Why Americans Don’t Rule Basketball Anymore
In late August, the USA team that went to Japan to compete in the FIBA World Championships took home the bronze medal, marking the third straight time the U.S. has not taken home the gold. Looking back, there was the shocking sixth-place finish in 2002 in Toronto and the bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics prior to this.
While there are reasons to think the 2008 Olympics, which the U.S. must qualify for again (even though it will likely prove to be essentially a formality), will have a better result, this year’s end result is hardly a fluke. Not only is basketball no longer dominated by America, we are no longer on top of the world, FIBA’s nonsensical ranking of the U.S. as No. 1 in the world (despite finishing third in the World Championships) aside.
It’s also not a real surprise when one looks at the state of basketball in America at lower levels. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and a sport is no different. In light of that, looking at basketball at levels well before the professional ranks is instructive in looking at why the home country hasn’t been on top of the world since 2000 – and even that team had a number of close contests that in retrospect may have been a bad sign of things to come.
It’s easy to lay the blame on USA Basketball, including coaches, or on the fact that most international teams play together more than the American teams do – although this point is often a bit over-stated when trying to explain the last few competitions, as it’s not like players from other countries play with each other day in, day out. But if we do that, and that mindset is adopted all across the board, one guarantee will be that we’ll go at least a few more years with America not being on top of the world in international competition. While the competition has improved, the real root cause of the drop from annihilating the competition to not even playing for the gold in the last three international competitions is within: we have seen the enemy, and it is us.
Watch a couple of games in travel team competition at the high school level – the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) scene has a huge presence in amateur basketball these days – and some things quickly become apparent. Free throws look like the hardest thing in the world as a number of them don’t go or are banked in off the glass. The entry pass (and bounce passes in general) and mid-range jump shot look like relics of days gone by. Players don’t stop and pop for short jumpers on the break, and instead they commit an offensive foul on a 2-on-1. Related to that, it seems like many players don’t want to pass the ball; going 1-on-5 is the way to win. Plenty of big men don’t care to bang inside, as they would rather face the basket, try to dribble and/or shoot the ball from 15 feet and out as though they are small forwards. Don’t even mention defense; that’s optional.
There are more issues than just those, but they are a representative sample and some of the most frequent ones. While this kind of play is not restricted to AAU by a long shot, it is at that level where it is most easily noticed at a lower level of play. Basketball in America now has a cultural problem that doesn’t begin at the level of our elite players competing in FIBA World Championships or the Olympics; rather, what we are seeing there all begins at lower levels of play and filters on up. It only makes sense, too, since players who grow up in the AAU circuit become tomorrow’s college and NBA stars, and ultimately those who compete in international competitions.
America has the best athletes, but nowadays our younger players get to high school and college not knowing how to play the game. A lot of the early success the American team had in this year’s World Championships came when they pressed less athletic teams into submission – not when they out-executed them, shot lights-out from the floor or played the kind of defense that wins championships. While a team has to play to their strength – and clearly the strength of this American team was its athletic advantage – the best teams are able to win on more than just their strong suit. A look at the 2001 Michigan State team that won the national championship is instructive: that team wasn’t the most athletic in the country and was certainly not known for running teams off the floor, but they were able to run against teams that in theory would seem to have an edge on them in a transition game. It’s just like hitting in baseball: the best hitters don’t just hit mistakes, they also hit “pitcher’s pitches”, because there are pitchers who make precious few mistakes to capitalize on.
So we’ve established that this all starts at lower levels of play. But how much deeper can we dig than that? We can’t pin this entirely on coaches; by and large they do the best they can, but they can’t do everything. At the college level, a lot of coaches don’t get to deal with purely coaching – they also have academics (can’t knock that), alumni and recruiting, among other things. But by that time, players have been shaped to a large degree, because so many have been playing basketball 12 months out of the year since they were kids, and human beings are creatures of habit.
