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

[outbreak]

Population, money invested and interest in the sport. Basketball isn't exactly the most popular sport world wide and in some countries that play it abit but don't follow the nba its totally different and alot more basic. Alot of athletically gifted people may like basketball but find that local sports are a better for for them. For instance here in Australia cricket is generally second to Australiab football (changing abit with ipl salaries) and so some players who prefer cricket stick to football as there's more chance to succeed. Hell patty mills only got into our sports institue because a better player pulled out to play football instead

[stanlove1111]

Steve Nash was relatively unathletic and he would light you up.

Of course you are talking about the exception and not the rule...

Some guys can play well without being ridiculously athletic but its not the norm..

[bdreason]

Basketball has to be the #1 recreational sport in the U.S., and we have over 300m people. You can't go 2 blocks without finding a hoop, and lots of kids here grow up with hoop dreams. I'm just a skinny white boy from the suburbs and my dream growing up was to be an NBA player.

[swagga]

Besides the rare exceptional foreign born basketball player, the game is still dominated by Americans. The world isn't better now than they were 20+ years ago. There was still rare exceptional talent from other countries, ex: Sabonis, Petrovic, Kukoc, etc People are confusing some one game elimination losses in 2002, 2004, and 2006 as some regression in basketball ability, and the world getting much better. The truth is we simply were coasting, and stopped trying. Now we're rolling out back up squads and sodomizing the competition again just a few years later and people are now crying the world sucks at basketball again? Um, ok. More like some fluke embarrassing losses woke a sleeping giant to get re-motivated.

1.
strongly disagree, also in 2002 there was no one game elimination loss but 3 losses to yugoslavia, spain and argentina, on home soil nonetheless.

2.
in case you didn't see usa-turkey or usa-lithuania we won big in the 2nd half because these countries can't field an entire decent roster and when their important players get in foul trouble or get tired they simply can't replace production(like we did with cousins/gay). Furthermore these countries are either too small in population or invest too little(soccer takes 90%+ of all sport cash) to produce a constant stream of talent, so they go as the generations go (argentina, greece are good examples)

usa played iso ball all the way... you think against a decent roster the iso pullups and second chances are the way to go?

for example france + spain have 1/3 of usa's population and they can roll the following squad:
parker/rubio/calderon
navarro/lull/fournier
batum/fernandez/
gasol/ibaka/diaw
noah/gasol/gobert
do you think we still would of won if we went up against that squad? With the way we played I'd say it would be easy to consider us as second favorites.

imo basketball is still in its infancy in europe. I've seen it first hand since I have been living here since the late 90s. If you think euros are all white stiffs you better come to berlin/paris/rome to see large populations of athletic africans that only play soccer because that is like 95% of sport in europe and all the money is in soccer. Immigration is huge in europe, I'm not sure the average american really understands the magnitude.

3.
for the people saying in soccer you only get basketball midgets what you fail to understand is that the decently sized people (6'5+) still try to play it when they are children as it's the only thing that's seriously organized and nobody knows how much they're going to grow. They usually can't make it big in the pros in soccer because the agility&skill focus favors smaller players. But instead of picking up basketball at 7-8 years they pick it up at 16-17-18. That's an enourmous loss in development.
So it's an indirect but huge loss caused by the soccer monopoly on the sporting life.

[MiseryCityTexas]

Donatas Motiejunas overrated as shit, and to think; We got rid of Thomas Robinson and Greg Smith in favor of this guy.

[swagga]

Donatas Motiejunas overrated as shit, and to think; We got rid of Thomas Robinson and Greg Smith in favor of this guy.

imo if there ever was a chuker GM that would be morey. He has the same fans and the same (deserved) detractors. Morey is the type of guy that will keep a 45-50 win team and will never ring because he simply doesn't understand that a team is more than its pieces.

[swagga]

Of course you are talking about the exception and not the rule...

Some guys can play well without being ridiculously athletic but its not the norm..

tbh athleticism in the american meaning (jump high, be fast, be strong) is extremely overrated in basketball. Besides size the truely important physical aspects in basketball are length, mobility and lateral quickness.

