Is the International/Euro Craze Over?

[Duiz]

It is not a craze anymore, it is a fact that Internationals have NBA game. The six year olds who stared wide eyed at the Dream Team 1992 are NBA ballers now. I still think the US will remain dominant, but that could change by 2020.

PS Aren't 75% of all Argentinians either native Italians, Jewish, or both?

It is around 90% of European descent... but it is very mixed... from Italian, Spain, Croatian, Arab... yeah there are jews. There is a lot of people from there.

I am glad that people are interested. Perhaps we can get a dozen new people to find Argentina in a map after this thread.

[Paladin55]

NBA teams have had enough experience in observing European players and their teams, and have enough scouts and scouting connections in Europe, for them to be able make rational decisions regarding the evaluation of European talent.

Teams will be evaluating European and non-U.S. players in the same way that they evaluate U.S. born players. I expect that they will have a much more realistic approach to drafting them- neither overrating or underrating them, as has been the problem in the past.

[Blame Rasho]

If I may add, a lot of people who were supporting fascists and Nazis went there after WWII, especially those from Balkan countries. But yes, most of the immigrants were from Spain and Italy. I think something like 85% of Argentinian population is of European ethnicity.

I thought they went to Brazil... esp Rio.

[durden_tyler]

I want it to get stronger and stronger everywhere. Every basketball fan should. Basketball >>> soccer, football, baseball, life and needs to be the global sport.

Best post ever.

It's still sad and unfortunate that most Americans think that they own the sport and shows serious lack of appreciation for basketball outside US. Guess what, the craze is just in its infancy stages and you can do nothing about it. No offense to Lebron, Kobe, Wade and company--- because they are the best team as of now, their team was called Redeem Team for a reason and not Dream Team anymore (and not ever) and you can blame/credit that for the improvement of basketball of other international countries.

It's pathetic that to appreciate one's own you have to destroy others basketball. And it's not like international improvement will hurt the sport itself.

[Stanford]

your a bargini, fan aren't you?

If Toronto picks Morrison nobody would be all over it as he isn't a Euro.

Then you obviously aren't aware of the effect Raptor fans have on this board.

[Rasho Brezec]

If I may add, a lot of people who were supporting fascists and Nazis went there after WWII, especially those from Balkan countries. But yes, most of the immigrants were from Spain and Italy. I think something like 85% of Argentinian population is of European ethnicity.

I thought they went to Brazil... esp Rio.

German traitors fled mostly to Brazil, Balkan traitors mostly to Argentina.

[milehigh]

Interesting.
If Europe could join together to barely match USA total population, we could have a really strong team.

Europe won twice as total medals in this olympics as USA or China did...with smaller total population.

Is it really that hard to work google on the internet? I mean it's not like you have to go to a library to find this stuff out.

Europe has roughly 728 million people
compared to the US which has 300 million.
Link

So try and think of another excuse to downplay the success of America in sports and this time try to use FACTS. They don't sound as good as excuses, assumptions, and what-ifs, but they are way less whiny and bring credibility to an argument.

[Frosty]

Is it really that hard to work google on the internet? I mean it's not like you have to go to a library to find this stuff out.

Europe has roughly 728 million people
compared to the US which has 300 million.
Link

So try and think of another excuse to downplay the success of America in sports and this time try to use FACTS. They don't sound as good as excuses, assumptions, and what-ifs, but they are way less whiny and bring credibility to an argument.

Easy there Mr. Einstein, I don't think any one I know uses the same definition of Europe as your link does. Russia is now a European country? I'd lay money he wasn't including Russia in his argument.

Mind you if you just count the EU you are still looking at around 500 million people. But if you're whining about other people's accuracy you might want to check your own "facts" too.

[milehigh]

Is it really that hard to work google on the internet? I mean it's not like you have to go to a library to find this stuff out.

