With only one day left to the Europeen championship in basketball, I was shocked to learn that nearly all of the big nations teams is made up with NBA players. Im not a big fan of basket but I vaguely remember from the time when I was a kid that this has not allways been the case. As I remembered it, NBA was allmost exclusively filled up with American players.
Is basket nowadays a great sport in continental Europa? Is it getting more popular worldvide?
Or is it loosing in popularity in the United States?
Basketball has been catching on in Europe for some time. Esp. seemed that Italy really got into it first. But even France seems to like it.
That’s actually all very good. The bad part is that the quality of play of US players is sinking like a rock. Coupled with “I didn’t see that” officiating which abets it, and the US is no longer the dominant basketball powerhouse. In a few years, it won’t even be in the top 10.
I’ll take that bet and run with it. The U.S. will be the dominant basketball powerhouse for at least the course of all of our natural lives. Foreign players from anywhere, let alone any one country, are still the exception in the NBA, albeit less and less so every year. Overall, though, the team made up of the best Americans would at least be a match for the team made up of all the best non-Americans from anywhere, and probably beat them handily, in my opinion.
As far as the OP, yes, basketball is growing in popularity around the world. It seems that NBA teams, following the success of European players like Arvydas Sabonis, Detlef Schrempf, and Drazen Petrovic, started looking overseas more and more in an attempt to find diamonds in the rough. That led to the drafting of more and more Europeans and other foreign players, whose success led to even more attention being paid to international players, and so on. Basically, Sleipner, I think that while basketball may be more popular internationally than ever before, the fact that the international teams’ stars are now on NBA teams is mostly due to the fact that NBA teams are finally catching on to the idea of signing international stars. The stars of the Italian or German teams from years ago may very well have been talented enough to play in the NBA, but they may not have been given the opportunity.
Foreign players are the new big thing in the NBA. It started back in the 1980s with a trickle. Now it’s more like a flood. The European basketball system turns out players with better fundamentals.
In Europe they have those corporate basketball, eh, thingies. Maybe a Euro doper could explain what goes on. It’s sort of like a tennis academy, they start with really young kids and mold them into being great players.
In Europe, there are lots of footwork drills, shooting drills, post move drills, etc. It’s much better preparation for organized basketball where there is real defense. Street ball can give players an overinflated ego.
Seriously, no way does the US ever fall out of the Top 10. For one thing, there’s a gigantic population here, which ensures a larger crop of players. The US team cleaned up in Olympic qualifying a few weeks ago and I’d be stunned if they don’t win the gold next year. The American team will be 12 NBA players. Most other countries don’t have that many guys in the league, so it’ll be mostly players from national leagues that just don’t play at the same level. I’m sure the rest of the world will keep improving and produce lots of great players, but I think that’s sheer hyperbole.
For me, foreign players (mainly them European ones) are what makes the NBA watchable these days, because they’re so well-rounded and they have all their fundamentals straight. Players like Pau Gasol, Dirk, Manu and Peja.
Thank you all, good posts.
As far as my OP, I have done some research by myself and according to some source the number
of foreign player increased as a result of,
A: NBA growth (more teams)
B: As a marketing strategy to draw more attention to the NBA.
Will someone care to explain the following,
fundamentals?
Do you mean the players ability to play for his team? A team player?
well-rounded?
Is a well-rounded player the same as a more flexible and all-round player?
The first basketball powerhouse outside the U.S. was Lithuania. Most of the best players on the very good Russian teams from 25 years ago were from there. Around the same time Yugoslavia’s program was catching fire with young players like Petrovic and Divacs.
I agree with those who believe the U.S. will remain dominant for decades to come.
As good as some of the international players are, we have yet to see a great, all-around player come to the N.B.A. You can’t just be a scorer to be considered great in our league. There has yet to be a European “Michael Jordan”, mostly due to defensive deficiencies. This is especially true of big men. Consider Shaq or Tim Duncan. Until other countries can produce players that can dominate at both ends of the court, the U.S. will stay on top.
As for whether the European players are really catching up yet, try this question: Who are the top 3 players in the NBA at all five positions, and are any of them European? I’m not up on my NBA players enough to really answer it, but I’m betting that of the 15, no more than two are European of any kind.
P.S. No one calls it “basket”. So much so, that when I typed that, I started to add “ball” to the word automatically.
I apologize for no link or cite, but the source - sportstalk radio- is noted for hearsay anyway, but having said that, I heard a sportstalk show host say once that an NBA executive told him “on the q.t.” that foreign players were become preferable to American players because the foreigners came “without their own posse.” That is, the foreign didn’t come with an entourage of family, friends and other assorted hangers-on taking up space in the locker room telling them how great they were and how much more money and playing time they deserved then they were getting.
