In the US people care about the NBA. Outside the US none except China cares about the NBA. The NBA is about as popular in most the rest of the world as cricket is in the US. I think Stern's marketing has you believing things that aren't true. The NBA is big in the US and China, has a very, very minor aspect in Argentina and Spain (even there Spanish basketball league is WAY more popular) and is practially non-existent in importance elsewhere in the world. So again everything you are saying would be true is you used the words "in the US" instead of you keep asserting this on a worldwide scale. Worldwide the NBA season is barely even a news blip compared to the Olympics basketball tournament. Let me put it like this, in Europe for example the NBA is much less important than Major League Soccer even is in the US.
manu is not playing this olympics to rest for the spurs. that tells you b/t the NBA and olympics. yes he already won gold medals, but he also have won NBA championships. again, you are right. i'm sure yao believes chinese basketball is more important. but that's him. what declan and I are talking about is how the WORLD perceives yao when he retires. nobody is gonna care what he did for china. they only care if he dominated and won in the NBA. yao can win 10 gold medals and nobody will care if he keeps losing in the first round.
if that's the case, how come we have basketball players from every country it seems like. it's like arguably the most diverse team sport right now in the world. argentina? france? serbia? china? .... it's also very popular in the ENTIRE ASIA continent (vietnam, philllipines, korea, taiwan... where everybody dresses like iverson it seems like). please, know what you're talking about first please. again, tell me who is going to watch angola v. china except for chinese and angolians? just b/c the olympics are avaiable to billions don't mean everybody watches it. but if you don't understand this logic, you haven't followed the game of basketball long enough. and i'm sure you don't know how basketball critics regard basketball players (what they do in the NBA).
Again if you say, "nobody in the US cares" you are right, but once again you are projecting US only reality to the whole world. You keep asserting US only opinions on the entire rest of the world. Like you brought up Dirk and being worldwide famous. In Europe (excluding Germany) the average person has never in their lives seen a Dallas Mavericks game. So if he is so famous worldwide as you assert how is this possible if as you also assert his fame (not in the US but "worldwide" according to you) is 100% directly because of the NBA?
You simply don't seem to be able to differentiate between famous in the US and "worldwide famous". You keep insisting that if someone is famous in the US they are famous "worldwide". NBA players are not worldwide famous. There are only 3 players in NBA history that are worldwide famous, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan. That is it. You are talking about European players for example in the NBA as being worldwide famous and yet even in Europe hardly anyone has ever even heard of them outside of the home country they come from. Even then basketball is very minor in the home country in question. Basketball is important in Lithuania and Greece and that's it. Even in Greece though soccer is still 100 times bigger than basketball. Lithuania is the only place in all of Europe where the average person follows basketball or cares about it. In neither country does anyone ever care or follow the NBA however only the national league and Euroleague. Even in the biggest basketball nations like Lithuania, the NBA is completely meaningless to people and no one pays attention to it. Again the Dirk example, well in Germany basketball doesn't mean much of anything at all. In fact, Dirk was supposed to be a handball player. And this is just Europe which has 500 million people to the 300 million in the US, let alone the rest of the world. Again with China, 1.6 billion people and only something like 100 million follows NBA regularly and only 250 million for a Bucks-Rockets game. Any game between big nations at the 2008 Olympic basketball competition will draw more viewers than even an NBA Yi-Yao match up (which remember has more viewers than the Super Bowl does and don't tell me that the NBA is close to even as big as the Super Bowl in the US). So something exponentially BIGGER than the Super Bowl and you are almost completely dismissive of it like people around the world are more concerned with how Aaron Brooks does with the Rockets.
When I lived in Germany in a city of 150,000 people there was 1 basketball court inside in the entire city and 3 outside courts. The outside courts were empty year round. The only place to play any games was the inside courts. There was never in 2 years one German person that ever appeared. There was only a couple Americans and a couple Greeks. But we have people here convinced everyone in Germany knows about the NBA because of Dirk. I am sorry but for you to ask if I am living in 2002, perhaps you should be asking if you are aware that what people in the US believe does not in fact equate to how the rest of the world actually is. The NBA is such a minor thing in Europe, it's about as important as the Indian cricket championship is in the US.
Minor or not without the NBA, people from a different country wouldn't know who LeBron, Kobe, or any other popular NBA player without the NBA. Goodness how hard is that to grasp.
The Olympics are very important to Manu Ginobili, he's going despite the Spurs concerns: No surprise: Spurs' Ginobili to play in Beijing Mike Monroe: Spurs sure Manu will play
Sorry, it was a joke. Seriously. But you're still not understanding the points in the context of this thread regarding Yao Ming or the minor side issue of why the best non-American players come to the NBA. This has nothing to do with being nationalistic or ethnocentric, indeed it's insulting to me that you think I'm being biased here because I'm an American and presuming I think "We Are The World". It's basketball and the world does look to the NBA to compare their basketball heroes. But since you obviously speak for "the rest of the world" I'll defer to you, and aver that you still just dont get it.
