Back to the thread title without all the unnecessary trolling and "LOL USA DABEST EVAR" stuff... I would love to see a Rest of the World Team vs USA would be an amazing exhibition game. Who would make the international team? (I'm very likely to miss good players here so help me out): Tony Parker Pau Gasol Mark Gasol Manu Ginobili Dirk Nowitzki Andrew Bogut Serge Ibaka Luol Deng Ricky Rubio Nikola Pekovic Andrei Kirilenko Pushing the boundaries on the rules - give International team Kyrie Irving. Andrew Wiggins? Dante Exum? But then you have a starting 5 of Paul, Harden, Durant, James and Howard with awesome players on the bench and you start to realise how far ahead the US team is...
It would have to look something like Parker/Dragic/Batum/Ibaka/Noah with some combination of Ginobili/Rubio/Oladipo/Wiggins/Nowitzski/Deng/Horford/Gortat/Gasols/Valenciunas/etc. on the bench.
Americans bragging about Winning with Basketball is like Chinees bragging about winning with Tabletennis or the Dutch bragging about winning with Korfball. The USA is the best country at basketball, but the world is getting better, there are more talented players in the NBA who are not from the US than there were 20 years ago. I do not think the any other country will ever be better than the US at basketball. But it is nice that the other countries also have talented players, It is a enrichment for the NBA. It is funny that the center position is the one were many of the best players are not american.
The time frame isn't 20 years, it's about 10 years. 10 years ago the refrain was 'the world is catching up" - since 2006 though it's really looked a lot more like the world is falling futher behind, at the Senior team level. The US sent basically a "B" level squad this time, with maybe 3 or 4 guys who would make the A team - and nobody really could touch them. Also the old guard of non-American players is aging - the Gasols, Dirks & Ginobilis/Parkers - and there doesn't appear to be a ton of young talent behind them.
I never thought the world was really catching up. The USA is and will probably always be superior. It is true that the old guard are aging, but I do think there are some talents coming to the NBA. The amount of talented pnon us players is increasing, However these are good role players in general, not allstars and certainly not the level of Nowitzki, Gasol, Parker etc.
I have been hoping for something like this during the All Star break. Maybe do away with the Rookies-Sophomores. Much more interesting and probably competitive.
But only 15% of the U.S. is African Americans, and the U.S. basketball team is 90% African Americans and starters are 100% African Americans. What's the point comparing populations?
If every state of the U.S. is allowed to send a team to FIBA, Serbia will be lucky to even crack top 50.
New term is Asian. Oriental is akin to "negro" or "mulatto". Technically correct but cringeworthy when used by one race to describe another. I am very close friends with a 70 year old white guy who uses this term everytime he talks about Asians. It doesn't bother me the slightest, but thats only because I know him and what kind of person he is. On the other hand, if it was someone new that I just met or happened to be a younger fellow (my age or younger), there would have to be a quick conversation about my discomfort with the word oriental.
I would be happy to further discuss the use of the word Orient and Oriental, being old enough to have heard it used very often in a non-perjorative way for years (Northwest Airlines was call Northwest Orient Airlines from the late 1940's until its merger with Republic Airlines in the late 1980's, for example), but this is not the proper forum for such a discussion. I can't speak to heypartner's use of the term "oriental," but I find personally offensive the idea that somehow I am "racist" because I grew up hearing both words, orient and oriental, used in a non-perjorative way. If it is considered politically incorrect these days to use both terms, so be it. I rarely use either word myself in conversation now, but when I do, the idea that somehow I am being "racist" is absurd. It was commonly used among educated people in the 1950's and '60's as an alternative to the phrase "The Far East" (and no doubt there is something "wrong" with that term now) to describe the general area of East Asian countries like China and Japan. When I traveled to the region in the mid-'60's, going to Japan and Hong Kong, among other places, it was being commonly used by fellow travelers. And that is the last post about this subject you are going to see from me in a forum devoted to basketball, or in Hangout, for that matter. If someone was offended somehow by any of my comments, I apologize, but the "offense" was unintentional. However, if someone calls me "racist," they will get a reply filled with adjectives the software here will delete, and then go on my ignore list.
If you don't know the background of these labels, then you likewise shouldn't be surprised if someone calls you ignorant or racist. Jap, Eskimo, mulatto and a litany of other terms are names people ascribed to people without their consent, historically used in a derogatory fashion, and labels they want to change. If you go to Italy and flick the backside of your hand underneath your chin, you shouldn't be surprised if someone takes offense. It's your fault for not understanding the context of the gesture. I'm also not sure why you came out and defended heyp for him in this thread. If you reread the rhetoric of his posts, he went full idiot and clearly had the intent of being derogatory. By the same logic of the way you've been defending him, I can think of a few terms that accurately label heyp, his past, and demographic. Words alone, I could come up with the same argument that I'm just objectively using them, matter-of-fact; taken into historical context of usage, they're absolutely horrible. However, I wouldn't be so ignorant to use them.
I wasn't coming down on you Deck, just letting you know why some folks take offense to certain words.
Everyone knows and the excuse of I heard it 50 years ago is an incredibly stupid excuse. In hp's case I believe it because he is so messed up he faps at his relatives.
Yes, but he invented the game in the US. Like Elon Musk and TESLA, its the rules and resources that the country offers that allows it (the country) to be great. If you think its only the people, then your probably racist.
