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

[jzek]

Let's be honest - this is our B team and yet they were able to beat teams by over 20 a game. After 2004, one would think the gap would be closer but it seems it is a lot wider today... almost similar to the gap when the original Dream Team played. So what happened? Why did the rest of the world stopped improving?

[mentallooser]

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.

[Booz Vivic]

Rest of the world has football as first sport by far, USA has superbowl, baseball and basketball before football. Think that is the reason.

[Crimsonrain777]

yeah, what the other guys said. alot of the players that would of been fantastic at basketball are going into soccer(football) which is the primary sport for the rest of the world. the leftovers pickup basketball. which leads us to where we are at now. absolutely no competition on the international stage

[JohnFreeman]

Isn't a large percent of the world poverty stricken?

[jzek]

Rest of the world has football as first sport by far, USA has superbowl, baseball and basketball before football. Think that is the reason.

True, but even we are improving at soccer. We made the round of 16 this year when teams like Spain (the defending champs), Portugal, etc. couldn't even get out of pool play. We also have the most number of players this year playing in top-level leagues like the Premiere League, Bundesliga, etc. so even though soccer is like our 5th major sport, we're improving immensely.

Teams like Slovenia, Lithuania, etc... these teams have basketball as their top or top two sport but they aren't improving that much overall.

[Booz Vivic]

Isn't a large percent of the world poverty stricken?

Thats also a deal, why africa usually lags a little bit behind in football is jus bcuz they havent got money/coaching etc

In football some of them are similar to european countries, like ghana nigeria algeria etc

[andremiller07]

Natural talent/athletic ability is something you can't teach

[Crimsonrain777]

Isn't a large percent of the world poverty stricken?


yeah, this too. you can't really play basketball on any type of surface. dudes can't practice a crossover trying to bounce a ball on dirt

[Booz Vivic]

Usa sort of fluked out of the groups. Football u can win while being second best. Vs. Ghana they were sevond best but won, vs. Belgium they had howard playing a blinder. Without him they wouldd have lost BIG. They are getting better at football, yeah, but theyre peobably at the highest level they can realistically reach.

[wally_world]

It's because USA is essentially a continent going up against countries. A continent vs continent basketball tournament would be more interesting.

[yarrak]

Athleticism makes all the difference. All white USA team wouldn't be able to dominate like that at all. In fact, I doubt they would win against teams like Spain.

Natural athletic ability is something you can't teach.

[GOATbrook]

Teams like Slovenia, Lithuania, etc... these teams have basketball as their top or top two sport but they aren't improving that much overall.
You are out of your mind with this statement. Slovenia, country with 2 million population is TOP 8 NT in the world. Also football is waaay more popular in Slovenia. It's success what we did, if we had more luck and if Australia didn't lost on purpose we could be in for a medal. We did good job.

Generaly speaking, USA is way ahead because of developmental system like some poster said it.

[PAOK]

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

[Lebron23]

USA have the best basketball players in the world. But you have teams like the Philippines and Senegal making some huge improvements in the last few years.

[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/1996/08/12/215893/slam-dunk-rarely-challenged-a-joyless-dream-team-cruised-to-the-gold-and-reemphasized-the-still-yawning-talent-gap-between-the-us-and-the-rest-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 :oldlol: and winning it. We won't have any heroes welcome and dinner with the prime minister and King and call Rose 2x world champion.:oldlol:

[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.

[Pointguard]

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.
I can't speak for foreign systems, my understanding is that they are just as good in skill development - or at very least shooting. When you read about some foreign players they started at 9 or 10 years of age which is about average. Anybody on any given day can go out and shoot a ball on a hoop all around the world. I ran into a scout in South Africa. And we never, hardly ever, hear of South African's ball players.

By contrast, there are 13 million people in the NY Metro area and there aren't that many soccer fields. And its hard to start a game up. And I imagine harder to get a great scout to come out.

[sundizz]

People may not want to play the race card but id say african americans here are the most physically athletic people in the world. And if u subscribe to the they bred the most physically capable slaves theory...then of course it makes sense that less than a few generations later that genetic physical superiority exists.

