The decline of superstar level development in US Basketball - How Fortnite and Minecraft killed US superstars

[Lockdown504090]

the problem with american basketball is purely that programs are financially incentivised to play kids every day and againt poor competition to promote brands.

[prophet_of_rage]

I picked them because of eras and positions and relative accomplishments at the same age.

It is a simple question, who is better at their age. I think it very clear.

Duncan was an avid gamer of dungeon and dragons but that didn’t seem to affect him.

Let’s change Duncan and put KG instead and instead of Kobe let’s put Wade.

I still think the those two are better than Edwards and Tatum.

In this inflated stat era, numbers are easy to come by. I am talking about impact, however you want to measure it.

I don’t see Edwards and Tatum as MVP level players compared to Kobe, Duncan, KG and Wade.

I doubt we will ever say wow… Edwards and Tatum are the best players in the world unlike at times we have said about the players I have mentioned.

The entire premise of this thread is absurd, as if gaming does something to someone ability to perform at an elite level. It comes down to actual ability and skills.

Even if we agree Wade and KG are better, so what? That's random chance. Meanwhile someone like SGA who yes, was born in Canada, was developed the US high school and on. He's easily as good as Wade. I certainly wouldn't argue that Wade is night and day better than Tatum or Edwards and ANT is still very young.

Certainly the best 5 or so peak years from wade are night and day above what these guys have shown.

And meanwhile it's difficult to judge this as the average player is just so much better today. We know KG and Wade would be great today, but would they stand out as much? Hard to say.

The average player is not "so much better", unless we're only considering offense for the word better. Zach Lavine is way more talented than tony Allen and makes scoring higher, but he's not better. The only thing that can make players inherently better is an expansion of the talent pool to siphon off less talented players. But Wade was in his prime 15 years ago, not 50. That's not enough time for any substantial increase. To where an MVP level peak like wade would suddenly barely be all NBA like Edwards. Or even "ranked just outside the top 5 but clearly a tier or more behind the top 5" like Tatum.

People are confusing practicing skills with inherent talent. 10 years ago, no NFL QBs were doing back shoulder throws. Now every scrub can do it, because they all found out it was effective and started practicing it. The same guys throwing them now were part of the group that wasn't doing it at all, much like step back 3s or bigs who can now catch a pass on the roll and immediately identify if they should continue to the basket or kick it out for a corner 3. That's just practicing something 1000 times, which wade or kg or any player from 15 years ago would have done.

That's the definition of skill. You're thinking about talent.

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[prophet_of_rage]

Question ... why are the American women who grow uo in the same system so internayionally dominant?

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[BigGargamel]

Video games - the reason we have school shootings, violence in general, and now bad USA basketball players? What's next?

[BarbaGrizz]

Well... the downfall of Brazilian soccer is often attributed to the descrease of "street soccer", so OP may be onto something here.

[peZt]

Well... the downfall of Brazilian soccer is often attributed to the descrease of "street soccer", so OP may be onto something here.

Yeah its the same in German Football and in european football in general. I've mentioned it here already that England was one of the first countries in Football that recognized this and overhauled their entire youth program and strategy in the late 2000s. They realized that kids dont play 1v1, 3v3 on the street anymore so they changed their practice methods to incorporate that into their strategy. And guess what? 15 years later they are the #1 producer of talent with France in the world. Germany has been starting to do this as well 5 years ago, completely different training than how I grew up playing football in the 2000s in Germany. My training in the club sucked ass. But I was still a good player because I played street ball every day and developed my skills there.

Its a widely accepted fact that the decline of "outside play" and street ball in the case of Basketball is leading to worse development in sports developmeent and skill development. And I mean its only logical. People say you master a skill after 10,000 hours. In the past kids used to play 4-5 hours EVERY DAY on the street after school. That's 1000 hours a year. That's at least 10,000 hours missing until they become 18. 10,000 hours where they developed their skills in the past. This is missing now. So its only logical that the kids are worse than they would have been if they had accumulated those 10,000 hours. People attribute guys like Kobe's skill to their work ethic and their hours put in. But dont wanna accept and get that in this case if hours are missing it will lead to a negative effect? Of course kids will develop worse if on average they play maybe 1000 hours street ball instead of 10,000 hours like in the past.

