Upon the dream team’s conception in 1992, the message was clear: Nobody outside of the Americans were within the same stratosphere when it came to the game of throwing an orange ball through a ten foot ring. The likes of Jordan, Magic, and Bird showcased the flashy, athletic scoring that made the NBA such an aesthetically pleasing product as opposed to the ball movement, player movement model of the Europeans. Achieving Gold has been an established norm 32 years on and the driving force behind the astonishing 16 gold medals in 19 tries: Talent.
With the 2024 Olympics kicking off in the next week, we must look at the drastic shift of the NBA landscape as the careers of Durant, Curry, and Lebron reach their inevitable conclusion. The overseas talent is coming and for anyone paying close enough attention, it was only a matter of the American’s getting kicked off their high horse in 2004 for them to realize that their impenetrable sheath of armor was merely a tin can, dented at the first sign of trouble.
If you want to win you need a group of selfless players and a system that promotes that. With the flare of the NBA, Red Auerbach created the triangle offense, the offence that led Phil Jackson and Michael Jordan to their illustrious careers. Then we saw the San Antonio Spurs, a Gregg Popovich system predicated on making the extra pass. Lastly, and most recently we saw the Golden State Warriors who added a run and gun flare in addition to the adapted principles of Gregg Popovich’s coaching philosophy. Though each of these reached their mainstream conclusion in the United States, they were birthed upon through European origin.
For any team focused on adapting a winning culture the foundation has been laid upon by our counterparts, now, it is only a matter of time as an influx of athletes bread with such intellectual integrity are deemed as the talent that was once the overarching label of any American basketball player. There is no doubt that there remains a long journey before this hypothesis can be deemed as entirely true, but the likes of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic, and Victor Wembenyama are making it much more difficult to disprove. We often hear the statement that the NBA is a “copycat league” and there is no doubt scouts will be continuing to poor on into the remotest of regions in the quest of acquiring their own version of them.
Let us flaunt our tin armor in the meantime, for the battle is not yet upon us…. I hope.
