The Chinese men's basketball team is no longer good, the fans are indignant, and the criticism is higher and higher, but have we ever found that in fact, the American men's basketball team is not good either. It's not about being worse than anyone else, or finding psychological balance, but thinking about how basketball should be done through the lessons of these failures.
In my impression, the kingdom of football is Brazil, and the hegemony of basketball is the United States. And Brazil has not won the World Cup for 20 years, and has not even entered the top four, so it is not the absolute king of football for a long time. The United States is not so miserable on the surface, but it is not much better, since the beginning of the 21st century, the American men's basketball team has suffered repeated defeats, and only regained its supremacy at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
As it turned out, the U.S. team couldn't win the championship at all if they didn't come up with the best lineup. Just like the super luxury American team with James, Wade, Anthony, Paul, Howard and others in 2006, they were still beaten by Greece, and what is even more intriguing is that the strong Greek team was beaten by the Spanish team without Pau Gasol.
It can be seen that the United States is just a strong team among the first-class teams, and it is the favorite to win the championship every year, but it is still far from winning the championship. At the 2004 Athens Olympics, the U.S. team was crushed by Argentina, and saw a "quasi-first-class" star Ginobili and a "non-star" Scala win the Olympic gold medal. Despite back-to-back defeats, the Americans have faith that their best player is yet to come.
And the best player they say is Kobe, Kobe finally came in 2008, and also came back with a group of mature superstars, James, Wade, Anthony and Howard in their prime, as well as the old and strong Jason Kidd and others. Although he finally won the Olympic championship as he wished, he also fought Spain to the last round, and the game process was quite miserable.
And 2008 brought together the best basketball players in the United States in the 21st century, and it was worthy of the world's second-ranked Spain to the last minute. Is American basketball not working, or is world basketball rising?
The two go hand in hand.
There is a lot of basketball talent in the United States, but only 5 people actually play, and only 12 people on the bench are included. It can only be said that the pond of basketball countries to select talents is deeper, and it is easier to have high-quality players, but the best five people on the court are not necessarily better than their opponents.
The talent soil of the American men's basketball team is the NBA, and the overall level of the NBA has declined slightly in recent years, at least there has been no improvement. Today's NBA players have indeed improved a lot in terms of projection, but not in terms of overall offense and defense. This also explains why the NBA is not as good as it used to be, because the eyes of fans are bright, and the superstars of the NBA are not as good as before.
Although basketball is a team sport, it is also a sport to fight for superstars, and the individual abilities of each player come together to form a team. Although there are superstars such as Curry and Durant, at least half of them do not participate in the national team, and the participating players do not have a lot of training time like other national teams.
Basketball is still a team sport, which is vividly reflected in European basketball, European basketball and South American basketball are the best at teamwork, a very humble pass can create a very simple scoring opportunity, but we don't think it is unusual, in the words of Zhang Weiping's guidance, it is "play reasonably". And the American players are good at fighting alone, and even if they cooperate, it is based on the premise of individual show.
The NBA has always encouraged offense, especially after entering the small ball, the defensive intensity has been greatly reduced. But FIBA is confrontational, and there is no three-second rule for offense and defense, so those NBA stars who are flying away often can't get under the basket.
Moreover, the European league is in full swing now, and the individual ability of European players is not much worse than that of NBA players, the difference is only in physical talent, but the strength is not bad, white people are the most powerful race, and European players are mostly white, and they do not suffer at all in the power confrontation, although it seems that the muscle lines are not so obvious. Under the premise that there is no obvious advantage in individual ability, teamwork is not fluent, and the rules are not familiar, the US men's basketball team naturally cannot bargain in international competitions.
The U.S. men's basketball team has long passed the stage where you can win gold medals by sending a few stars, and even outscoring opponents by an average of 40 points per game, and this era is gone. The Dream Team, which used to have Jordan as the core, was invincible in the international arena, so strong that they had no friends, and the opponent didn't even finish the game, so Jordan began to ask for autographs.
On the one hand, the American stars in the 90s were too capable to make up for the lack of cooperation, and they were all superstars with one against the other. On the other hand, basketball in other countries has not developed to such a point.
Today, basketball has become the second sport in the world and is popular in various countries. Europe will always be the core of the world, whether it is culture or sports, Europeans are born with sports genes, after years of hard work, basketball has been studied very thoroughly.
As early as 20 years ago, we always wanted to send local players to the NBA, and we didn't even see European basketball at all. Today, there is no player in our country who has the level to play in the European Basketball League, and this is the gap. We've played against a lot of big European teams, so much so that we think we're always at this level, but we don't know how to go against the tide or retreat, our basketball has been standing still, even regressing, and European basketball has been making great strides.
Back then, Greece beat the United States at the World Championships and became the favourites to win the title, while Gasol was sidelined due to injury. Almost everyone is optimistic about this Greek team, who knows that this Spanish team, which lacks the first core, through skillful coordination and accurate projection, shot inside and out, beat Greece to the ground, standing on the bench, Gasol on crutches burst into tears. That's what a team is all about.
After two years, Spain did not fall behind in front of the Dream Eight team with Kobe, and finally lost. Americans used to think that basketball was in their pockets, and they could win if they wanted to, but now they can't win if they want to. The U.S. team has already paid a heavy price for its arrogance, and what right do we have not to try?
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