It's hard to grasp because you are asserting falsehoods. A guy like Kobe known only so far from the NBA is NOT popular and known in most of the world. But you guys keep asserting he is. I am telling you even in the biggest basketball hot beads in the world outside the US the average person has no freaking clue who NBA players are unless they did see them in something like an Olympics. You are using arguments based on falsehoods. Manu actually played in Italy and the average person doesn't care or follow Manu and this is with winning an Olympics AND with Italy being one of the places where basketball is most popular. And as a place like Italy can get 6,000-7,000 average a game for their basketball league, no one there even cares about the NBA. These guys like Kobe that you guys keep saying are so famous in these places are no more "famous" than Ryan Bowen is in the US.
oops, he DID initially said he wouldn't go to rest his injuries. but again, yao's legacy is made in the NBA, not olympics/international ball. if you can't grasp that concept nine_gates, you havne't followed the NBA long enough. michael jordan is not considered the greatest athlete in the world of all time (if you ask most sports watchers) arguably b/c he won a gold medal.
You don't read what others say well do you? Magic, Bird, and Jordan are worldwide famous basketball players. There are no other worldwide basketball players. Back in the 1980s and 1990s the NBA was an enormously popular sport and around the world was huge. It had huge TV ratings and followings and people cared about it. Today, other than China and the US no one cares basically at all about the NBA anymore. Yes people know Jordan from the NBA but they have no idea who Kobe is or whatever. You are comparing apples and oranges from a lost era the "glory days" or "golden age" as people call it of the NBA to the era now when the NBA popularity around the world is several tiers lower than then. The NBA used to be a major player in European TV markets for instance and today it can't even get half the viewers that the local domestic leagues are getting over there. And to put that in perspective, most of the domestic leagues over there would be as important as AA baseball in the US. There is no such thing today as a popular worldwide NBA like there was in the Bird/Magic and Jordan eras and there is no such player in the NBA that is famous worldwide. It doesn't exist anymore. I guess exists in the minds of some NBA fans, but it doesn't exist in reality. Sorry to burst your bubble if you thought the NBA was still important outside the US because it's not in the least anymore. The big thing that saved the NBA and Stern internationally was Yao and China. That's what has upped the viewer ship and revenues because of China's influx. Outside China though the market is practically non-existent. The sad thing about this is that despite this the refs have been unfair to Yao.
Wow this is incredibly wrong. NBA basketball is broadcast in Europe on Sky and Canal and all over Asia via ESPN Asia. I know this because I have seen it. Allen Iverson is the most popular player in Japan - there's a reason why the NBA sells out its games in Japan. Phillipines is basketball-crazy, read the Gilbert Arenas thread. Turkey has a TV channel that is all NBA basketball. I know this, because i watched it. You're either mistaken or lying here.
don't mind him for being in a cave. i've seen pictures of young chinese teens sporting cornrows for god sake when iverson went to promote his shoe in china. chinese in cornrows? c'mon now. NBA must have "some" impact.
are you serious? yes yao def. helped brought over the chinese market and god knows stern thanked him for that. but you must be joking if you think nobody watches the NBA outside of china and US. i've been back to my home country in vietnam and kobe and iverson are the 2 most popular players over there. you even see iverson jerseys sometimes in the freakin' village (though fake ones).
You know what? I'm going to just ignore everyone here that keeps posting total nonsense. I can't believe how lacking in sports knowledge so many of Rockets fans are.
Billy, nobody cares if you ignore us or not (note this is your 3rd ignore threat of the day - maybe this time it will work).
Reducing Yao's minutes and making him a "Rhythem scorer" is a must. When the other team scorers, then Yao must come back up the court no need to rush or anything take your time get position in the Low-Post and counter the scoreboard. After some great defense is players such as after a block shot then try to capitalize ASAP by getting down the court in a hurry for a easy basket. After a good rebound, then go back up the court no need to rush and bring Yao out high into the High-Post and run the offense forcing the other team to try to read the offense much more difficult with all the player movement, and ball movement and passing going on. Making Yao more of a passer because of his court vision also provides him more energy to produce in the Low-Post. Simple method should be a cake walk and by the time you know it the game should be too far out of reach if the other team cant catch up with Yao countering every basket down low time will run out eventually. When he is rested if the game is close, then he can close out the game in a slow manner using the clock in the Low-Post in the 4th and end of the 2nd.
That's all fine and true, but that's not what folks are saying in this thread, and no one is even debating that. Yes, the NBA is the best basketball league on the planet. Yes, international players know if they want to play against the best, or define their basketball legacy as being one of the best ever then they will have to dominate in the NBA. But that doesn't translate to how popular the NBA is worldwide, it being more important to play in this league as opposed to playing for your country, etc. If you (not you per se, just anyone) is arguing that more folks care about the NBA, or an NBA championship compared to the Olympics then you are wrong. I don't know Yao personally, but I would bet that he cares more about these Olympic games than he does about playing in the NBA....and it makes perfect sense if he does. He has a whole nation relying on him to play well in these games. I love the Rockets and the NBA...I just understand our place in the pecking order. Just because our NBA athletes don't give a rats ass about the Olympic games doesn't mean that most athletes from overseas feel the same way. They keep showing us time and time again that the Olympic games are very important to them and their country (Dirk, Manu playing hurt, Yao, etc). And sports fans worldwide continue to show us which one they care about more.