China loves hoops. Ive visited etc. Probably way bigger of a pool of kids love hoops there by volume. However they are not genetically predisposed to having the athletic ability of most african americans.

Stuff like hand eye coordination is athleticism too. Any of you who think.steph curry isnt a top tier athlete are crazy. It is a genetic ability of how fast he can shoot...and even his dribble jukes are undeniably fast.

[Blue&Orange]

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
And then 90% of that population want to be soccer players and play soccer as kids, not basketball.


Sorry to say but the world doesn't care about FIBA world cup, they care about FIFA world cup.

[swagga]

LMAO at the jingosim and trolling in this thread. I'll answer tho.

The US is a 300+ mil country with a tradition of grooming elite bball talent from early ages. About 30% of the elite athletic talent goes into basketball and with it a proportional amount of money.

You guys are comparing it to freaking slovenia 2mil, lithuania 3mil, and the like. That's like USA vs Oregon. Moreover even in these countries soccer is much more organized. Usually basketball gets about 7-10% of the elite athletic talent because soccer gets 80%+. The money percentage is also comparable but these countries are also significantly poorer than us.

In the big population countries like uk/germany/brazil/spain/italy soccer gets 95%+ of all the athletic talent and 99% of the money so that leaves them at levels that are comparable to slovenia/lithuania/serbia/greece.

If germany would invest 30% of their athletes&money in basketball they would produce enough be a tough match .. as would the french or the british. Just statistics.

In china/philippines the percentage of the athletically gifted population is low for basketball (height being the main concern). Also their money investments are really low compared to other big countries like us/uk/germany/france/etc ... so they produce alot less talent. This applies to soccer too as china only made it once to the world cup in its entire history.

People living under a rock :roll:

[dannywpt]

We barely have outdoor basketball courts available in a city of 500.000 people.

It's all about soccer over here

[SpanishACB]

People may not want to play the race card but id say african americans here are the most physically athletic people in the world. And if u subscribe to the they bred the most physically capable slaves theory...then of course it makes sense that less than a few generations later that genetic physical superiority exists.

This is partially right. However, an all white USA team would also be pretty good even though most likely they wouldn't have such an easy time raping all opposition.



China loves hoops. Ive visited etc. Probably way bigger of a pool of kids love hoops there by volume. However they are not genetically predisposed to having the athletic ability of most african americans.

this is mostly wrong. Chinese fathers want their kids to study and become engineers, anything worse is a complete failure. Sure they allow them to understake extra-scholar basketball and even be on a team, but they're also doing piano, table tennis, match club, chess club, etc etc...

[oarabbus]

This is partially right. However, an all white USA team would also be pretty good even though most likely they wouldn't have such an easy time raping all opposition.



this is mostly wrong. Chinese fathers want their kids to study and become engineers, anything worse is a complete failure. Sure they allow them to understake extra-scholar basketball and even be on a team, but they're also doing piano, table tennis, match club, chess club, etc etc...

That's for 1st generation immigrants or Chinese-Americans, not Chinese in China :facepalm

[SamuraiSWISH]

Athleticism makes all the difference. All white USA team wouldn't be able to dominate like that at all. In fact, I doubt they would win against teams like Spain.

Natural athletic ability is something you can't teach.
Why would Team USA be rolling out strictly white players? This isn't the racial games, it's national teams.

And we don't dominate simply due to athleticism, we have better skill sets. The best players are Americans usually because of the combination of both athletic ability, and skill set.

[Jon_Koncak]

Soccer "stealin" potential bball players is a lame esxcuse.Most soccer players are too short to have a good bball career.The tall ones are usually the center backs who are slow as fvck anyway so they wouldnt cut it for bball either.I mean,does anyone believe Iniesta or Xavi would make a good pro in bball?C mon

[Hittin_Shots]

I wish the basketball set up in Australia was anything like the American version. The focus is just not as strong from an early age in schooling.

[stanlove1111]

People may not want to play the race card but id say african americans here are the most physically athletic people in the world. And if u subscribe to the they bred the most physically capable slaves theory...then of course it makes sense that less than a few generations later that genetic physical superiority exists.