Several college coaches have said that they have to spend time un-teaching what many of these kids already know by the time they get to college. Instead of taking players who already have a good understanding of the game to the next level, they have to first step back before they step forward. That’s not a good statement on what is happening at lower levels of play. More emphasis on skill development and team play is clearly needed, and the NCAA doesn’t help because college coaches can’t work with their players during the off-season.
Players aren’t the only ones responsible for fundamentals going out the window in recent years, nor are coaches. Indeed, sports have become entertainment as much as competition, and players grow up as fans and then reflect what fans want to see. Fans love the dunk, just like they love the long ball in baseball, but they don’t love good movement without the ball, or the clutch base hit to the opposite field on a pitch on the outer edge of the plate. Fans leave a game talking about the dunk on a defender or the crossover move made by the point guard – one which probably looked so good only because his defender didn’t move his feet and gambled – but they don’t say anything about the great ball movement by the winning team that got them good shots all game long. And that’s a problem right there – fans don’t appreciate the beauty of basketball, and players reflect that.
One example that stands out in my mind with this happened at the ABCD Camp in 1999, then run by Adidas. Gerald Wallace went in all alone on a breakaway in the senior all-star game, and with his athleticism, most probably expected a highlight-film quality dunk. Instead, he did a layup, and the place was stunningly silent.
Media reflects all of this as well. Check the highlights of games on your local news cast or SportsCenter. You will see the breakaway dunks, the shots that got swatted into the third row, and the shots at the buzzer. What you won’t see are things like offensive rebounds and stickbacks because someone knew where the ball was going and got to it, or the great bounce pass that set up the dunk. We can’t fault the media entirely; they have a business reason for this, as they know fans love what they put on the air. The unfortunate reality is that if SportsCenter was full of highlights that didn’t include dunks, a large number of fans would probably not be very interested in seeing anything but the final score and who led a team in scoring. They would probably change the channel.
This all shows that there is an emphasis on style over substance, in addition to the focus on the individual instead of the team. It’s everywhere in sports, not just in basketball, but it’s in basketball where, arguably, it is most noticeable. The NBA is a very visible part of the sports culture in America, just like college basketball is in the world of college sports. In international competition, basketball is more noticed than any of the other major sports – baseball doesn’t get the same kind of attention and media coverage, America has never been dominant in ice hockey although they have been good, and there is no football competition in the Olympics. So in light of this, it’s very noticeable that since the mid-1990s, the U.S. has gone from annihilating other countries in basketball to now losing five times in the last three competitions and winning no better than bronze.
With the athletic advantage Americans will seemingly always have in these competitions, pressing the opponent and playing a fast game is certainly an important part of the strategy. But the press is no guarantee; teams spend practice time on breaking a press, and it can be done, especially if the pressing team doesn’t quite execute it properly. So that means that a team can’t live or die by that if they are truly the best team; they have to be able to win a slower game in the event it becomes one. Sometimes a team can’t get into the press much, especially if they’re not making shots in the first place. The Kentucky teams of the mid-1990s that were famous for pressing teams into submission didn’t go undefeated.
At earlier levels of competition, our kids need to be taught how to play within a team concept. They need to be taught that athleticism alone will only get you so far in this game. They need to be taught how to play defense by doing more than reaching to try and get a steal or standing back and hoping to block a shot at the last second. Perhaps the recent decision by Adidas to end its camp in early July, which many expect to be followed by Reebok and Nike doing the same with theirs, will be a step in the right direction for this – but that alone won’t do it, especially since those few days will likely be filled by large AAU tournaments.
Likewise, fans need to appreciate the beauty of the game. They need to appreciate winning games. They need to appreciate players who don’t make highlight-film dunks on a defender, but score 15 points and grab eight rebounds by out-working the opponent. They need to appreciate players who don’t swat a shot into the seats, but poke away entry passes to disrupt an offense or make a great outlet pass off of a rebound.
Basketball in America has now become more about what fans like on the playgrounds. The dunks, crossovers and no-look passes may be part of the game, just like home runs are in baseball, but they aren’t the essence of the game. When the emphasis on basketball can shift to being about playing the game and letting athleticism enhance it, America will be on top of the world again.