And my point is that without this street ball, the only touchpoint of these kids with Basketball is in the school system. Which is simply not a great environment for talent to develop and thrive. And which imo is the reason why we see a decline in this tier 1 superstar talent in the US. Coincidentally exactly after around the birth years 1993 and 1994. Before that kids used to play outside a lot. After that they began to be inside more and play street ball less. Is this a coincidence? No. And like i said, birth years 1993-1999 are also the worst in Football in terms of individual talent probably in decades. Its imo not a coincidence that the 2 ball sports that relied heavily on developing skills on the street playing with friends suffer from a clear decline in top tier superstar talent exactly in the exact same birth years.
And my point as to why this does not effect Europe as much is that in Europe they have academies with professional coaches etc. They are able to counter this much more, its simply a much better environment to develop skills and fundamentals. So they dont see the negative effect of missing street ball as much as they do in the US because the kids even without street ball still get really good development in the academies. In the US they dont

And people seem hung up on the video games part, I dont know why. The point isnt that video games are making kids worse. Its that kids are getting worse because they are going outside less and dont play street ball anymore. And one of the reasons they go outside less is because they play video games more. But video games is also a symptom of this, not the reason why they are getting worse. The problem is this indoor epidemic, kids simply do not enjoy spending so much time outside anymore, for whatever reason. And they are also not even allowed to anymore. We were allowed to just freely roam the streets until it got dark with no phone in our pockets and no chance for our parents to reach us. Now kids arent even allwoed to go to school alone. And this is even more widdespread in the US, so this is also a contributing factor to it I assume. Im sure that kids are going out less in the US at a higher rate compared to in Europe

[Capn'O]

It's not Fortnite or games, kids all around the world play videogames and Fortnite. Kids in Japan play games more than Americans, and yet they are producing insane baseball players, boxers and wrestlers at an astonishing rate now. It's that the US system has privatized skill development, it's why so many kids of players are now appearing because they have the genetics, yes, but most importantly they have the money to get the training. Europe skill development is so far ahead, and all you need to do is try out for a local club team and you're getting training that would cost thousands of dollars here in the US. I've been teaching a young family member basketball since he was a kid, and I'd look at European videos and I noticed a massive difference in how they did things.

First and foremost, the kids play on lowered rims a lot longer than they do here. If you've been to any AAU tournaments you'd see little kids playing with a smaller ball on 10 foot rims, yet you see kids in European videos as old as 13 playing on 9 foot rims. And they have shotclocks, where as here in the US it can vary from state to state, even city to city within the state on whether or not a AAU/HS will use shotclocks. They don't just pigeonhold kids into positions like they do here, it's why we have so many undersized centers and PFs with no skills, because often those kids were bigger than everyone else and never had to learn any skills, European model they all learn the same skills.

You will not see a Giannis, Jokic or Wemby come out of the US, not unless the kid is the son of a former player.

This probably explains the dearth of bigs coming out of the US. We have a pretty good lock on wings and guards but our bigs have been limited. They're all rim runners and rim protectors.

[falcolombardi]

Mmm,amyone remembers when we said bigs were dead 10 years ago and then we got giannis, embiid, jokic and no2 wenbayama?

Talent cycles come and go and sometimes they dont signal any bigger trend than that, specially in superstsr talent which is the top 1% of the league and as such is very volatile to peaks and lows

Right now 4 of the top 5 players in the world are european and the other is canadian (but a product of usa system) but these thinghs come and go

The currently more intriguing young players (besides wenbayama of course) are almost all americans (dybantsa, flagg) so 6 years from the top 5 may reverse into wenbayama and 4 americans pretty easily

[Doctor MJ]

3. We need to keep in mind that most of the international outlier talents aren't succeeding due to their home country doing anything special, but rather on the back of the growth in their game after getting under the mentorship of Americans. Here are our international MVPs since this new era began:

Giannis
Jokic
Embiid
Shai

I would suggest it's a mistake to actually think of any of these guys other than Jokic as truly foreign players. Giannis, Embiid & Shai are American products regardless of where they were born and we shouldn't forget that.

i am not sure I agree here.
I don't know enough about Shai (and it's hard for me to appreciate the difference between growing up in Canada or in the US), but the other guys spent their formative years in a foreign country and that absolutely changed their development path. For instance, think how playing football might have affected Akeem and, probably, Embiid. Or how growing up in Greece affected Giannis's style, being exposed to different sports.
All of them grew up immensely in the US, including Jokic, but I wouldn't discount how important their imprinting was.

