Why is the United States so much better at basketball than the rest of the world?

[QUOTE=greymatter]"Always"?

Last time I checked, their men can't win at anything outside of ping pong, badminton, and diving. Their women win at the same + weightlifting and swimming.

Not exactly a huge list.[/QUOTE]

Maybe the wording was wrong, what I tried to express is that anytime some chinese sportsman/woman win's it's most likely something almost only dependant on training and time put into that very sport. Not that they excell in every sport.

Funding and incentives is the biggest issue for most countries.

In the US, you can be encouraged and motivated to play competitive basketball staring at high school because of these 2 reasons.

1. Its cool to be on the basketball team because its such a popular sport in the US.

2. If you play really well, you have a good shot at getting a scholarship for University.

Once your in University there are 2 incentives again.

1. Its cool to be on the basketball team because its such a popular sport in the US plus imagine all te girls you can get in college just for being on the team.

2. You can have a shot at an NBA career and earn millions of dollars or if your not that good just finish your degree for free that would have cost you thousands and thousands of dollars if not for your scholarship.

In most countries, people don't have these opportunites because of the lack of funding for scholarships because there is no college level competitions. However, there are some countries with the same incentives like the Philippines but the problem then becomes genetics and 99% of Asians that have the skills dont have the height and athleticism to compete at an NBA level.

[QUOTE=Bigsmoke]you gotta have athleticism "black" and an IQ to be good at bastetball.


Blacks are the most athletic race and [B]U.S.A. has the smartest blacks [/B]:confusedshrug:[/QUOTE]
That's debatable a lot of top black physicians in USA are Nigerians

[QUOTE=Bigsmoke]you gotta have athleticism "black" and an IQ to be good at bastetball.


Blacks are the most athletic race and U.S.A. has the smartest blacks :confusedshrug:[/QUOTE]

And just how do you know that USA has the smartest blacks?

You people with your hair brained theories and uninformed opinions on genetics and intelligence :lol

It's because U.S.A. is the father-country and central hub of professional basketball, it has a league (the NBA) with the tenured and well-earned reputation as the "best" in the world as such - more systems and opportunities have been in place to develop our young talent. And it is an absolute magnet for the greatest U.S. [I]and[/I] International talent. The best players in the world will always gravitate towards the NBA - not some scrub-league team. So more great players also want to live here.

Europe for example, isn't producing "inferior" competition (Dirk, Sabonis, the Gasols, Manu, Parker - etc) - the reason foreign leagues like EUROLEAGUE sucks in comparison is because the good Europeans play for the NBA. The American NBA is stacked with not just America's best talent - but also the greatest talent from everywhere on the planet. Therefore American and International scrubs alike who can't make it in the U.S.A. tend to get repelled towards International leagues.

Again to the people getting caught up in race :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm

And the reason International teams don't look like U.S. teams is because the U.S.A. is f*cking massive in talent pool compared to the countries we face. We have 50 f*cking States to pull our talent from many of which have large cities which are extremely competitive with the kind of basketball talent they cultivate - some of which (like California) are as big or bigger than the countries we are facing. Europe as a whole, does not necessarily produce inferior talent. And even China is getting in the game now. Race isn't the problem. International basketball isn't really that bad considering their lesser population pools (Europe) and/or level of economic development or interest in the game (Asia, Africa, South America). I think what people get confused by things like EURO[U]LEAGUE[/U]. And Euroleague does suck at basketball. Royally. Because nobody great wants to play for some second rate Euroleague. But that doesn't represent International basketball - the NBA's great European players do.

/thread

Come to europe and yuo will see.
Very few people care about basketball.

USA has the best athletes in terms of basketball athleticism. It is as simple as that.

I don't think many other countries are producing guys like Shaq, Duncan(i know), KG, T-Mac, Kobe, Lebron, CWebb etc...there may one or two a generation per country but USA has several freak athletes every generation.

Just look at the last decade...

Lebron
Wade
John Wall
Melo
Rose
Rondo
CP3
Josh Smith
Dwight Howard
etc.

This could be just a function of having more people. But, I still think our freak athlete to population ratio may be higher than other countries.

[QUOTE=greymatter]"Always"?

Last time I checked, their men can't win at anything outside of ping pong, badminton, and diving. Their women win at the same + weightlifting and swimming.

Not exactly a huge list.[/QUOTE]

[B]oh really ?[/B].


[IMG]http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2012/0812/08_12olympicmedalcount/13441320-2-eng-US/08_12OlympicMedalCount_full_600.jpg[/IMG]


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:biggums:

[QUOTE=CavaliersFTW]:facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm :facepalm[/QUOTE]

Its a politically incorrect statement, but there is some truth to it.

