Boston Globe June 4th 1997

SAN PEDRO DE MACORIS, Dominican Republic -- On the backlots of the most famous baseball town in Latin America, a subtle revolution has been taken up by poor young men in $100 Nikes.

Shunning the game that turned their modest sugar caning community into a major league feeder system, the men gather on slabs of broken concrete to shoot hoops in the blistering afternoon. Their god is Michael Jordan. Their dreams are shaped by images that flicker into their homes, care of the National Basketball Association.

These are the new disciples of the NBA, and there are millions of them. Its logo already ubiquitous from London to Latvia, the NBA is turning its aggressive global marketing strategy on Latin America, selling the youthful allure of American hip-hop along with the spectacle of professional basketball.

But the league has been so successful that even people making millions wonder whether the region can handle it. In an era of expanding trade, the exploding demand here for sneakers, jerseys and other NBA-related products has raised questions about the impact of American consumerism on countries where a worker's monthly salary is often less than the price of a basketball.

"I don't know exactly where this is going, but I don't feel good about it," said Eliseo Alba, the leading distributor for Nike in the Dominican Republic, a country of 8 million people where the average monthly income is $256. Over the past five years, he said, Nike's shoe sales have risen from 300,000 to 1.2 million pairs a year because of the NBA's popularity.

"Listen, I'm one of the beneficiaries of this, but I know in the long run it's going to damage our country," Alba said. "It's a time bomb. I see poor people who I know are earning about 2,000 or 3,000 pesos a month -- about $200 -- and they're spending that $200 just so they can have the same shoes as Shaq," the Los Angeles Lakers' star Shaquille O'Neal.

In many ways, the phenomenon resembles one that has taken place for years in urban America. "People are being robbed here for their shoes," Alba said.

In his travels throughout the country, he said, he has met poor children who remove their Nikes, then knot the laces around their ankles to avoid having their sneakers stolen while they sleep.

The NBA's success is also part of a global trend in which US companies increasingly are selling American culture and affluence abroad.

"We want the product to be aspirational at its inception," said Rob Levine, a Sharon High School graduate who is managing director of NBA Latin America, Inc., which promotes the league from its Miami office.

Working closely with corporations such as Stoughton-based Reebok and Coca-Cola, the NBA has sought to export the cutting-edge image that enabled it to transform the US sports scene during the 1980s. Its licensed products, Levine said, include $20 NBA T shirts and official team jerseys ranging from $30 to $100.

Even then, the league is unable to keep pace with demand. As official NBA products were hitting the Dominican streets for the first time last month, "pirated" merchandise was appearing all over the country.

Especially popular were replica jerseys with the star's name and number on the back -- not only Jordan's but also those of lesser stars such as the Knicks' Patrick Ewing and Orlando's Anfernee Hardaway.

"If you go out in the street with that shirt, you're a superstar," said Julio Cesar Sanchez, 18, who was wearing the name and number 3 of Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson, the NBA's rookie of the year.

Sanchez said his mother loaned him 500 pesos -- about $36 -- to purchase the jersey in a San Pedro de Macoris department store.

"It's what everybody wants now," he said. "You wear it out in the street. At night, people put them on when they want to look good. They go out to the discos in them."

"I don't have enough merchandise," said Alba, the country's Nike distributor. "It's overwhelming. Whatever Nike could give me I could sell. And it's all because of the effect of the NBA. It's not baseball, it's not tennis, it's the N-B-A. For me, the NBA and Nike are the same thing. There's no difference."

"The NBA is el maximo here right now," said Hugo Lopez Morrobel, the sports editor of Listin Diario, the country's largest daily. "But what I worry about is that with the NBA, with the introduction of all these North American products, this country is losing its identity. We do not have the capacity, the economic capacity to support this publicity and penetration."

Asked whether Latin America's poor could afford the NBA, Levine said that in addition to high-end products, the league plans to market lower-priced merchandise such as trading cards and pencils. In addition, he said, the league, with Reebok as a partner, is helping to rebuild courts and sponsors a skills program that reaches 3 million kids in 40,000 Mexican schools.

"We will have low-priced consumer products that carry our trademarks," he said. "There are a number of ways that we try every day to make the game accessible to everybody."

Meanwhile, the league continues to expand. Before Game 2 of the NBA Finals today, the league plans to announce in Mexico City that the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks will play a regular-season game there next year -- the first non-exhibition contest in Latin America. League officials estimate that 15 million Mexican viewers saw Game 1. During the playoffs, the NBA has dominated regional sports sections and radio talk shows.

The NBA concedes that it will probably never consistently match the popularity of baseball in the Caribbean and soccer in South America. "We're not going to supplant the passion for Boca Juniors," said Levine, referring to the Argentine soccer power. "But if we can be No. 2 behind soccer worldwide, wouldn't that be a good place to be?"

For decades, the Dominican Republic has been the epicenter of Latin American baseball. Dozens of stars, from Cesar Cedeno to the Alou brothers, emerged from the gritty sandlots and several feeder "schools" sponsored by major league teams, including the Red Sox.

In US baseball circles, San Pedro de Macoris came to be known as Shortstop City for producing not just major leaguers such as Rico Carty and Sammy Sosa but also a virtual assembly line of big league infielders, including Tony "Big Head" Fernandez and Alfredo Griffin.

"In this country, the only profession -- the only profession -- where you can become a millionaire, by working, is baseball," said Santiago Cepeda, a San Pedro de Macoris broadcaster.

The sport is so embedded in the culture that fathers simply expect their sons to play, and sons fear telling their fathers that they intend to do anything else.

"One night last week, my phone rang, and it was my son calling," said Cepeda. "He's 10 and he lives with my first wife. He says to me, `Hello, Papi, I need to tell you something.' I said, `OK, what is it?' And he says, `I have to tell you that I've decided. I've decided that I'm going to play basketball, not baseball.'

"He thought I wanted him to play baseball. He was afraid to tell me. I had to tell him, `Son, you can play whatever you want. Make sure you study, but the sport you play is your decision.' "

San Pedro is still a baseball hotbed because the sport is seen as the No. 1 ticket out of poverty and because major league teams furnish money and equipment. But the NBA has made inroads in much the same way that it has throughout Latin America: through the star power of Jordan and the proliferation of cable television.

Most of the population has access to cable, and thus, the NBA's broadcasts on TNT and the ESPN International. The league also has television "partners" in 22 countries -- including the Dominican Republic -- that broadcast NBA games with Spanish-language voice-overs.

"I think Jordan has had a lot to do with the league's success here," said Tito Horford, a 7-foot center from San Pedro de Macoris who became the first Dominican to play in the NBA when he joined the Milwaukee Bucks in 1988, and later tried out for the Celtics.

Horford said he has seen a dramatic change in the country. Basketball courts are suddenly turning up on telephone polls, nailed to trees near the country's majestic beaches. As he sat in the stands before a recent semi-pro game, televised locally from a concrete pavilion in downtown San Pedro, he said, "You watch: This place is going to be packed in a couple hours."

Sure enough, it was. But before the game began, a crowd of about 30 people had gathered around the press table near the basketball floor. At first it was unclear what the people were watching. But standing on tiptoes, peering through the crowd, one could barely make out Game 4 of the NBA's Western Conference finals, Karl Malone barely visible on a fuzzy 13-inch color television.