For every freak athlete superstar like kobe,lebron,shaq,jordan, dr j or wilt there is a duncan, bird, magic, nowitzki, stockton or older kareem.
For every freak athlete role player like tony allen or a. bradley there is a bowen or a battier.

[Sportal]

It really is entirely due to the systems these players go through.

World basketball is progressing just slowly.

The USA basketball system I would compare to something like the Barcelona/Real Madrid soccer academies. Players like Messi, Iniesta, Xavi, Jese etc come out of these places.

USA has the top HS teams, the top college teams and certainly, the best basketball teams/facilities in the world for basketball.

[La Frescobaldi]

tbh athleticism in the american meaning (jump high, be fast, be strong) is extremely overrated in basketball. Besides size the truely important physical aspects in basketball are length, mobility and lateral quickness.

For every freak athlete superstar like kobe,lebron,shaq,jordan, dr j or wilt there is a duncan, bird, magic, nowitzki, stockton or older kareem.
For every freak athlete role player like tony allen or a. bradley there is a bowen or a battier.

yeah.
durant is a pencil. Chris Paul isn't some huge magic johnson dude. anthony isn't an athletic freak, he's extremely skilled. same with pierce. I mean sure these guys are very athletic. but within their own domain of NBA they aren't top of that list and never were.
Dr. J was absolutely insanely athletic but Larry Bird destroyed him 500 ways from Sunday and it was like... every Sunday.

Yes those may be some kinds of requirements all right; but then why Kevin Love or Tim Duncan? Why those guys I mentioned above? Durant is sleek on a court. He's like a gazelle. He's completely unstoppable....... but would he be all that playing in the whistle-free era of Shaq? I'm extremely skeptical KD could drive at all on the early 2000 Lakers.

There's something much more subtle than "african american" or "athletic" going on in basketball.

I'm afraid people who stereotype the greatest game in the world with such simple, facile concepts as those are not ever going to get it.

[lilojmayo]

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

Can't use population as an excuse. We are average at best in Soccer. Jamaica dominates us in Track .

It is clearly, development systems ...... and our best athletes " the black athlete " basketabll is #1 sport by a mile , outside of select places in the south.

The best athletes in other countries play soccer.

[eliteballer]

They are, but how many individual countries have a population of 300 million to draw from?

[Timmy D for MVP]

The rest of the world is getting better. Many points have been laid out as to what happened in this tournament that made such a bizarre result, but I think it's pretty obvious the rest of the world is getting better.

I wish we could have seen one final run with all the international stars before the current generation peters out. That said there were a lot of talented, young players who showed promise in this tournament. I hope they continue to develop and we have another fun Olympics.

[lilojmayo]

They are, but how many individual countries have a population of 300 million to draw from?

In reality it isn't 300 million , there are barely any white American players that are talented/athletic enough represent Team USA.

So now your dealing with about 42-45 million blacks in this country. Still a lot for you to choose from talent pool wise.


And the world is not getting better. It has remain stagnant, not getting better. The world was better in 2002-2006 ish. Highest level of abroad talent then now.

[ralph_i_el]

In reality it isn't 300 million , there are barely any white American players that are talented/athletic enough represent Team USA.

So now your dealing with about 42-45 million blacks in this country. Still a lot for you to choose from talent pool wise.


And the world is not getting better. It has remain stagnant, not getting better. The world was better in 2002-2006 ish. Highest level of abroad talent then now.

plenty of good white ballers. Replace Derozen/harden/boogie with Korver/Parsons/Love and we may have dominated even harder.

[Optimus Prime]

Because most of them can't hack it in the NBA so they play in the Euroleague and other such joke leagues. When you play against the best every game, you get better. When you play against bums and outcasts every game, you tend to stay at their level due to a lack of challenge.



This disparity was especially pronounced in this past FIBA tournament. What's even scarier is that we sent our C team to the tournament. That's how much better the NBA is than the rest of the basketball world.