The NBA announced Tuesday that Amadou Gallo Fall was named the president of the new Basketball Africa League (BAL).
Fall, a graduate if the University of the District of Columbia and a native of Senegal, has been with the NBA since 2010. He will begin immediately in his new role as president while concurrently helping in the hiring and transitioning of a new director of NBA Africa, which was his previous role.
“I am extremely excited about the opportunity. I am grateful for the trust that NBA commissioner Adam Silver and deputy commissioner Mark Tatum have given me to lead this new initiative for the NBA in Africa that is also affiliated with FIBA. We’re looking forward to getting it off the ground. We’re working closely with FIBA to build a compelling property. There is tremendous opportunity to grow the game of basketball in Africa, which is why we opened our office in 2010.
“In the close to 10 years that we’ve been on the ground, we’ve made a lot of progress. We have a robust grassroots infrastructure.”
The BAL will be a professional basketball league that will showcase 12 teams from varying leagues across the continent and is slated to begin play in 2020. Six of the teams will come from the champions of various leagues with the other half of the league to be chosen from FIBA-hosted qualifying tournaments. About 40 games will be played in the BAL season commencing in March 2020 and ending with a title game in May. It is the first league outside of North America that is operated by the NBA.
