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

[dhsilv2]

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.

And KAT...

[prophet_of_rage]

Well let's see:

1. In my experience analyzing perception and developments in the WNBA in contrast to the NBA, I tend to see things as often 10-20 years behind. It's not a universal rule, but it tends to hold true even when there was no good reason for it. The WNBA gets dominated from the jump by Cynthia Cooper a Euro-Stepping 3-point shooter, well before the NBA had anyone like that... and yet still, pace & space in the W didn't really take off until the 2020s. The whole league seemed to just want to dismiss Cooper leading her team to a 4-peat as some kind of weird fluke and instead craved finding dominant bigs to lead both a team's offense and defense. Not only was this in the process of proving to be backward in the NBA, I'd argue it always made less sense in the W where "bigs" really aren't that big.

2. But clearly, money-wise, the fact that women's basketball hasn't been a source of profit that allows the players to get paid millions as anything other than oligarch pets, had made it completely understandable that they haven't been able to achieve the same type of global talent pool that the WNBA has.

3. Until now. If WNBA management doesn't utterly ruin everything for themselves, we're going to have a bigger global focus on women's basketball talent development flood into the WNBA. This year we saw Dominique Malonga and others come in from France - part of the same state-sponsored stuff that the men's prospects are part of, and then soon enough we'll get Awa Fam from Spain.

I don't know if Malonga & Fam will develop the finer basketball skills to dominate the W, but as coarse physical talents, I expect they'll make A'ja Wilson look short and slow in comparison.

There is and has been a huge global talent pool of women. Women's basketball exists in nearly all the major basketball countries. Russia poured a lot into women's basketball. Didn't touch US women. And US women don't play streetball, eitger.

It's a narrative based around 5 non-American players now. But if Europe is superior in talent NBA washouts wouldn't be able to go to Europe and dominate. But they do.

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So let me say first here, since it's you & I going back & forth here, if memory serves you've got a lot of knowledge of women's hoops, and honestly I'm more interested in just getting a good discussion going than winning a debate.

Next thing I'll say is that I didn't really touch upon the streetball allegations of the OP before so let me address that now:

Streetball is how New York City became the great basketball city of the world, and the death of streetball absolutely relates to why it no longer is. (Now, it's Los Angeles home of warm weather, almost as many citizens, and basically every associated with the NBA with basketball or basketball-adjacent expertise.)

So while streetball's diminished participation hurts American basketball, I'd say more specifically it hurts the East Coast cities know for streetball (NY, Philly, DC, etc), but other methods of development have developed further to make up for this.

Re: "Russia poured a lot into women's basketball. Didn't touch US woman." Eh, maybe you'll correct my misunderstandings, but I'd very much disagree with these assertions.

The Soviet Union poured a lot into women's basketball, and as a result kicked Team USA's butt over and over and over again as it was crystal clear from 1959 through 1983 that American women were not the best female basketball players in the world, and even after the breakthrough of 1984 due to the USSR's boycott and them winning again in 1988, come 1992 the Americans were yet again losing to the remnants of the USSR.

So whereas in the men's game, the US has always, aways, always been the best basketball nation in the world from 1890s to the present, this wasn't the case on the women's side of things.

For the women, first it was the Canadians, then the Americans, then the Soviets, and then finally the Americans again.

So how did the Americans finally end the Soviet reign? By winning the Cold War and destroying the USSR. From that time onward, Russia's been a shell of its Soviet self.

Now, eventually Russian oligarchs would through extreme money at American players, but in terms of their development program, it's kinda been crap ever since.

Now I don't want to act like women American basketball hasn't improved though. The #1 thing here was Title IX in the '70s, which pushed for girls to have as much athletic opportunity as boys - something that had been true in the Communist Bloc, but to this day isn't necessarily a norm in much of Europe.

I will say this in terms of streetball. New York dribblers were always overrated and the minute other cities started playing seriously the city game was over. New York hasn't been relevant for a while. Ballers come from Los Angeles, Texas, Chicago, the Baltimore-DMV, Atlanta, Florida and Seattle mostly. Which tells younthey are still playing outside becauae those are all moatly warm weather states.

As OP said the game has matured to a point where everybody can do all the things so it isn't special unless you're a physical freak like Jokic, Luka, Giannis and Wemby are. But there is no wave behind those four. It's juat them. They don't play any different than American counterparts. They are just bigger.

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[bonita_the_frog]

Kevin Durant isn't declining the best scorer since MJ was a boy
Even last season KD averaged 26.6 points, .527 field, .430 threes!
And this season averaging 27.7 points, .522 field, .368 threes, after 4 gameroos!