chudak wrote:i agree that ultra fans and huligans care about team accomplishments and only that and they dont care about euroleague, rhey only care about their club
But I am talking about what is held in higher regard and that is definitely national team
And national team performances are viewed more broadly as more important if you remove the most hard core club fans who often only care about the club and root for it in soccer, basketball and all other sports
Jokic is a good example
You can be the best player in the World, multiple time MVP winner, NBA champion and if you miss a NT competition you get a lot of hate from fans and media
Same goes for local players, if you decline a NT invite you will catch a lot of hate, even after carying your team to an NBA title or to a new MVP
A lot of Serbian fans like Bogdanovic more than Jokic just because he doesnt skip NT games
I'm talking about the basketball level.
NBA and EuroLeague are just way, way better than any national team competition. Any of these major national team competitions has all kinds of players that look like they are all world stars, but they are not actually good enough to play in a regular main rotation in the NBA or the EuroLeague. It's the same with most of the coaches.
None of the national team tournaments should be used as a gauge of the level of the teams, players, and coaches.
Seriously, guys that are not even good players in secondary European leagues like the EuroCup and FIBA BCL often are superstars in these national team tournaments.
And from a basketball standpoint, the whole concept of rating the basketball level by national team competitions is totally illogical.
If Pau Gasol was born in Armenia, he would never sniff a FIBA medal. Hell, even if he was born in like Croatia, he very likely would have never won a single medal in FIBA. Sergey Belov, Gennady Volnov, all of those Soviet players that won so many medals - if they were born in Sweden, Austria, etc. no medals. Even if they were born in France or Turkey, or Greece, there would be a very strong chance they never win a medal.
There were decades where Soviet Union and Yugoslavia were super teams and if they didn't win a gold or silver at a tournament, it was a major failure.
There was Spain, that had for 15+ years, the best rosters in Europe, and the second best rosters in the world, and most of the time, the next best team after them was way, way less talented. And anything less than a silver or gold was a huge failure.
There is Team USA, that has the best roster in every tournament and should be ashamed when they don't win, and that includes all of the FIBA World Cup losses, that they supposedly "don't care about".
The national team tournaments are just about pride, patriotism, nationalism, cultural stuff, etc. But they should never be used as a gauge of basketball level of leagues, teams, players, coaches.
From a purely basketball sports viewpoint, EuroLeague and NBA are much more important than any of these 1-2 week long national team tournaments that are decided by 99% simply based on where players are born or not born, along with the ridiculousness of some naturalizations like Lorenzo Brown. Which just makes it even more ridiculous for national team tournaments to have any importance whatsoever, other than just for the nationalism, patriotism, bragging rights, trash talking, etc.