Fundamentals refer to a player’s ability to dribble, use proper footwork, to make shoot shots appropriate for his position, to get open, to pass to the open man, to “box out” in order to get rebounds and to play defense. Fundamentals differ by position. For example, a big man, playing center or power forward, is supposed to be able to score in close to the basket by tipping in missed shots and by using footwork to pivot around those guarding him and make shots that way. Think Kevin McHale of the 1980s Celtics, or Yao Ming of the Rockets right now. Too often big men lack such fundamentals because they prefer to take low percentage jump shots from outside. A big man on the perimeter shooting jump shots violates fundementals because he’s out of position for offensive rebounds and tip-ins.
zamboniracer: Thank you, just a question; If as Beagle pointed out, U.S. players are more trained for streetbasket,
then wouldn´t this give them better fundamentals? I know practically nothing about basketBALL but I do know that this is the case for
soccer. That is why (my opinion) South American players are so skilled in one-one situations.
Is it really the case that European players are better in the, uhm, field( word please) under the basket?
Regarding the OP, I have never claimed that Europe is in any way better than U.S in baskettball. I just thought it remarkable that there nowadays
are so many NBA players considering that football is the sport number one here and until now(?) interest has been very low for basketball.
But as ftg kindly pointed out “Basketball has been catching on in Europe for some time.”.
No, better one-on-one skills don’t necessarily make for good fundamentals, because a streetball, one-on-one style player doesn’t pass the ball to the open man. Streetball emphasizes each player beating his own man without regard to the others on his own team. Offensive players without the ball usually just stand around yelling at the guy with the ball to pass it to them, while the guy with the ball tries to drive in and dunk. In fundamental ball, the offensive players move without the ball, picking for each other, and pass the ball to each other looking for the best shot.
Dirk Nowitzki (Germany) certainly has to be on this list. I’m not sure Peja Stojakovich (Serbia-Montenegro) makes the top 15, but he’s one of the best pure shooters out there. Pau Gasol (Spain) won Rookie of the Year in '01-'02, he’s got a lot of talent. Tony Parker (France) helped take the Spurs to the NBA title this year.
Tim Duncan is actually from the Virgin Islands. In fact, when the American team played against the V.I. team in Olympic qualifying, Duncan sat out because he wouldn’t play against his home squad. (A technicality prevented him from playing for the Virgin Islands.)
To add a more trivial nitpick, Shaq was born in West Germany. Nah, he definitely counts as an American.
wakanika raises a very good point: this isn’t quite so new, the USSR and USA had a long-running rivalry in Olympic basketball (using only amateur players, of course). The Americans beat the Soviets for the gold in 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1964. The USSR beat the US for the gold in 1972. Okay, that’s a very one-sided rivalry, but you know what I mean. Yugoslavia has also done well historically, and if you look atthis page, you can see that most of the medals (any kind) that haven’t been won by the United States have gone to European countries.
That Olympic rivalry was between America’s college kids and the USSR’s best players, period. There was “no such thing” as a professional player in the USSR, so they were in effect cheating. What would America’s record have been if we had been sending Cousy, Chamberlain, Russell, etc?
Duncan may be from the Virgin Islands, but the Virgin Islands are part of the US. He’s still technically a US player. But since they are unincorporated, the VI can field their own team, but you can only ever play for one country’s (US or VI) team. Which is why Duncan is with the US.
As for a position by position breakdown of the top 3:
Center:
Shaq
Yao
Beats me - Olowokandi? Miller? Nesterovic?
Power Forward:
Tim Duncan (I still say he’s really an out of position center)
Kevin Garnett
Chris Webber
Small Forward:
Tracy McGrady
Peja Stojakovic (Serbian)
Shawn Marion
Shooting Guard:
Kobe Bryant
Paul Pierce
Allen Iverson
Point Guard:
Jason Kidd
Stephon Marbury (provided he doesn’t revert to Starbury)
Another toughie - Steve Nash (he’s Canadian) maybe?
Anyway, the US isn’t going anywhere as a basketball powerhouse. While international players are getting better, there’s no country in the world with a player in the top 3 at each position other than the US. And you simply can’t dominate without that. Look for the US to win this year. And I’m not sure it will even be close.
Duncan is actually with the US because he played for an American team - not sure when exactly - as an amateur when the Virgin Islands did not field a team. Now, they do have a team, but as you say, he can’t play for anyone else.
As for the third best center in the NBA, I’d put Ben Wallace ahead of Miller, Olowokandi and Nesterovic.
By the way, I’m not trying to say I think the US is “going away” as the #1 basketball powerhouse. I just disagree with Cardinal’s assessment that Europe isn’t catching up yet.