Europe has roughly 728 million people
compared to the US which has 300 million.
Link

So try and think of another excuse to downplay the success of America in sports and this time try to use FACTS. They don't sound as good as excuses, assumptions, and what-ifs, but they are way less whiny and bring credibility to an argument.

Easy there Mr. Einstein, I don't think any one I know uses the same definition of Europe as your link does. Russia is now a European country? I'd lay money he wasn't including Russia in his argument.

Mind you if you just count the EU you are still looking at around 500 million people. But if you're whining about other people's accuracy you might want to check your own "facts" too.

Let's make this clear Russia is in Europe and it just so happens that 78% of the population in Russia is in Europe.

Heres more prove.

So let's do the math 78% of 142,000,000

So that would be 110,760,000 of Russians living in Europe.

So I apologize it should be 700 million people live in Europe and 300 million people live in the US if you want to get technical. And if I really wanted to humor you and pretend like Russia isn't in Europe like you said. It would still not take away from my original point. The poster said the combined population of Europe (504 million not including European Russia) wouldn't equal the US population (300 million). Do you understand what im trying to get at here?

[aroba]

Hey chill out man, I'm just fantasizing here. No need to be such "precise". Spain has 40 million people while USA has 300 million people and we played the USA team. I'm just saying that a Unified Europe could match just about any of those huge countries like USA, China...and yes, Russia in overall sports.

And of course I ain't counting Russia, since they don't belong to European Community.

Just having United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, Austria, Portugal, switzerland and Greece....we would be the team to beat at the olimpics.

Ex-yugoslavian countries, ex-URSS countries as well as Turkey could be considered Europe as well, but I was talking about the old core of European Community.

If you take only those 16-17 countries mentioned we barely would match US population and still will preserve most of sport power. I guess we would be absolutely dominators on winter sports olympics, and could probably be winners on summer olympics.

Only counting those old-core EEC countries, Olimpics would be like this:
Gold - silver - bronze - total
1.-EEC 71 82 82 235
2.-China 51 21 28 100
3.-USA 36 38 36 110
4.-Russia 23 21 28 72
...now go check number of population on those 16 countries and compare to China, Russia or USA

Besides, a basketball team with Ben gordon, Luol deng, Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, Turiaf, Dirk Nowitzki, Chris Kamann, Bellinelli, Bargnani, Gallinari, both Gasol brothers, Calderon, Rudy Fernandez, Navarro, Garbajosa, Ricky Rubio, Spanoulis, Diamantidis, Papaloukas, Schortsianidis,...among many many others to choose for, would be a very interesting team to compete vs USA.

And still other eastern european good teams could also compete in the basketball olimpics and be competitive in the tournament like Croatia, Lithuania, Russia, Turkey, Slovenia, Serbia, etc, etc.

Calm down, it's just a nice fantasy to talk about, not trying to downplay nobody.
We europeans also love sports and if we could be a united country we could have a, awesome competitive core of athletes....with similar population to search them on, aprox: 400 million people vs USA 300 million, chinese 1300 millions, and Russian 140 millions. HUGE countries.

Talking about thos 16-17 countries having +25% of population over USA but TWICE the number of medals. That says a lot a bout the sports potential.

[Baseline Runner]

I said international/euro. I lived in Argentina for a year. I know more about the country than you do Duiz. For example you probably don't know that Argentinians look down and make fun of hispanics and consider themselves more European than Latin American. Its an ignorant mentality, yes, but no different than you thinking all Americans are stupid and don't know sh*t about the world. I don't like ignorant people whether european, argentinian, or american.

[Baseline Runner]

Olajuwon, Sabonis and Petrovic are all better than Yao, Nowitzki and Ginobili. Great international players have been around for decades. My point was that recently there was a lot of hype that resulted in a lot of bad draft picks. It used to be good Euro players were steals in the drafts, guys like Schrempf, Ilgauskus, Peja, Vlade Divac, etc., rarely were they picked in the top 5. Now that overhype seems to have subsided.