{"id":22,"date":"2003-06-25T10:51:35","date_gmt":"2003-06-25T14:51:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tradermike.net\/movethecrowd\/2003\/06\/rise_of_international_basketball_talent\/"},"modified":"2003-06-25T10:51:35","modified_gmt":"2003-06-25T14:51:35","slug":"rise_of_international_basketball_talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/25\/rise_of_international_basketball_talent\/","title":{"rendered":"Rise of International Basketball Talent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This is sort of a follow-up to my earlier basketball post about the <a href=\"http:\/\/tradermike.net\/movethecrowd\/archives\/2003\/06\/why_is_that.php\">foreign invasion of basketball players<\/a>.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hbo.com\/realsports\/stories.shtml\">REAL Sports With Bryant Gumbel<\/a> had an excellent report on international basketball this week.  (The show will be rebroadcast a few more times if you missed it.)  Here&#8217;s a synopsis of the show:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i>For several years, a trend has been emerging in the world of pro basketball: The game once dominated by Americans is feeling the impact of players whose talents developed outside the United States. At the 2002 World Championships, Team USA finished sixth after stunning defeats to Argentina, Yugoslavia and Spain, in stark contrast to the Olympic gold medal-winning Dream Teams of the past. Certainly, an ever-increasing number of international talents are securing spots on NBA rosters. In addition to established European-born pros such as Vlade Divac (Kings), Toni Kukoc (Bucks) and Dirk Nowitzki (Mavericks), promising newcomers like Nene Hilario (Nuggets) of Brazil and Pau Gasol (Grizzlies) of Spain are blazing into the league. Yao Ming of China, taken by the Houston Rockets as the first pick in last year&#8217;s draft, was recently the runner-up for Rookie of the Year honors. Correspondent Frank Deford, in collaboration with Sports Illustrated, travels the globe to determine how and why the rest of the world is catching up to the Americans on the basketball court.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Here are some highlights:<\/p>\n<p><UL><br \/>\n<LI>There are at least 20 basketball farms\/factories\/camps in Europe.  They take in kids as young as 9, board them for free, and teach them the game.  La Ghirada, the top &#8216;farm&#8217;, is owned by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.benetton.com\/html\/whoweare\/founders\/index.html\">Benetton family<\/a>.<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>Kids as young as 14 leave school to turn pro in Europe.<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>European teams don&#8217;t want American players who are fresh out of college because of their lack of fundamental skills.<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>The number of foreign players in the NBA has tripled in the last 10 years.<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>John Thompson says that European players are the new Black players because they see basketball as their way to economic salvation.<\/LI><br \/>\n<LI>Thompson also says that many NBA coaches would rather have European players because they are more receptive to coaching.<\/LI><br \/>\n<\/UL><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is sort of a follow-up to my earlier basketball post about the foreign invasion of basketball players. REAL Sports With Bryant Gumbel had an excellent report on international basketball this week. (The show will be rebroadcast a few more times if you missed it.) Here&#8217;s a synopsis of the show: For several years, a&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/25\/rise_of_international_basketball_talent\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Rise of International Basketball Talent<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,15],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":57,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/07\/black_hispanic_players_hold_up_better_in_heat\/","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":0},"title":"Black, Hispanic Players Hold Up Better in Heat?","date":"July 7, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"Dusty Baker may have played himself with this statement - Black, Hispanic players hold up better in heat. We've started a little discussion about that in a previous post, but I thought this was worthy of its own post. My view is that Dusty is generally correct about darker skinned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Race&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":141,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/08\/11\/slamball_is_the_sht\/","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":1},"title":"SlamBall is the Sh*t!","date":"August 11, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I just saw SlamBall for the first time and I'm hooked. I can't believe I slept on the entire first season though. I remember seeing promos for it and thinking 'eh, so what if these guys can dunk using trampolines...'. Silly me. Here's a description of the game: Take basketball.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Sports&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":339,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/09\/larry_bird_nba_a_black_mans_game\/","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":2},"title":"Larry Bird: NBA &#8220;a Black man&#8217;s game&#8221;","date":"June 9, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"I just saw a clip from an ESPN show, Two on Two, airing tomorrow night. The funniest part was when Larry Bird said that he'd get upset if a team sent a white player to guard him. He took that as a sign of disrespect. :-) This article sums it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Race&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":419,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2004\/11\/20\/pacers_pistons_game_turns_into_an_ugly_fight_with_fans\/","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":3},"title":"Pacers \/ Pistons Game Turns into an Ugly Fight with Fans","date":"November 20, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"(Here's the video of the fight) Or maybe I should have said \"I went to an NBA game and the Vibe Awards broke out\". In case you haven't heard \/ seen it by now - \"Fight breaks out between fans & players at NBA game\". WTF is going on? The\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Sports&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":107,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/24\/noahs_basketball_shot_arc\/","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":4},"title":"Noah&#8217;s (Basketball Shot) Arc","date":"July 24, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"OK, I know I'm mad late on this, but what the hell, I just found it. I was catching up on my reading when I came across an invention to improve a person's basketball shot. It's called Noah, and it uses a video camera and machine vision to analyze the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Sports&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":95,"url":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/2003\/07\/21\/jay-z_signs_lebron_james\/","url_meta":{"origin":22,"position":5},"title":"Jay-Z Signs LeBron James&#8230;","date":"July 21, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"LeBron James to play on Jay-Z's Rucker Park league basketball team. Now this is must see basketball! Sway: Now when you say you're a part of the Roc \u2014 are you signed to Roc-A-Fella or are you just a Roc fan? Jay-Z: That's extended family right there. James: And coming\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.michaelseneadza.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}