From the couch one comment I often hearis how younger player, in the last decades, are being exposed only to some very basketball specific drills. Then I think of Nash describing how playing football and lacrosse affected his style (we're hearing the same about Jokic and water polo, even if it's overblown).

So, I'll concede the point generally that regardless of actual basketball training, the childhood sporting culture of a place can matter a great deal. And I'll say specifically that Hakeem's game is very soccer-foundational while Steve Nash also reads as foreign to me with a very hockey-foundational approach (even more than soccer). I don't really think there's anything about Embiid or Giannis' style that screams Association Football to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

I do want to draw a distinction between a) learning how to play basketball by local training that proved more effectively than AAU training, and b) approaching basketball through the skills developed in another sport though. Both are real, but only the former can be a real criticism toward American basketball development. Like, if it were to turn out that Irish road bowling ended up being incredibly valuable for basketball that would be very interesting, but before we see that I'm not going to criticize basketball coaches for not embracing road bowling.

On the specific players, I'll just say my take:

a) I see Giannis (on offense) as basically just a tall, explosive battering ram who does stuff that would get him called for fouls in a sane era, but instead now get defenders called for fouls, and I think playing American football as a running back would be more useful than playing Association soccer with its rules against physical assault.

b) I see Embiid as a a) giant with great shooting skill who also excels at b) falling down and getting refs to call fouls against defenders when he falls on them, and frankly I don't see how any other sport helps a young player get good at (b). Sure soccer players founded flopping culture, but basketball players took it to a completely different level of ridiculousness before Embiid.

c) I see Shai as purely an American player in a way I don't with Nash, and it's only partially because Nash actually looks like he plays another sport when he plays basketball. The other aspect is that SGA (and his cousin NAW) literally transferred to an American high school which then helped him get recruited by the great One & Done NCAA program of the era (Kentucky) where in just that one season he played with 6 future NBA players as teammates.

Now, Nash would have done this if anyone in the US had any interest in him, so I'm not saying he was "above the US" in any way other than latitude, but the fact that the US had no interest in him meant that he had to just figure out his own way of playing without going to any AAU-style factory. Frankly him then playing different was also part of why he was so successful so I think it all worked out for him, but the reality is that he didn't really have any choice but to figure it out for himself, whereas Shai literally left Canada at a minority age to go join the American pipeline.

Re: Jokic & water polo. This one's a bit trickier. My general assessment is that Jokic is to be understood primarily through the lens of Eastern European basketball which itself needs to be understood through the lens of American basketball missionaries spreading the game to Europe and emphasizing the American trends in existence when they did so.

Now, those missionaries were at work even back as far as the 1890s, but a lot of the major success comes in the 1930s in the wake of FIBA's creation (1932) and basketball's first Olympics (Berlin, 1936). Elite American basketball in the late 1920s and through the '30s was dominated by read & react schemes that trained and featured tall pivot passers, and to this day, I'd say that's the same phylum that Serbian basketball is in.

As I say that, I need to acknowledge that water polo had already spread to Yugoslavia by that point and that alone would make it unjustified by me to say that that was irrelevant to what would come later. It's just that while Eastern European basketball may look like a totally different thing from American basketball today, that's because American basketball changed drastically compared to what it used to be, not because no Americans ever played in a style more like the Serbians.

I also want to acknowledge that it is said that the emphasis on team play in a read & react pass-heavy schemes resonated with communist ideals across all free-flow field sports (such as basketball and water polo), and it makes sense to me that this would contribute to that basketball culture remaining more team-oriented while the hyper-individualist culture of the US eventually embraced schemes that let one player dominate the ball.

