why do you think the rest of the world isn't getting better at basketball?

[Unbiased_one]

Soccer still gets almost all the top athletes. Thing is there are plenty of big and tall athletes who play soccer but then get phased out because they are too big.

[fpliii]

I'm not sure, but it's worth noting that a nontrivial portion of foreign players in the NBA didn't play with their national teams in this tournament.

[Andrew Wiggins]

they are. it's just that the talent is widely distributed through multiple countries. most countries will produce 1 or 2 nba players per year at most while the usa brings through at least 45-50 per year

[andremiller07]

what about the size of the talent pool of basketball-first countries??

serbia has a population of 7 mil, lithuania 3mil, slovenia 2mil, greece 10mil...

even spain's 50 mil is a fraction of USA's 300 mil population...

now imagine a team that would include all the major balkan basketball nations (greece, serbia, montenegro, slovenia, croatia etc). I think that they would be able to compete against the US team

Still would not have the athletic ability

[Nash]

Imagine if basketball was #1 sport in Africa and they had the American development system. Imagine all the 7-10 tribe people we'd get to see taking over the NBA.

[Rake2204]

I think the rest of the world is getting better but I just do not believe they're coming along as quickly as a lot of people may have wanted us to believe in 2004. I think it was trendy to be a part of the Dream Team from 1992 through 1996. All the best players wanted to participate. But slowly, players were less and less willing to be a part of the circus, particularly when avoiding criticism seemed virtually impossible (win by too many: you're rubbing it in, don't win by a lot: you're not playing as good as you should be).

Anyhow, as most of us know, the absolute best players began dropping out (Shaquille O'Neal was one of the first to part ways with Team USA). By '02 and '04, we had a relative shell of a team who more or less thought they'd be able to run out and win as if they were participating in scrimmages. When they came up short, I think some conclusions were sound (the world is improving) while others were not (USA will now struggle to win from now on).

Even in '96, there was wide spread belief that real deal competition was coming, but just not in the foreseeable future.

The Yugoslavs--particularly Zarko Paspalj, a clever forward who
scored 19 points on 8-for-11 shooting, and hard-nosed point
guard Aleksandar Djordjevic (13 points and six assists)--were
gallant if overmatched opponents for the U.S. Their efforts
should signify that the rest of the world is creeping closer to
the Americans but not at a pace that should cause the U.S. any
immediate worry. "It took a long time for the rest of the world
to catch up to the U.S. college players, but it happened," says
Australian forward Andrew Gaze, who played at Seton Hall. "We'll
catch the American professionals, too. I just don't know if it
will be in my lifetime."

That said, Lenny Wilkens unintentionally almost hit the nail on the head.

Not everyone thinks the current system needs adjustment. Wilkens
believes that as the rest of the world improves and the current
older generation of NBA stars bows out of international
competition, the gap will close quickly. "Look at the players on
this team," he says. "Maybe three or four of them will be back
[in the Olympics] in four years--Grant, Penny, maybe Shaq. Add
to that the fact that players are coming into the NBA at younger
ages, before they've really got all the fundamental skills, and
you're going to have future Dream Teams that probably won't be
as accomplished as the ones that have played in 1992 and '96."
Adds Barkley in assessing the international talent level, "Ain't
no way a college team could beat those guys....I think they're
going to close the gap more and more. Maybe not the next
Olympics, but the one after that, we could be in trouble."

http://www.si.com/vault/1996/08/12/2...t-of-the-world

[Ray22]

what about the size of the talent pool of basketball-first countries??

serbia has a population of 7 mil, lithuania 3mil, slovenia 2mil, greece 10mil...

even spain's 50 mil is a fraction of USA's 300 mil population...

This

they are. it's just that the talent is widely distributed through multiple countries. most countries will produce 1 or 2 nba players per year at most while the usa brings through at least 45-50 per year

and this.

[I<3NBA]

all the good athletes are going to soccer.

and as some have mentioned, the US has a larger talent pool to draw from. i would imagine Euro all-stars vs the US team would be quite a game.

[Random_Guy]

Developmental systems. Other countries can't compete with ours. We rank our kids from very very early childhood. They compete nationally at a very young age, and they compete at a high level almost immediately.

Big schools and the USA program identify them early on and they compete for national rankings.

No one else has anything like this in basketball at the level we do.

Same reason we aren't on a higher level in soccer. We don't have the sort of developmental systems that other nations have.

this is partly true, similar to how soccer is in europe where the biggest club, barcelona, real madrid etc have teams since early childhood to train the most elite talent.

[HurricaneKid]

The international game used to be far more disparate to the NBA game than it is today. It was one of the reasons the NBA finally adopted SOME of the more loosened international defense rules.

Now that the two games are more closely linked with many of the same strategies implemented the US team is going to destroy the opposition. If that gap between the games continues to shrink it will absolutely be to the detriment of competitive balance (for instance if FIBA backs the 3 pt line to the NBA distance or disallows 3 seconds in the lane for defenders).

[BoutPractice]

The easy answer is that it was a weak year, with many teams going without their stars...

But it's more complicated than that.

America's B team was arguably more dominant in 2014 than their A team in 2008. Spain had its best team ever on paper, and lost against a Parker-less, Noah-less France. France, the third best team in terms of NBA talent after Spain and the US, then proceeded to lost against Serbia, a team with no current NBA players. There are no simplistic explanations.

Still, a few factors to take into account to explain the results:

- a very cleverly built team USA: a plethora of sharpshooting guards (Irving, Curry, Thompson) supported by terrifying rebounders (Faried) and shotblockers (Davis) instead of ultra talented, but redundant iso loving, ball dominant swingmen. Previously it would have been all about the Rudy Gays in this group

-the win-or-go-home format, disproportionately rewarding hot and cold streaks from 3 point range

[SpanishACB]

rest of the world needs to catch up in caring and drug use

[Rooster]

what about the size of the talent pool of basketball-first countries??

serbia has a population of 7 mil, lithuania 3mil, slovenia 2mil, greece 10mil...

even spain's 50 mil is a fraction of USA's 300 mil population...

now imagine a team that would include all the major balkan basketball nations (greece, serbia, montenegro, slovenia, croatia etc). I think that they would be able to compete against the US team

Baltimore with 2.6 million produce better basketball players than any of your countries you mentioned.

[Rooster]

rest of the world needs to catch up in caring and drug use

Yes we should eradicate those cartels from Mexico instead of spending time with terrorist.

And USA does not care about massacring all those hopeless Euros and winning it. We won't have any heroes welcome and dinner with the prime minister and King and call Rose 2x world champion.

[DCL]

those 2004 years, dudes were just f--king around, then they started getting serious, treating international competition like the playoffs instead of preseason or an all-star game. the whole attitude changed.