Bingo. End of thread. They can say that Americans have 300 million and its not fair to compare them to smaller countries but lets be honest, its the American blacks that dominate basketball. That's about 12 % of the population.


I have seen this debated before and Euroes can't grasp how superior American black athletes are. I was a really good basketball player when I was younger and I rarely played against a white guy who was as athletic as me and I rarely played against a black guy who wasn't much more athletic then me.This is why I think the thread comparing a couple of soccer players to NBA players or ever Football players in terms of athleticism is laughable.


America will continue to dominate basketball because its an athletic game that American Blacks will continue to dominate. If American blacks start to play Rugby then they will dominate that and any other sport that relies mostly on Athleticism..

[S13M]

yeah, what the other guys said. alot of the players that would of been fantastic at basketball are going into soccer(football) which is the primary sport for the rest of the world. the leftovers pickup basketball. which leads us to where we are at now. absolutely no competition on the international stage

How so? Many of the best footballers are midgets in basketball standards. They're world class athletes, but basketball unfortunately requires a skill that can't be trained.

[SamuraiSWISH]

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.

[oarabbus]

Athleticism makes all the difference. All white USA team wouldn't be able to dominate like that at all. In fact, I doubt they would win against teams like Spain.

Natural athletic ability is something you can't teach.

Are black people born here no longer American now :biggums:

Why the **** would the USA send an all white team? That's disturbingly ignorant.

[oarabbus]

I have seen this debated before and Euroes can't grasp how superior American black athletes are. I was a really good basketball player when I was younger and I rarely played against a white guy who was as athletic as me and I rarely played against a black guy who wasn't much more athletic then me.This is why I think the thread comparing a couple of soccer players to NBA players or ever Football players in terms of athleticism is laughable.



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

[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.:facepalm

[swagga]

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

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.

:confusedshrug:

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.

:kobe:

[Dr.J4ever]

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.

Larry Bird "destroyed" Doc? Let's be a little more accurate here.

http://hoops-nation.com/community/topic/92471-larry-bird-vs-julius-erving-complete-career-head-to-head-stats/

Here's a head to head compilation of every game they ever played against each other.

"Overall Career H2H Numbers



Regular Season



Erving: 22.8 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 3.9 apg on 49.7 %FG/75.5 %FT/54.2 %TS

Bird: 23.8 ppg, 10.8 rpg, 6.0 apg on 46.9 %FG/84.5 %FT/52.1 %TS


Playoffs



Erving: 19.5 ppg, 6.5 rpg, 4.1 apg on 43.5 %FG/79.6 %FT/50.2 %TS

Bird: 22.1 ppg, 12.4 rpg, 5.9 apg on 44.3 %FG/85.1 %FT/49.9 %TS



Looking at the numbers Erving often got the better of Bird while he was still in his prime. Even beyond that from 82-83 to 86-87 an aging Erving was able to play peak Bird surprisingly close. "

Don't forget these numbers INCLUDES years when Doc was aging and was basically a shell of his former self.

Notice Doc's early advantage vs. Bird when he usually outscored him and played an almost equally good overall game. And these were all in the NBA when Doc was just "near prime".

Imagine what ABA doc would do?

[thugginnuggin]

Australia loses all its players to the usa. Instead of representing aus they do what Irving does and give up Australian passport to represent the us for a gold.

[Hoopz2332]

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.


agreed

[ball4life27]

USA have the best basketball players in the world. But you have teams like the Philippines and Senegal making some huge improvements in the last few years.

people in america especially African Americans have great passion for basketball, aside from america the Philippines also have this obsession with the sport though people from the Phil. are short and less athletic, now these teams in Europe doesn't really have this great passion for basketball most of them would rather play football

[Hittin_Shots]

Australia loses all its players to the usa. Instead of representing aus they do what Irving does and give up Australian passport to represent the us for a gold.

Well At least we can say we have th MVP of the world born here.

[Hoopz2332]

Well At least we can say we have th MVP of the world born here.


:coleman:

[LakersForlife]

its because USA is like a continent its large as ****. compared to small countries(slovenia,lithuania,serbia)

[Jasi]

USA vs European all stars would be an interesting game between two comparable talent pools.