Tonight the NBA comes to London with the O2 Arena hosting an exhibition match between the Chicago Bulls and Utah Jazz.

Amongst those taking part is British basketball star Luol Deng, who has admitted he is relishing the opportunity to play on home soil. The 24-year-old started his basketball career in Brixton as a nine year old before moving to America to play high school basketball and being drafted in by the Chicago Bulls.

While returning to your home town having become a star overseas may be a fairy story for some, the opportunities for the further development of British basketball stars are improving, and young talent won’t have to move abroad to gain access to top quality coaching while studying.

Last week English Basketball celebrated the launch of the Advanced Apprenticeship in Sporting Excellence (AASE) for Basketball following a year long trial. The AASE programme combines high calibre coaching for top athletes while they continue their education, meaning that those who don’t manage to make the grade at the highest level still have qualifications to fall back on.

Back in February we visited one of the pilot projects at Southend College, as part of our filming for the AASE celebration events, and as we recently mentioned they have also hosted cameras for the Extra Time programme on Sky Sports. The show provides a good background to the growth of basketball in this country, and how AASE will help our young athletes further. You can view the programme below:

If you want to find out more about AASE, check out the pages over on our website: www.skillsactive.com/AASE

Back in February we visited Southend to see the AASE Basketball apprentices in action at a training camp and get some footage for the Advanced Apprenticeship in Sporting Excellence Video that we produced for National Apprenticeships Week. Now the AASE basketballers will be basking in the limelight of even more coverage, this time on Sky Sports.

The Extra Time programme visited Southend in June to take in a GB U20 warm up match for July’s U20 European Championships, covering a local school sports basketball competition coached and refereed by AASE players prior to the international game, as well as capturing exclusive interviews with the GB Team’s U20 coach Tim Lewis, and AASE coordinator for Essex Ian Mollard.

You can see the programme on Sky Sports 1 on Monday 17 August at 5pm, with repeats at 7pm on Sky Sports 3 later that day and 1pm (SS3) and 2.30pm (SS2) on Tuesday 18 August. We’ve had a sneak preview, and it is a fantastic feature on the AASE programme and how it is benefiting British Basketball, so watch out for it. If you do miss it, we hope to be able to bring you the footage here on the SkillsActive blog afterwards.

You can see some of the AASE basketball players in action and interviewed in February’s video below, around the 3:50 mark: