I’m not sure how it works in hockey, but in baseball the players move teams at the whim of their organization. Local teams have little or no control over the players. And they don’t have time to work because they’re either playing, training, resting, or travelling.
I think the closest true amateur leagues are the collegate summer leagues, where college players get experience playing but often stay with host families and work jobs to pay the bills.
That’s my sense of it, too.
IIRC, most of the Soviet hockey players were ostensibly officers in the military. In fact, the nickname of the team was the ‘Red Army’.
The gap between the original Dream Team and the rest of the world was probably bigger than the hockey gap. Now not so much. Basketball has exploded across the world and the US team plays against a lot of other NBA level professionals. They also don’t get all the players they want. It meant more to be on the Dream Team than it does now. The level of hype for that first team will never happen again.
The international game is different so the NBA players have an adjustment period and they are now playing against professionals who are used to it.
It could, if we stopped sending professionals for a few decades once again.
US women’s soccer has never been anywhere near that level of dominance. Heck, their most famous victory ever was in a penalty shootout after a 0-0 match in which they were, arguably, outplayed. In fact, exactly 20 years ago, the Women’s World Cup was won by… Germany.
US women’s basketball, on the other hand, have won every Olympic gold back to 1996. THAT is a dominant team.
Yeah, my memory was way off. Germany then won the next one for good measure!
My memory was that the rest of the world didn’t really play women’s soccer so the USWNT dominated, but now looking at wiki that was clearly not the case.
My only explanation is that I’ve been wearing very thick rose-colored glasses because I went to high school with one of the early USWNT members, who was part of the team that won gold at the first women’s world cup.
Looking more closely at wiki, seems like the USWNT has never placed worse than third since the world cup began in 1991. Until this year. Doh!