Basketball Blog

The United States team that will be competing the FIBA Americas tournament to earn its place in the 2008 Olympics in Beijing has had its share of press lately, but there haven’t been many media outlets discussing how international basketball rose to power over the years. I think it bears mentioning as the USA fights for the right to compete in the upcoming Olympics, that Jordan, Magic, Bird, Barkley, Drexler, Pippen, Malone,
Ewing, Mullin, Robinson, Stockton, and Laettner had an enormous impact on the growth of the international game.

It was 15 years ago this week that the Dream Team won Olympic gold in Barcelona, Spain. The Olympic commission had its reasons for allowing professional players from the NBA to compete in what was always intended to be a venue for amateurs – namely to grow the worldwide interest in the sport and to even the odds against American collegiate players who were going up against older, professional players from other nations. The NBA had its reasons for sending the best players in the game – a desire to recapture a sport the country had dominated before the disappointing silver medal finish in the 1988 games and a desire to create new markets in the hundreds of nations that would witness the televised Olympic games.

There’s nothing to call that team’s accomplishments except unbridled successes. The dominance they exhibited over the other teams in the 1992 Olympics was unmatched in modern sports. And yet, even though they relegated the rest of the field to a race for second place, the team was almost universally admired for its star power and exemplary display of basketball brilliance. The players were idols and heroes to their competitors, other athletes, and the international fans.

In an article concerned with his 1992 Olympic experience, Chuck Daly wrote, “Out there somewhere was a 12-year-old or a 13-year-old, not necessarily in the United States or in Spain but in any country, who perhaps was seeing these players for the first time. Now that youngster has a dream, and will be willing to work to make that dream come true.” – NBA.com

The coach seems prophetic today. Two foreign players with no US collegiate experience have been taken with the number one overall draft pick since 2002. Two NBA Rookies of the Year have been foreign players with no collegiate experience. A Chinese citizen, who was both a number pick and a rookie of the year, has also led the league in All-Star votes for years. The 2007 NBA Finals MVP is from France. The 2007 NBA MVP is from Germany. To put a name to Chuck Daly’s hypothetical 13 year old, Dirk Nowitski entered the league in 1998 at the age of 19.