Basketball Is No Longer America’s Game – The American Spectator

Europe gave us the Euro step, a sidestep move that every old-timer worth his bun-hugging short basketball shorts is convinced is traveling. And it gave us finesse-oriented forwards and centers who could shoot but who also threw up their hands in horror if instructed to bang with the big boys underneath. 

Africa gave us a great talent now and again — think Hakeem Olajuwon — but mostly beanpoles who camped in the lane and swatted opponents’ shots into the seats — think Dikembe Mutombo and Manute Bol.

But that’s all yesteryear. What Europe has done for the NBA lately is give it arguably three of its four best players: Serbian Nikola Jokić, two-time regular season MVP and one-time Finals MVP, who, earlier this week, led the Denver Nuggets to their first ever NBA championship; Greek Giannis Antetokounmpo, also holder of two regular-season MVPs and one Finals MVP; and Slovenian Luka Dončić, whose wait for his first MVP trophy should be very brief. If you spread the geographical net to include Africa, you pick up the fourth, this season’s regular season MVP, Joel Embiid, who grew up in Cameroon.

And that’s omitting the No. 1 pro prospect this year, Victor Wembanyama, a Frenchman who runs the court and is 7 feet, 4 inches. Think Kevin Durant plus five inches. Pro teams lusting after that generational talent can stop their slobbering now that the San Antonio Spurs have won first pick in the NBA draft later this month.

So, whence all these international players elbowing in on “America’s game”?

Credit Basketball’s Global Expansion

One reason is that it’s no longer “America’s game.” It’s the world’s game now. It used to not be so. Indeed, Americans have historically dominated the game to the point that, until the 1992 Olympic Games, amateur U.S. players — that is, college kids — won every Olympics but two, competing against pros from the rest of the world. And one of those two losses was the biggest hose job in basketball history when, in 1972 in Munich, the refs allowed the Soviets to keep playing the last three seconds over and over — three times — until they finally erased a one-point deficit.

And, although the 1992 Dream Team underlined just how dominant Americans were — they won games by an average 44 points per game; coach Chuck Daley did not call a timeout during the entire Olympics tournament — it was their magnetism and charisma that captured the world’s sporting attention. A team with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Charles Barkley will tend to do that. So great was their celebrity that thousands trailed them as they walked the streets of Barcelona; opposing players pulled cameras out of their shorts for impromptu shots with their heroes immediately after the game; teams swarmed to group photos with them after being annihilated by 40-plus points.

Said Coach Daley, “It was like Elvis and the Beatles put together. Traveling with the Dream Team was like traveling with 12 rock stars. That’s all I can compare it to.”

What they did was elevate basketball’s international profile exponentially and plant in young players the world round the dream of playing in the world’s top league. Talent level in foreign leagues improved, and within a decade those players started showing up on NBA courts. Olajuwon, Dirk Nowitzki, Steve Nash, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Pao and Mark Gasol, Luol Deng — all made it big in the NBA. And success here was broadcast back to the home country — as streaming technology grew more advanced — creating an escalating spiral of interest and achievement as more saw what their national heroes could do and more aspired to replicate their success.

And don’t forget Yao Ming. Today we rightly decry the NBA’s complicity with China, its willingness to gloss over slave labor manufacturing the shoes and personalized gear that are padding NBA players’ already hefty bankrolls. But there is no getting around the popularity of the league in China — there are as many basketball players in China as there are people in the United States and a television audience, according to CNBC, of over 600 million during the 2017–2018 NBA season.

That popularity can be primarily laid on the extra-wide shoulders of the 7 feet, 6 inch Ming. The first international player to go at the top of the NBA draft while not playing in college, the charismatic Ming signed with the Houston Rockets in 2002, opening doors to the China market and making the Rockets China’s NBA team in the process. His first game against fellow NBA big Shaquille O’Neal drew a TV audience of 200 million in China. He then started popping up on TV, plumping for Nike, Reebok, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Apple, and Visa.

What was once a novelty is now commonplace — the foreign-born NBA player. Thirty years ago, 23 international players from 18 countries made NBA rosters; 10 years ago, the tally was 74 players from 35 countries. On the first night of the 2022–2023 season, 120 world players from 40 countries graced NBA rosters; the Toronto Raptors alone had eight, three other teams had seven, two others had six; every team had at least one.

A Rosy Global Future

The obvious (and much-lamented by some) changes in the NBA game itself have also spurred this growth. Pro basketball has transmogrified from a banging, outside-in game where the ball went into the pivot and rarely ever came out and teams played for the best, closest shot to what it is now an inside-out game where drivers consistently pass up layups to whip it out to the perimeter, and many bigs patrol the arc waiting for the chance to jack up the long ball.

That, in short, is the European game. It’s similar to how they’ve always played in Spain and Croatia and Serbia. Europeans, big or small, come to the U.S. with their shooting stroke already well grooved and their game already acclimated to the States’ version.

They also come with years of high-grade development under their belts. They are better prepared for the NBA than their U.S. college peers who, at 18 or 19, go the one-and-done route through college and sit on NBA benches for a few years before cracking a lineup. Dončić turned pro at age 16; Jokić was 17. They were tender teens throwing elbows with grizzled European pros for years before joining an NBA roster.

And the foreigners are humble and hungry. Commented Troy Justice, NBA vice president and head of International Basketball Development:

There’s humility, No. 1. There is a desire and hunger. So the work ethic is very strong — and I’m not saying the domestic players [don’t work hard], I’m not speaking negatively about them, but I’m just speaking directly to the characteristics I see in international players. You know, the work ethic, the desire.

Also, European players in particular are tutored in a club system that emphasizes team play, vis-à-vis individual play, with an emphasis on fundamentals, which turns out versatile all-around players that are attractive to any NBA coach. The U.S. game, by contrast, is dominated by me-first one-on-one play.

Continued Justice:

And then finally, you typically see that they’re really great team players. They’re team-first players, with very little ego usually and they’re very professional in their approach. Also, I would say that they’re family oriented and community oriented. A lot of them come from places where this core value that sits within them allows them to not be self-focused or self-centered, but to be other-focused. And I think that allows them to be great teammates.

When you combine those positives with the youth of the international stars — Dončić is 24, Jokić is 28, Antetokounmpo is 28, Embiid is 29 — what used to be an American-dominated sport is likely to become more “worldly” with every passing year.

Now, if we could only get them to take back the Euro step.

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