the idea of a new league, however, and said the plans for a new European league amounted to a threat that could fragment the sport.

"Our goal is not to replace the Euroleague. Our goal is to create a commercially viable league that features high quality on-court competition and respects the rich tradition of European basketball. And we think that that will better serve fans and players on the continent," Tatum said.

"We've tried for years to bring all of the relevant stakeholders together and we remain open to doing so."

ALSO READ: NBA keen to tap into deep European talent pool

Tatum pointed to the lack of permanent Euroleague teams in key cities including London, Paris, Berlin and Rome, and said the investment that comes with a new league would help bring sorely needed basketball infrastructure to the region.

"The lack of world-class basketball facilities in Europe is striking relative to the affinity there," Tatum said.

"There are big markets in Europe that aren't being serviced today, where there are millions of basketball fans that aren't being serviced."

NBA talks

The NBA held early-stage talks with owners of Paris St Germain (PSG) and Manchester City among others, along with possible backers of a London-based team, Bloomberg reported.

A spokesperson for PSG owner Qatar Sports Investments said it had been "approached with regards to a basketball franchise in Paris in relation to which we have expressed an interest",

NBA rules would prohibit current team owners from having individual franchises in Europe, Tatum said.

The potential Europe league extends the NBA's longstanding effort toward globalization, a trend that is happening across the North American "Big Four" men's leagues.

Four years ago, the NBA announced the formation of NBA Africa, which co-organizes the Basketball Africa League with FIBA, and Tatum said the league has hosted more than 100 games in Europe.

Nowhere was the sport's growing global appeal more obvious than the Paris Olympic Games, where dozens of NBA athletes could be found on teams from Germany to South Sudan. At the 1992 Games, there were only nine international players from the NBA.

A joint-record 125 international players from 43 countries were named to NBA teams at the start of the 2024-25 season.

"The US accounts for less than 5 percent of the world's population so by definition, our biggest opportunities for growth are going to exist outside the United States," said Tatum.

READ MORE: NBA and European football teams in talks to back new basketball league

"We want to continue to spur the growth of basketball in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, in South America and Latin America and continue to grow the sport here in North America as well."