2021 Tokyo Olympic Basketball...

[Cheriehoop]

There have been me first players since the dawn of basketball.

The NBA is a great basketball product, I don’t see why the development of players would need to change.

It already has changed. The NBA no longer covets the strong, physical back to the basket center who specialized in being an under the basket shot blocking rebounding machine who powers up short contested shots. The NBA has changed their priorities for centers who not only excel in rebounding but that can shoot jump shots including the 3, can run the court, pass and handle the ball. Those are the overall qualities the Euro players appear to develop in their system regardless of position.

Even of the top 12 rebounders in the NBA this year, only 4, Andre Drummond, Russell Westbrook (a guard), Domantas Sabonis and Enes Kanter (both who were developed abroad though before coming to the US) didn’t go totally though the foreign development system. We can and have learned from them and they can and have learned from us too.

 

[MikeSU02]

There have been me first players since the dawn of basketball.

The NBA is a great basketball product, I don’t see why the development of players would need to change.

I think it has more to do with iso ball (which is FINE). Luka has openly said it's easier to score in the NBA than in Euro ball or FIBA.

I think what the point was is to get guys that can work with more motion offenses, flourish even in dribble/drive stuff that Cal (and JB to an extent) run where you can make a two man game a really beautiful thing.

 

[CardiacCuse]

For those who really follow this stuff - what's the difference between FIBA hoops and the current NBA?Minus the goaltending.

The Euros historically "seem" to be more well rounded in skill, but I am admittedly playing on NBA stereotypes of 3s and foul hunting.

I dont follow the stuff - but I have a take

The whole mechanism of basketball production in the US - from aau, ncaa, nba has become distorted around making or being a "star"...and thus garnering the money. theyve taken a team sport and made into an individual one.

The NBA caters to it as players are now running the show and have dominion over the whole process basically. You can see it in the open and public disrespect players like Kyrie have for their "coach", Steve Nash. Its beyond ridiculous. Most "stars" in the NBA now make a majority of their money from revenue streams outside of their salary... alot of them dont really have much incentive to keep performing once they have become a "star"...at least not all out.

Players and their agents dont necessarily know or care for whats good for the game...these guys arent saints or stewards...they are greedy and want as much as they can get. Its almost like wrestling now, imo.

Who is and who isnt a good NBA player isnt the same as who is and who isnt a good basketball player. There is a lot of overlap but they arent the same thing.

When you understand the economics and personal interests of the people involved the sport becomes a lot less enjoyable for me, personally. Its a lot of soap opera these days.

Players like fournier and patty mills torching the US team makes no sense if the NBA is indeed an objective measure of basketball. It isnt. Its politics, greed, marketing, advertising, morons and basketball mashed together.

Like almsot any other industry - who you know matters a lot - even a supposedly fair competitive world like the NBA. That fairness doesnt exist in the NBA ...and thus a lot of players that are on top of the sport have done so due to luck and handlers' strategy and playing the system more than based on actual true talent.

What was a team sport is now an individual one. So the stars on team USA are the best at getting theirs for themselves...which, when you assemble them all together, doesnt make for the best team.

Its always been this way, to an extent, but the talent gap was always great enough to cover it up. Now the rest of the world has caught up on the court...and it doesnt work anymore. The rest of the world still cant catch up in the politics of the game in the NBA bc they are outsiders who arent as well connected. If the NBA was fair and objective towards foreign players - A LOT more of them would be successful in the NBA than they currently are, imo.

 

[MikeSU02]

I dont follow the stuff - but I have a take

The whole mechanism of basketball production in the US - from aau, ncaa, nba has become distorted around making or being a "star"...and thus garnering the money. theyve taken a team sport and made into an individual one.

The NBA caters to it as players are now running the show and have dominion over the whole process basically. You can see it in the open and public disrespect players like Kyrie have for their "coach", Steve Nash. Its beyond ridiculous. Most "stars" in the NBA now make a majority of their money from revenue streams outside of their salary... alot of them dont really have much incentive to keep performing once they have become a "star"...at least not all out.

