The U.S. Embassy, in partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA), the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), and the Ethiopian Basketball Federation, is hosting a two-day basketball clinic for Ethiopian youths from July 29-30, 2017 at the Ras-Hailu Gym in Addis Ababa.

Exhibition games, live streaming in Mandarin and by next year a ‘Chinese-influenced’ team all on the agenda for Aussie’s NBL. [...] It’s all part of a master plan that NBL chief executive Jeremy Loeliger hopes will see the Aussie game take off among China’s army of basketball fans. [...] Loeliger believes there’s huge opportunities for China and Australia to work together; he even aims to have a ‘Chinese’ team in the NBL by next year.

The Worm has returned. On Tuesday, former NBA great Dennis Rodman flew back to North Korea during a time of heightened tensions with Washington, after the rogue state's 16 missile tests so far this year, and its arrest of two more U.S. citizens, bringing the total number of Americans held by the regime to four. It's at least the fourth trip to North Korea for Rodman, who was previously hosted in 2013 and 2014 by Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, a known basketball fanatic.

American and Cameroonian soldiers come from entirely separate parts of the world with distinct cultural differences. [...] a 101st Airborne Division-led unit based in northern Cameroon, built a basketball court with freshly painted lines and hoops weighed down by concrete blocks next to an active runway. They then invited Cameroon service members from the local area for a basketball game to help foster better cohesion.

That could be coming soon with the NHL looking at China as hockey's next great frontier. With the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China is eager to step up its game and the league is intrigued by the potential of a new nontraditional market with 1.4 billion people that might take to hockey like it did basketball. "It's a place that hasn't had that much of an opportunity to be introduced to what everybody acknowledges is a great game,"