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

[sirkeelma]

african slaves selective breeding + invention of the game

This

[Haymaker]

african slaves selective breeding

That is definitely a factor.

[tomtucker]

african slaves selective breeding + invention of the game

Then how do you explain this : ?

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[Nero Tulip]

First off "so much better" is absolutely wrong.

Why are they better? Same reason why China, the US and Russia do well in the Olympics. Just a bigger pool of players. It's the largest population of any basketball playing country.

If anything countries like Lithuania or Slovenia have more talent than the US per population.

[SpanishACB]

First off "so much better" is absolutely wrong.

Why are they better? Same reason why China, the US and Russia do well in the Olympics. Just a bigger pool of players. It's the largest population of any basketball playing country.

If anything countries like Lithuania or Slovenia have more talent than the US per population.

It's like playing Spain vs California.

It's the same pool size

[LBJHEAT]

It's about the money. I'm 15 years old and I live in Europe. My dream was to be a basketball player, but all those teams started asking abnormal prices. Like when I want to go to a competition abroad I have to pay 300-800 euros for it. It was last year, I was 14...

[greymatter]

Same reason why China is so much better than the rest of the world in ping-pong and badminton.

[greymatter]

african slaves selective breeding + invention of the game

Invention means nothing. The Brits invented cricket, tennis, and ping pong.

[DCL]

to many high school kids in the states, basketball is simply life.

[B-Easy8]

Spain which is so much smaller than the US in terms of both size and population came very close against the US so I wouldn't say so much better.

No one commits to basketball from such a young age like the US do, it's not nearly that popular anywhere else in the world. The Euro's love football, tennis and a bunch of other sports way more than basketball. Here in Australia, basketball isn't very popular, our football is what all the young athletes are groomed to play.

Most of our schools don't even have high school basketball teams and if they do, the coach will be an actual teacher who is willing to volunteer their time. When I was in high school, we didn't have an actual team. We played once in an interschool competition where the top 2 teams from the North, South, East and West conferences would go on and play for the state championship. We finished the top on the South conference but no one at our school was willing to be our coach so we were forced to withdraw from the comp.

You don't get opportunities to go far with basketball in Australia unless you are one of the best in the country for your age and im assuming that's similar for the rest of the world. It amazes me that you guys have high school basketball games on tv when we didnt even have a team to play on.

[pegasus]

Because Wilt had sex with 20,000 women.

[Pointguard]

One is the priority of sports in their communty and the access to a legit court before becoming a teen helps tremendously.

Brazil has a soccer ball in their flag... so they will likely play soccer growing up and its more of a traditional thing to do. If you are tall you might get later exposure to basketball but its usually around 16 years of age. To me Varejao and Noah would be mirror images if they grew up on the same block. Noah dribbles a little better and is better offensively because of early exposure to good competition and the coordination of the sport.

As far as athleticism goes, African Americans (Both Brazilians and North American Blacks) seem to dominate the fluid sports - soccer, basketball, fighting and track - much more so than Africans (or anybody else for that matter). So nutrition, exposure to the sports and general history would have to play a role. And nearly half the time, Brazilian Africans are from a different set of Africans than US Africans but share a common history, but they have different exposure to different sports.

While in Salvador Brazil a group of about 12 Norwegian men in their 20's were in the same hotel as me. I asked them if they were a sports team and they said they didn't play sports and that the trip was just a college outing. They were all over 6'3 svelte and muscular. So nutritionally, I don't know if America has an advantage on European nations.

[gabepizza]

Just imagine the US would be if football was the top sport in the country? Right now many of America's best athletes go into a sport in which there is no competition of the international level.

[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?

[RaininTwos]

Just imagine if we gave inner city kids the incentive to pickup the books instead of the ball.

America might stop sliding in secondary education rankings every year.