Players and their agents dont necessarily know or care for whats good for the game...these guys arent saints or stewards...they are greedy and want as much as they can get. Its almost like wrestling now, imo.

Who is and who isnt a good NBA player isnt the same as who is and who isnt a good basketball player. There is a lot of overlap but they arent the same thing.

When you understand the economics and personal interests of the people involved the sport becomes a lot less enjoyable for me, personally. Its a lot of soap opera these days.

Players like fournier and patty mills torching the US team makes no sense if the NBA is indeed an objective measure of basketball. It isnt. Its politics, greed, marketing, advertising, morons and basketball mashed together.

Like almsot any other industry - who you know matters a lot - even a supposedly fair competitive world like the NBA. That fairness doesnt exist in the NBA ...and thus a lot of players that are on top of the sport have done so due to luck and handlers' strategy and playing the system more than based on actual true talent.

What was a team sport is now an individual one. So the stars on team USA are the best at getting theirs for themselves...which, when you assemble them all together, doesnt make for the best team.

Its always been this way, to an extent, but the talent gap was always great enough to cover it up. Now the rest of the world has caught up on the court...and it doesnt work anymore. The rest of the world still cant catch up in the politics of the game in the NBA bc they are outsiders who arent as well connected. If the NBA was fair and objective towards foreign players - A LOT more of them would be successful in the NBA than they currently are, imo.

I'm not sure I agree. Foreign players are a serious % of NBA players now and continuing to grow. And to excel.

I also think using "foreign players" as a catch-all isn't really fair. Giannis' trek to the NBA was much different than Luka's, for example. And, not for nothing, Luka was very much a star on his rise up.

MJ was knocked for being an individual star until he started winning chips.

Fournier and Mills have played with their respective teams more than the cobbled-together team we currently have.

The NBA is currently deeper in talent than it's ever been. There is more movement and spacing and shooting than ever before. Defense is harder than it's ever been because of the square footage needed to be covered.

Also, guys are in much better shape than before.

If you go back and watch 80s NBA, these guys aren't even trying on defense until the 4th quarter.

The issue with our olympic team is 1) talent and 2) fit.

Do you think that a team of Steph, Bron, KD, Kawhi and AD don't roll? Heck, a healthy Brooklyn team would beat every team by 20 in the olympics.

 

[OrangeDW]

We need to revamp the development system. The AAU system creates me first players that don't know how to play team basketball players. They all want to be one-and-done superstars instead of wanting to be winners. Not all, that isn't fair, but USA Basketball should create a development system with the sole purpose of developing winning basketball players.

Shoutout to all the “basketball trainers” getting paid to have kids practice nothing but shooting stepback jumpers and fancy and pointless dribbling.

 

[tbouks02]

The biggest reason the European teams are catching up and beating the U.S. occasionally is they are "teams". They play every year together in EuroBasket, World Cup, Olympics, etc. When Coach K took over, Lebron, Melo, Wade, Howard, etc. played the 2006 WC and the 2007 FIBA Americas tournament before they played the 2008 Olympics. Every summer they were building chemistry. The 2008 team wasn't just selected and thrown out there in a month's time like this team. And even with the familiarity that team had it took some clutch shots by Kobe and Wade to close out the Gold Medal game. It wasn't easy.

Fast forward 13 years and the gap between the best U.S. players and foreign players has shrunk even more. Gone are the days where we can win on talent alone.

 

[MikeSU02]

Shoutout to all the “basketball trainers” getting paid to have kids practice nothing but shooting stepback jumpers and fancy and pointless dribbling.

It's the Steph corollary, right? OH, Steph can shoot 40% from 30+ feet, I have to mimic that to make the league!

Well, no. There are like three guys that can do that in the world. You may as well practice flying with your arms.

Or, the step back that Luka and Harden can pull off. Those guys are very few and far between. Luka is arguably the greatest 22 year old ever in the NBA and Harden is going to finish a top 30 all timer.

Point being, I agree with your assessment. These guys are getting trained on actions that are to be built off of high level expertise that you can only pull off if you are the very best of the best.