I'm not comfortable saying these broader cultural norms made these differing basketball cultures inevitable, nor would I try to argue that water polo's prominence in Serbia is irrelevant to how Jokic plays, but I do think we can see some general "family trees" of style looking at stuff like this.

I'll also mention that back in and around this era, even within the US they talked about regional styles making a big difference. I was struck when I learned that the Rochester Royals - the first great pro team after World War II - had a style of play built around their star Bob Davies that was described as "Midwestern" as opposed to "Eastern", because Davies was known as the Harrisburg Houdini, and Harrisburg is literally on the Eastern side of Pennsylvania, which makes it clearly in the Eastern USA as opposed to the Midwestern USA.

It wasn't that Davies had invented the style, but that the style had spread from the Midwest (think Indiana) to the East by the time he was in high school, and that's how he played. Also for the record, Midwestern style was very much run & gun compared to the slower pace (in the possessions/game sense, there was still a lot of quick action), more methodical Eastern style. Davies' signature thing was attacking in transition with fancy dribbling and passing.

Also ftr, both the Eastern & Midwestern styles were read & react with tons of quick passing, which means they were both more like modern Serbian basketball than modern American basketball is.

[prophet_of_rage]

Well... the downfall of Brazilian soccer is often attributed to the descrease of "street soccer", so OP may be onto something here.

Yeah its the same in German Football and in european football in general. I've mentioned it here already that England was one of the first countries in Football that recognized this and overhauled their entire youth program and strategy in the late 2000s. They realized that kids dont play 1v1, 3v3 on the street anymore so they changed their practice methods to incorporate that into their strategy. And guess what? 15 years later they are the #1 producer of talent with France in the world. Germany has been starting to do this as well 5 years ago, completely different training than how I grew up playing football in the 2000s in Germany. My training in the club sucked ass. But I was still a good player because I played street ball every day and developed my skills there.

Its a widely accepted fact that the decline of "outside play" and street ball in the case of Basketball is leading to worse development in sports developmeent and skill development. And I mean its only logical. People say you master a skill after 10,000 hours. In the past kids used to play 4-5 hours EVERY DAY on the street after school. That's 1000 hours a year. That's at least 10,000 hours missing until they become 18. 10,000 hours where they developed their skills in the past. This is missing now. So its only logical that the kids are worse than they would have been if they had accumulated those 10,000 hours. People attribute guys like Kobe's skill to their work ethic and their hours put in. But dont wanna accept and get that in this case if hours are missing it will lead to a negative effect? Of course kids will develop worse if on average they play maybe 1000 hours street ball instead of 10,000 hours like in the past.

And my point is that without this street ball, the only touchpoint of these kids with Basketball is in the school system. Which is simply not a great environment for talent to develop and thrive. And which imo is the reason why we see a decline in this tier 1 superstar talent in the US. Coincidentally exactly after around the birth years 1993 and 1994. Before that kids used to play outside a lot. After that they began to be inside more and play street ball less. Is this a coincidence? No. And like i said, birth years 1993-1999 are also the worst in Football in terms of individual talent probably in decades. Its imo not a coincidence that the 2 ball sports that relied heavily on developing skills on the street playing with friends suffer from a clear decline in top tier superstar talent exactly in the exact same birth years.
And my point as to why this does not effect Europe as much is that in Europe they have academies with professional coaches etc. They are able to counter this much more, its simply a much better environment to develop skills and fundamentals. So they dont see the negative effect of missing street ball as much as they do in the US because the kids even without street ball still get really good development in the academies. In the US they dont

And people seem hung up on the video games part, I dont know why. The point isnt that video games are making kids worse. Its that kids are getting worse because they are going outside less and dont play street ball anymore. And one of the reasons they go outside less is because they play video games more. But video games is also a symptom of this, not the reason why they are getting worse. The problem is this indoor epidemic, kids simply do not enjoy spending so much time outside anymore, for whatever reason. And they are also not even allowed to anymore. We were allowed to just freely roam the streets until it got dark with no phone in our pockets and no chance for our parents to reach us. Now kids arent even allwoed to go to school alone. And this is even more widdespread in the US, so this is also a contributing factor to it I assume. Im sure that kids are going out less in the US at a higher rate compared to in Europe

Why doesn't this affect the American women?

