mixerball wrote:SportsGuy8 wrote:Today's Adriatic league (teams from all ex-Yu countries) is nowhere near the level it was 20 years ago, same for Italian league (which was very strong back in the day). Basketball only really significantly gained popularity in countries where it was almost non-existent 20 years ago.
thats because players could not leave the country like now. every super talent is now playing abroad at very young age.
Yes and in the long run, that also has a major effect on the talent-base. Without a strong local league and/or big clubs, whole basketball suffers tremendously and it shows in the total nose-dive of basketball's popularity in ex-Yu countries.
Yugoslavia was basically the major source of European basketball talent in the last 50 years or so, but I worry about the future. At it's peak, virtually every tall kid at least tried basketball, nowadays many most talented tall kids pursue other sports - not just other sports that require height (like volleyball), but also soccer, since soccer is starting to really value height.