I'll give one call out to show this: People call Trae the next Steph, or had. And, to be clear, I love Trae Young. But Trae is not the shooter that Steph is. Trae *can* hit 30+ foot shots. Steph *does* hit 30+ foot shots. But what people don't practice is the excellence that Trae showcases in the pick and roll. His floater, his lobs, his control in the lane surrounded by guys swiping at him, him being able to read a defensive reaction to screening action... all of that is what we need to see.

The 30 foot shots are just for the guys that are extraterrestrial.

 

[OrangeXtreme]

Iran. I ran so far away...

 

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[OrangeXtreme]

Grant: 4 & 3

 

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[4evaOrange]

What ideal 12 member team would you put out there? If you could pick any 12 players currently in the nba, and the best with picking around injuries and anything else.
who you got?

 

[OrangeXtreme]

 

[MikeSU02]

What ideal 12 member team would you put out there? If you could pick any 12 players currently in the nba, and the best with picking around injuries and anything else.
who you got?

Assuming I can't have injured players... so I'm tabling Kawhi and Klay. I'm also assuming CP3 is dinged up.

Steph
Harden
Bron
KD
AD

Trae
Dame
Jimmy Butler
Tatum
Zion

For the remaining two spots, one can go to one of Book/Beal/Mitchell.

I think the last one isn't bad to have Bam to have another guy with size.

Honestly, if the last two spots went to Cade and Mobley, I wouldn't be mad.

 

[CardiacCuse]

I'm not sure I agree. Foreign players are a serious % of NBA players now and continuing to grow. And to excel.

I also think using "foreign players" as a catch-all isn't really fair. Giannis' trek to the NBA was much different than Luka's, for example. And, not for nothing, Luka was very much a star on his rise up.

MJ was knocked for being an individual star until he started winning chips.

Fournier and Mills have played with their respective teams more than the cobbled-together team we currently have.

The NBA is currently deeper in talent than it's ever been. There is more movement and spacing and shooting than ever before. Defense is harder than it's ever been because of the square footage needed to be covered.

Also, guys are in much better shape than before.

If you go back and watch 80s NBA, these guys aren't even trying on defense until the 4th quarter.

The issue with our olympic team is 1) talent and 2) fit.

Do you think that a team of Steph, Bron, KD, Kawhi and AD don't roll? Heck, a healthy Brooklyn team would beat every team by 20 in the olympics.

yeah I see youtr point about foreign players.

I guess what Im really getting at is that I think the NBA puts a select few players on a pedestal and anoints them. and that I dont necessarily think that is an accurate reflection of how good they are relative to their peers and I think that as extension to that domestic players have a bit of an advantage in that whole process. but certainly foreign players do make up a big segment of the nba and some of them are stars.

as far as this team and games... i havent been watching any of the games...Im just speaking on a few general trends.

1 - extreme selfishness and me me me culture that has been exacerbated by social media and modern cultural shifts. which we see in basketball in the NBA. lots of iso ball, 1 on 1 play...all the players are fighting for the "max contracts"...I think the NBA distorts things in terms of how good players acutally are at team basketball vs 1 on 1 basketball. its all about getting the label of star player nowadays. but thee guys arent very good at actually playing team basketball...they dont know how...which is a shame bc that is the best type of basketball to watch. ironic that the spurs coach is overseeeing this mess...they were the gold standard for team basketball for a long time in the NBA...one of the few teams you could say played the right way.

2 - if you go off of NBA stats - it would seem IMPOSSIBLE for nigeria, france or australia to compete even with this "watered down" version of team usa - which still has multpile orders of magnitude more stars and talent than any other team in the games.

so you have to find a way to reconcile how these teams with much less NBA talent are beating team usa. familiarity matters.but really shouldnt be enough, imo. again, patty mills and fournier are not needle movers in the NBA...they are just replacement level players. they wouldnt sniff team usa.

In my opinion, the NBA is eccentric and has worked itself into a distorted basketball pretzel, so to speak. to me, other teams competing and beating this team USA is evidence that the NBA is far from an objective and fair competition in which the true cream rises to the top and water finds its level.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

yeah I see youtr point about foreign players.