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[prophet_of_rage]

Well... the downfall of Brazilian soccer is often attributed to the descrease of "street soccer", so OP may be onto something here.

Yeah its the same in German Football and in european football in general. I've mentioned it here already that England was one of the first countries in Football that recognized this and overhauled their entire youth program and strategy in the late 2000s. They realized that kids dont play 1v1, 3v3 on the street anymore so they changed their practice methods to incorporate that into their strategy. And guess what? 15 years later they are the #1 producer of talent with France in the world. Germany has been starting to do this as well 5 years ago, completely different training than how I grew up playing football in the 2000s in Germany. My training in the club sucked ass. But I was still a good player because I played street ball every day and developed my skills there.

Its a widely accepted fact that the decline of "outside play" and street ball in the case of Basketball is leading to worse development in sports developmeent and skill development. And I mean its only logical. People say you master a skill after 10,000 hours. In the past kids used to play 4-5 hours EVERY DAY on the street after school. That's 1000 hours a year. That's at least 10,000 hours missing until they become 18. 10,000 hours where they developed their skills in the past. This is missing now. So its only logical that the kids are worse than they would have been if they had accumulated those 10,000 hours. People attribute guys like Kobe's skill to their work ethic and their hours put in. But dont wanna accept and get that in this case if hours are missing it will lead to a negative effect? Of course kids will develop worse if on average they play maybe 1000 hours street ball instead of 10,000 hours like in the past.

And my point is that without this street ball, the only touchpoint of these kids with Basketball is in the school system. Which is simply not a great environment for talent to develop and thrive. And which imo is the reason why we see a decline in this tier 1 superstar talent in the US. Coincidentally exactly after around the birth years 1993 and 1994. Before that kids used to play outside a lot. After that they began to be inside more and play street ball less. Is this a coincidence? No. And like i said, birth years 1993-1999 are also the worst in Football in terms of individual talent probably in decades. Its imo not a coincidence that the 2 ball sports that relied heavily on developing skills on the street playing with friends suffer from a clear decline in top tier superstar talent exactly in the exact same birth years.
And my point as to why this does not effect Europe as much is that in Europe they have academies with professional coaches etc. They are able to counter this much more, its simply a much better environment to develop skills and fundamentals. So they dont see the negative effect of missing street ball as much as they do in the US because the kids even without street ball still get really good development in the academies. In the US they dont

And people seem hung up on the video games part, I dont know why. The point isnt that video games are making kids worse. Its that kids are getting worse because they are going outside less and dont play street ball anymore. And one of the reasons they go outside less is because they play video games more. But video games is also a symptom of this, not the reason why they are getting worse. The problem is this indoor epidemic, kids simply do not enjoy spending so much time outside anymore, for whatever reason. And they are also not even allowed to anymore. We were allowed to just freely roam the streets until it got dark with no phone in our pockets and no chance for our parents to reach us. Now kids arent even allwoed to go to school alone. And this is even more widdespread in the US, so this is also a contributing factor to it I assume. Im sure that kids are going out less in the US at a higher rate compared to in Europe

European academies are pretty similar to American prep schools. It isn't just public school basketball any more. And why is US women's ball so dominant?

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[prophet_of_rage]

3. We need to keep in mind that most of the international outlier talents aren't succeeding due to their home country doing anything special, but rather on the back of the growth in their game after getting under the mentorship of Americans. Here are our international MVPs since this new era began:

Giannis
Jokic
Embiid
Shai

I would suggest it's a mistake to actually think of any of these guys other than Jokic as truly foreign players. Giannis, Embiid & Shai are American products regardless of where they were born and we shouldn't forget that.

i am not sure I agree here.
I don't know enough about Shai (and it's hard for me to appreciate the difference between growing up in Canada or in the US), but the other guys spent their formative years in a foreign country and that absolutely changed their development path. For instance, think how playing football might have affected Akeem and, probably, Embiid. Or how growing up in Greece affected Giannis's style, being exposed to different sports.
All of them grew up immensely in the US, including Jokic, but I wouldn't discount how important their imprinting was.

