We have reached you

In the last years, we have witnessed how European players have arrived to the NBA. I remember that in the eighties, not many Europeans were playing in the NBA, and their role was not very important. Besides, at Olympic Games and World Championships USA got the first place without much difficulties with an universitary team.

But as George Karl once said, "they have reached us", meaning that nowadays we have European players playing a top role on their teams (Nowitzki, Gasol or Kirilenko), while the USA is having big problems in finding a competitive team for the international competitions (even Spain managed to defeat them in the World Championship in Indianapolis, 2003). But there are also a lot of European players in the NBA, coming from the bench and performing good games. And, at team level, we have seen how some NBA teams have been defeated by European teams. I am sure that nowadays many NBA teams could not defeat much of the top European teams, do you think so?

The reasons for this are maybe beyond my mind. But I think that the level of most American players has decreased, since many of them do not finish their university period, and therefore, they lack of an important background. They base their basketball on their phisical skills, not having much more to show and sometimes they forget that basketball is played by teams of five players, not by five guys looking for their own starship. Besides, the generous commercial contracts they sign at an early age, make them more concerned about their business than about basketball.

I feel some fear when I read that a single player has made 30 throws in a game, such as Kobe Bryant and Lebron James tend to do every two nights; while the other four players are watching them as mere spectators. I would like to highlight also that the average number of assits per game has plummeted and now we can have a team whose maximum assits player has reached only two. That means that everyone in Dallas team (one of my favourites teams, though) took the ball and shot, as simply as that. I remember John Stockton having spent fifteen years giving 15 assits per game. Nowadays, that is impossible unless you are Steve Nash, who is Canadian by the way.

I do not pretend to write a complete thesis about basketball, but I just remembered how much I love basketball and I wanted to write something about it in my blog. I will try to write more from time to time. Next time, I will write about my favourite players and games.