I guess what Im really getting at is that I think the NBA puts a select few players on a pedestal and anoints them. and that I dont necessarily think that is an accurate reflection of how good they are relative to their peers and I think that as extension to that domestic players have a bit of an advantage in that whole process. but certainly foreign players do make up a big segment of the nba and some of them are stars.

as far as this team and games... i havent been watching any of the games...Im just speaking on a few general trends.

1 - extreme selfishness and me me me culture that has been exacerbated by social media and modern cultural shifts. which we see in basketball in the NBA. lots of iso ball, 1 on 1 play...all the players are fighting for the "max contracts"...I think the NBA distorts things in terms of how good players acutally are at team basketball vs 1 on 1 basketball. its all about getting the label of star player nowadays. but thee guys arent very good at actually playing team basketball...they dont know how...which is a shame bc that is the best type of basketball to watch. ironic that the spurs coach is overseeeing this mess...they were the gold standard for team basketball for a long time in the NBA...one of the few teams you could say played the right way.

2 - if you go off of NBA stats - it would seem IMPOSSIBLE for nigeria, france or australia to compete even with this "watered down" version of team usa - which still has multpile orders of magnitude more stars and talent than any other team in the games.

so you have to find a way to reconcile how these teams with much less NBA talent are beating team usa. familiarity matters.but really shouldnt be enough, imo. again, patty mills and fournier are not needle movers in the NBA...they are just replacement level players. they wouldnt sniff team usa.

In my opinion, the NBA is eccentric and has worked itself into a distorted basketball pretzel, so to speak. to me, other teams competing and beating this team USA is evidence that the NBA is far from an objective and fair competition in which the true cream rises to the top and water finds its level.

Eh

The objective of the NBA isn't to produce a Team USA that coasts to gold.

The Warriors made ball movement cool. There's a lot more passing now than at other times in the NBA. Guys have to be very skilled overall to stick, let alone get regular minutes now. I think you're way underestimating the ability of players today by reducing the league philosophy to iso ball.

 

[4evaOrange]

Assuming I can't have injured players... so I'm tabling Kawhi and Klay. I'm also assuming CP3 is dinged up.

Steph
Harden
Bron
KD
AD

Trae
Dame
Jimmy Butler
Tatum
Zion

For the remaining two spots, one can go to one of Book/Beal/Mitchell.

I think the last one isn't bad to have Bam to have another guy with size.

Honestly, if the last two spots went to Cade and Mobley, I wouldn't be mad.

I did mean that you can imagine no one is injured in the nba and everyone is available.

 

[NineOneSeven]

What ideal 12 member team would you put out there? If you could pick any 12 players currently in the nba, and the best with picking around injuries and anything else.
who you got?

Curry, Lillard
Harden, Klay, Booker
Leonard, Durant, Tatum
James, Zion
Davis, Adebayo

 

[Newhouser]

Eh

The objective of the NBA isn't to produce a Team USA that coasts to gold.

The Warriors made ball movement cool. There's a lot more passing now than at other times in the NBA. Guys have to be very skilled overall to stick, let alone get regular minutes now. I think you're way underestimating the ability of players today by reducing the league philosophy to iso ball.

I agree that FIBA success is not the NBA's concern. That said it is interesting that Pop - who brought the Euro ball movement to the NBA - is reportedly having a tough time getting iso-centric players to buy into that concept.

 

[CardiacCuse]

Eh

The objective of the NBA isn't to produce a Team USA that coasts to gold.

The Warriors made ball movement cool. There's a lot more passing now than at other times in the NBA. Guys have to be very skilled overall to stick, let alone get regular minutes now. I think you're way underestimating the ability of players today by reducing the league philosophy to iso ball.

I dont think it it is the job of the NBA to prduce a team usa that coasts to gold.

i just think that the NBA could structure itself in many different ways and the ways that it has chosen dont lead to necessarily even the highest level of basketball. they certainly arent promoting team basketball. they blast the "stars" on all advertising. its a cult of personality.

the nba would personally appeal to me a lot more if it was more based on team basketball than marketing stars.

i think they could take all of the current players they have and produce a much better product than they do.