From the couch one comment I often hearis how younger player, in the last decades, are being exposed only to some very basketball specific drills. Then I think of Nash describing how playing football and lacrosse affected his style (we're hearing the same about Jokic and water polo, even if it's overblown).

So, I'll concede the point generally that regardless of actual basketball training, the childhood sporting culture of a place can matter a great deal. And I'll say specifically that Hakeem's game is very soccer-foundational while Steve Nash also reads as foreign to me with a very hockey-foundational approach (even more than soccer). I don't really think there's anything about Embiid or Giannis' style that screams Association Football to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

I do want to draw a distinction between a) learning how to play basketball by local training that proved more effectively than AAU training, and b) approaching basketball through the skills developed in another sport though. Both are real, but only the former can be a real criticism toward American basketball development. Like, if it were to turn out that Irish road bowling ended up being incredibly valuable for basketball that would be very interesting, but before we see that I'm not going to criticize basketball coaches for not embracing road bowling.

On the specific players, I'll just say my take:

a) I see Giannis (on offense) as basically just a tall, explosive battering ram who does stuff that would get him called for fouls in a sane era, but instead now get defenders called for fouls, and I think playing American football as a running back would be more useful than playing Association soccer with its rules against physical assault.

b) I see Embiid as a a) giant with great shooting skill who also excels at b) falling down and getting refs to call fouls against defenders when he falls on them, and frankly I don't see how any other sport helps a young player get good at (b). Sure soccer players founded flopping culture, but basketball players took it to a completely different level of ridiculousness before Embiid.

c) I see Shai as purely an American player in a way I don't with Nash, and it's only partially because Nash actually looks like he plays another sport when he plays basketball. The other aspect is that SGA (and his cousin NAW) literally transferred to an American high school which then helped him get recruited by the great One & Done NCAA program of the era (Kentucky) where in just that one season he played with 6 future NBA players as teammates.

Now, Nash would have done this if anyone in the US had any interest in him, so I'm not saying he was "above the US" in any way other than latitude, but the fact that the US had no interest in him meant that he had to just figure out his own way of playing without going to any AAU-style factory. Frankly him then playing different was also part of why he was so successful so I think it all worked out for him, but the reality is that he didn't really have any choice but to figure it out for himself, whereas Shai literally left Canada at a minority age to go join the American pipeline.

Re: Jokic & water polo. This one's a bit trickier. My general assessment is that Jokic is to be understood primarily through the lens of Eastern European basketball which itself needs to be understood through the lens of American basketball missionaries spreading the game to Europe and emphasizing the American trends in existence when they did so.

Now, those missionaries were at work even back as far as the 1890s, but a lot of the major success comes in the 1930s in the wake of FIBA's creation (1932) and basketball's first Olympics (Berlin, 1936). Elite American basketball in the late 1920s and through the '30s was dominated by read & react schemes that trained and featured tall pivot passers, and to this day, I'd say that's the same phylum that Serbian basketball is in.

As I say that, I need to acknowledge that water polo had already spread to Yugoslavia by that point and that alone would make it unjustified by me to say that that was irrelevant to what would come later. It's just that while Eastern European basketball may look like a totally different thing from American basketball today, that's because American basketball changed drastically compared to what it used to be, not because no Americans ever played in a style more like the Serbians.

I also want to acknowledge that it is said that the emphasis on team play in a read & react pass-heavy schemes resonated with communist ideals across all free-flow field sports (such as basketball and water polo), and it makes sense to me that this would contribute to that basketball culture remaining more team-oriented while the hyper-individualist culture of the US eventually embraced schemes that let one player dominate the ball.

I'm not comfortable saying these broader cultural norms made these differing basketball cultures inevitable, nor would I try to argue that water polo's prominence in Serbia is irrelevant to how Jokic plays, but I do think we can see some general "family trees" of style looking at stuff like this.