[QUOTE=MavsSuperFan]Its a politically incorrect statement, but there is some truth to it.[/QUOTE]
No, there is NO truth to it, slaves were not BRED. There were a lot of horrible things connected to what was happening when slavery was active in the United States - but there has never been any evidence of any American slavery SELECTIVE BREEDING PROGRAM. Honestly, research this sh*t people. Black Americans with slave ancestry are not products of selective "breeding", that's nothing but an ignorant assumption. In fact, via genetic research through programs like 23andme many black Americans are finding out they have surprising amounts of "European" ancestry mixed into their DNA - the polar opposite result of what one should expect from "selective breeding" pressure. Apparently these white slave owners couldn't resist some black poon - there by f*cking up any chance of successfully "breeding" slaves which doesn't matter anyways because such a movement has never been known to historically exist to begin with.

I don't think we're that much better than other countries. It's just the majority of great players all play in the NBA. It's not like the NBA is made up completely of American born players. Also, basketball is all about recognition. We have so many colleges where players can showcase their talents. Many countries don't have that luxury.

USA has a massive talent pool with superior athleticism.

A underrated aspect is the emergence of handball in Europe which is very unfortunate, a lot of potential good basketball players play that instead.

There are lots of places where they run very good development programs which is the reason for the influx of top European bread player in the NBA.
Lithuania for example has an insane amount of good players compared to only being 3.5 million people.
The Sabonis academy in Kaunas probably runs the best basketball program in the world.

[QUOTE]The complex is located a bit outside of the city center of Kaunas. It features 4 basketball courts of which 2 are FIBA certified. These two courts are generally used for the games of the teams of the school but also for some games of Senior teams from Kaunas. The two other courts are only used for practices. Next to the courts, the center has a top-notch weight-lifting room, 9 dressing rooms, a cafeteria and a trophy lounge where you can sip a coffee while watching basketball games on the courts or on TV. The dimensions of the center would make lots of professional teams jealous as it features everything that you need for a quality practice.

Currently there are more than 700 kids practicing in the Sabonis school. Depending on their age, they have three to seven practice units per week. The youngest players are around 10 years old while they can stay up to their majority at the age of 18 in the school. The competition is rude among the different Basketball academies as there are 7 Basketball academies in the 350,000 people city of Kaunas alone. From the moment that you can detect a highly interesting talent, all schools try to chase the kid in order to get him in their system. Of course, the Sabonis School has the best options as it is the biggest and the most famous one but this does not mean that their teams are dominating everything as we could see in the games that were running while we were at the complex.

Talking about games, there are about 400 games per season in the center as all the teams compete in different local, regional or national championships. Next to a specific athletic and weight-lifting coach, there are 13 basketball coaches active in the school. They normally follow one generation over several years in order to better understand and see their progress over the years. The kids themselves do not stay overnight at the academy. As most of them come from the city of Kaunas, they stay with their parents but just come to the Sabonis center for the practices. But the school is also recruiting nation-wide and even internationally. For these players, they help to find places where they can live during the week or the season depending on their situation.

Next to the ordinary basketball school, the Sabonis center is also organizing summer and winter camps for any kind of youth basketball teams. You can find more information about these camps on the official website of the academy. The future looks good for Lithuanian basketball with academies like this. It will probably not last long until the next big name is coming out of the Sabonio Krepsinio Centras.[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.europeanprospects.com/sabonis-basketball-academy-the-pride-of-kaunas/"]http://www.europeanprospects.com/sabonis-basketball-academy-the-pride-of-kaunas/[/URL]

for dudes who follow a sport dominated by black athletes......lot of y'all are really clueless

it's almost as if you don't know ANY Black people in real life to be that clueless..or the ones you know are the ones who grew up as only black kid on the block or something ....like sean elliot or somebody

[QUOTE=Horde of Temujin]Well if they're so much better than the rest of the world then why did Spain give them such a hard time in the Olympics?[/QUOTE]

On ISH, a 5 point win over Lithuania and a 7 point win over Spain = "sooooo much better than the rest of the world".

Just grasp that the average IQ in this forum is about 60.

[QUOTE=TaLvsCuaL]Here several factors:

NBA rules favor the athletic players much more than FIBA rules.

NBA players are not used to playing under FIBA rules.

Spain has been playing a long time together.

Spain is enjoying a unique generation of players, especially Pau and Navarro are two of the best European players in history.

USA did not take some of their best players.[/QUOTE]

FIBA rules are now almost identical to NBA rules, even the way refs interpret fouls is 100% copied from the NBA now.

What you claim was only true in the past.