"Stars" are too empowered in the modern NBA, imo. They stunt the developemnt of team basketball and the development of their teammates. Hence, they (relatively) suck as a team when they are all thrown together on team usa...they literally dont know how to play team bsketball!!!

 

[hoopsupstate]

yeah I see youtr point about foreign players.

I guess what Im really getting at is that I think the NBA puts a select few players on a pedestal and anoints them. and that I dont necessarily think that is an accurate reflection of how good they are relative to their peers and I think that as extension to that domestic players have a bit of an advantage in that whole process. but certainly foreign players do make up a big segment of the nba and some of them are stars.

as far as this team and games... i havent been watching any of the games...Im just speaking on a few general trends.

1 - extreme selfishness and me me me culture that has been exacerbated by social media and modern cultural shifts. which we see in basketball in the NBA. lots of iso ball, 1 on 1 play...all the players are fighting for the "max contracts"...I think the NBA distorts things in terms of how good players acutally are at team basketball vs 1 on 1 basketball. its all about getting the label of star player nowadays. but thee guys arent very good at actually playing team basketball...they dont know how...which is a shame bc that is the best type of basketball to watch. ironic that the spurs coach is overseeeing this mess...they were the gold standard for team basketball for a long time in the NBA...one of the few teams you could say played the right way.

2 - if you go off of NBA stats - it would seem IMPOSSIBLE for nigeria, france or australia to compete even with this "watered down" version of team usa - which still has multpile orders of magnitude more stars and talent than any other team in the games.

so you have to find a way to reconcile how these teams with much less NBA talent are beating team usa. familiarity matters.but really shouldnt be enough, imo. again, patty mills and fournier are not needle movers in the NBA...they are just replacement level players. they wouldnt sniff team usa.

In my opinion, the NBA is eccentric and has worked itself into a distorted basketball pretzel, so to speak. to me, other teams competing and beating this team USA is evidence that the NBA is far from an objective and fair competition in which the true cream rises to the top and water finds its level.

With NIL, it’s only going to get worse. HS players are now getting into the action. It’s all about brand and not about winning. The game has suffered greatly since AAU. Summers used to be about going to basketball camps and improving your individual skills. There’s zero improvement in developing skills in AAU. It’s all about me.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

I agree that FIBA success is not the NBA's concern. That said it is interesting that Pop - who brought the Euro ball movement to the NBA - is reportedly having a tough time getting iso-centric players to buy into that concept.

I don't think they aren't bought in. I think we have a collection of guys that don't mesh great.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

I dont think it it is the job of the NBA to prduce a team usa that coasts to gold.

i just think that the NBA could structure itself in many different ways and the ways that it has chosen dont lead to necessarily even the highest level of basketball. they certainly arent promoting team basketball. they blast the "stars" on all advertising. its a cult of personality.

the nba would personally appeal to me a lot more if it was more based on team basketball than marketing stars.

i think they could take all of the current players they have and produce a much better product than they do.

"Stars" are too empowered in the modern NBA, imo. They stunt the developemnt of team basketball and the development of their teammates. Hence, they (relatively) suck as a team when they are all thrown together on team usa...they literally dont know how to play team bsketball!!!

I submit that you're not separating the NBA's marketing for entertainment purposes from the NBA's winning style of play, which is based on floor spacing through shooting and ball movement.

 

[sufandu]

Eh

The objective of the NBA isn't to produce a Team USA that coasts to gold.

The Warriors made ball movement cool. There's a lot more passing now than at other times in the NBA. Guys have to be very skilled overall to stick, let alone get regular minutes now. I think you're way underestimating the ability of players today by reducing the league philosophy to iso ball.
[/QUOTE]
I don't think that' the point he was making. The point is more that guys don't know how to play as a cohesive team. Sure the warriors made putting shooters all over the place and moving the ball quickly to get an open shot cool, but there's more to well rounded team basketball than passing and shooting.

 

[OrangeXtreme]