I'll also mention that back in and around this era, even within the US they talked about regional styles making a big difference. I was struck when I learned that the Rochester Royals - the first great pro team after World War II - had a style of play built around their star Bob Davies that was described as "Midwestern" as opposed to "Eastern", because Davies was known as the Harrisburg Houdini, and Harrisburg is literally on the Eastern side of Pennsylvania, which makes it clearly in the Eastern USA as opposed to the Midwestern USA.

It wasn't that Davies had invented the style, but that the style had spread from the Midwest (think Indiana) to the East by the time he was in high school, and that's how he played. Also for the record, Midwestern style was very much run & gun compared to the slower pace (in the possessions/game sense, there was still a lot of quick action), more methodical Eastern style. Davies' signature thing was attacking in transition with fancy dribbling and passing.

Also ftr, both the Eastern & Midwestern styles were read & react with tons of quick passing, which means they were both more like modern Serbian basketball than modern American basketball is.

Steve Nash played futbol not hockey. And he develooed his game at Santa Clara. The wrong foot stuff came later but while in the US. And his MVPs camecwith the no touch rule.

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[Doctor MJ]

i am not sure I agree here.
I don't know enough about Shai (and it's hard for me to appreciate the difference between growing up in Canada or in the US), but the other guys spent their formative years in a foreign country and that absolutely changed their development path. For instance, think how playing football might have affected Akeem and, probably, Embiid. Or how growing up in Greece affected Giannis's style, being exposed to different sports.
All of them grew up immensely in the US, including Jokic, but I wouldn't discount how important their imprinting was.

From the couch one comment I often hearis how younger player, in the last decades, are being exposed only to some very basketball specific drills. Then I think of Nash describing how playing football and lacrosse affected his style (we're hearing the same about Jokic and water polo, even if it's overblown).

So, I'll concede the point generally that regardless of actual basketball training, the childhood sporting culture of a place can matter a great deal. And I'll say specifically that Hakeem's game is very soccer-foundational while Steve Nash also reads as foreign to me with a very hockey-foundational approach (even more than soccer). I don't really think there's anything about Embiid or Giannis' style that screams Association Football to me, but maybe I'm missing something.

I do want to draw a distinction between a) learning how to play basketball by local training that proved more effectively than AAU training, and b) approaching basketball through the skills developed in another sport though. Both are real, but only the former can be a real criticism toward American basketball development. Like, if it were to turn out that Irish road bowling ended up being incredibly valuable for basketball that would be very interesting, but before we see that I'm not going to criticize basketball coaches for not embracing road bowling.

On the specific players, I'll just say my take:

a) I see Giannis (on offense) as basically just a tall, explosive battering ram who does stuff that would get him called for fouls in a sane era, but instead now get defenders called for fouls, and I think playing American football as a running back would be more useful than playing Association soccer with its rules against physical assault.

b) I see Embiid as a a) giant with great shooting skill who also excels at b) falling down and getting refs to call fouls against defenders when he falls on them, and frankly I don't see how any other sport helps a young player get good at (b). Sure soccer players founded flopping culture, but basketball players took it to a completely different level of ridiculousness before Embiid.

c) I see Shai as purely an American player in a way I don't with Nash, and it's only partially because Nash actually looks like he plays another sport when he plays basketball. The other aspect is that SGA (and his cousin NAW) literally transferred to an American high school which then helped him get recruited by the great One & Done NCAA program of the era (Kentucky) where in just that one season he played with 6 future NBA players as teammates.

Now, Nash would have done this if anyone in the US had any interest in him, so I'm not saying he was "above the US" in any way other than latitude, but the fact that the US had no interest in him meant that he had to just figure out his own way of playing without going to any AAU-style factory. Frankly him then playing different was also part of why he was so successful so I think it all worked out for him, but the reality is that he didn't really have any choice but to figure it out for himself, whereas Shai literally left Canada at a minority age to go join the American pipeline.

Re: Jokic & water polo. This one's a bit trickier. My general assessment is that Jokic is to be understood primarily through the lens of Eastern European basketball which itself needs to be understood through the lens of American basketball missionaries spreading the game to Europe and emphasizing the American trends in existence when they did so.

Now, those missionaries were at work even back as far as the 1890s, but a lot of the major success comes in the 1930s in the wake of FIBA's creation (1932) and basketball's first Olympics (Berlin, 1936). Elite American basketball in the late 1920s and through the '30s was dominated by read & react schemes that trained and featured tall pivot passers, and to this day, I'd say that's the same phylum that Serbian basketball is in.

As I say that, I need to acknowledge that water polo had already spread to Yugoslavia by that point and that alone would make it unjustified by me to say that that was irrelevant to what would come later. It's just that while Eastern European basketball may look like a totally different thing from American basketball today, that's because American basketball changed drastically compared to what it used to be, not because no Americans ever played in a style more like the Serbians.

I also want to acknowledge that it is said that the emphasis on team play in a read & react pass-heavy schemes resonated with communist ideals across all free-flow field sports (such as basketball and water polo), and it makes sense to me that this would contribute to that basketball culture remaining more team-oriented while the hyper-individualist culture of the US eventually embraced schemes that let one player dominate the ball.

I'm not comfortable saying these broader cultural norms made these differing basketball cultures inevitable, nor would I try to argue that water polo's prominence in Serbia is irrelevant to how Jokic plays, but I do think we can see some general "family trees" of style looking at stuff like this.

I'll also mention that back in and around this era, even within the US they talked about regional styles making a big difference. I was struck when I learned that the Rochester Royals - the first great pro team after World War II - had a style of play built around their star Bob Davies that was described as "Midwestern" as opposed to "Eastern", because Davies was known as the Harrisburg Houdini, and Harrisburg is literally on the Eastern side of Pennsylvania, which makes it clearly in the Eastern USA as opposed to the Midwestern USA.

It wasn't that Davies had invented the style, but that the style had spread from the Midwest (think Indiana) to the East by the time he was in high school, and that's how he played. Also for the record, Midwestern style was very much run & gun compared to the slower pace (in the possessions/game sense, there was still a lot of quick action), more methodical Eastern style. Davies' signature thing was attacking in transition with fancy dribbling and passing.

Also ftr, both the Eastern & Midwestern styles were read & react with tons of quick passing, which means they were both more like modern Serbian basketball than modern American basketball is.

Steve Nash played futbol not hockey. And he develooed his game at Santa Clara. The wrong foot stuff came later but while in the US. And his MVPs camecwith the no touch rule.

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Umm, he played basketball, futbol, hockey, lacrosse and rugby and dominated in all of them though some say he was better at a completely different type of sport - baseball - than any of them.

Nevertheless, his "Nashing" style is directly inspired by Wayne Gretzky and his use of the space behind the defense, so it's hard for me to really say another sport is a bigger influence on Nash than hockey.

Re: he developed his game at Santa Clara. Certainly - he was always looking to get better.

Also, I think the Santa Clara coach (Dick Davey) deserves considerable credit if only for giving Nash a chance when no one else would and then being open enough to allow Nash to show he should be the guy the offense runs through. And as part of the reward for that, Davey can say he once in his 15 year college head coaching career (all at Santa Clara) had a player who got drafted by the NBA, and for the 11 years after Nash could say "You can get noticed by the NBA at our school!" even though it would never happen again in the span.

[Daddy 801]

Think it all can be summed up as the talent pool is larger now. Kids that grow to 6’6” and above are the majority of NBA stars and now the sample size is the whole world of tall people instead of just America or predominantly American.

It isn’t even the world got better or America got worse. It’s simply the amount of people the world can produce who are tall is way more than what America can produce.

And now that there is so much money and the internet ANY parent or kid who has a freakish growth spurt is going to think about the possibility of sports as a future. It wasn’t on the minds of most freakishly tall people 20+ years ago. They would have had to be found by a scout or some random person with basketball knowledge and push the parents. Any parent now who has a 12 year old grow to 6’6” is going to push their kids to give basketball a shot.

Boring answer. But it’s sample size. America is going to be cooked for a long time compared to the world.