Sorry for the long delay. Now to get to the point...
Thorgalaeg said:
Why? I see it exacly like football. It is logical that in NBA there are more "central" players from US since it is an US league. Your argument is endogamic. You are saying that NBA player are superior becuase they play in NBA. It is circular logic. To be objective you must go out of such circle and look at the topic with some perspective, and the only places to do so are international tournaments.
It's not logical IMO that more franchise players are American because it's an American league. Franchise player is determined by exceptional talent, as in Dirk Nowitzki, Yao Ming, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash etc... The NBA has no problem with taking foreign players if they are good enough. Who was the number 1 pick last year? An Australian... This year? An Italian. Granted, neither is considered a true franchise player, but the point is NBA teams will take players from anywhere if they're good enough.
And I do look at the topic with some perspective. I watch
a lot of basketball, to put it mildly. Here is the major difference in our thoughts I think: I do not view the international tournaments as the ultimate place to judge talent (or the highest level of basketball)- though obviously it is valuable. IMO the NBA is the highest level of basketball in the world, period. If you want to judge a country's true talent pool, I suggest looking at the best players it sends to the NBA and how dominant they are there, in the NBA. Viewed from this perspective, the country with the greatest talent is the US, and it's not even close. Now international basketball and players are extremely important, it's just that there's no single country that rivals the US, or even comes close to it, in overall talent.
MCdread said:
But that doesn't mean that they add up to form a talented team. Or that they are talented team players or at least talented team players when playing alongside the specific teammates they had for the tournament.
The issue of team play, tactics, strategy and knowledge is a key issue in the USA's embarassing and disgraceful losses in the International format, obviously, but it is actually separate from the question of a country's talent and ability to produce great players IMO.
Call it lack of experience, lack of talent, lack of concentration, lack of form or lack of desire, but it certainly looks like lack of something...
I definitely would not call it lack of talent. The talent is there. The US could have sent another equally talented team of completely different players. Lack of planning and strategy, lack of desire, lack of taking the international competitions seriously... but not lack of talent. The US is trying to change this, but obviously international teams are competent enough to beat the US in the international game.
Also, I agree that talent and technique is something very difficult to define. In a football analogy, in southern countries we generally praise our players' technique and ability, while dismissing northern european players as all force and no technique. Yet that hides the fact that we're only counting on feet ability, fancy moves and neat dribbles, not counting such fundamental actions as technique: reception, passing, shooting, heading, etc. which is ridiculous from my point of view.
The US has so many good players... the numbers are overwhelming. This is not to say that there aren't other good and talented basketball countries, but the US has enough talent in all facets of the game. They do not win in International competitions however.
For example, before Ginobili had been enrolled in the NBA, I doubt he'd be considered as a candidate to NBA Finals MVP. Nobody would look at him as having the athleticism to attack the basket and dunk in individual plays and lead last second plays against fierce defenses.
But while he doesn't have that so praised athleticism of typical NBA star guards, he has incredible agility, speed and ball control, and his qualities have suprised prety much the entire NBA community. In short, he has a different type of talent to what is the standard.
Well, Manu was never a true NBA finals MVP candidate. It was always known that Duncan would win. Manu is a very good player, though not a true franchise player. He also had a terrible past season and is probably surpassed by Andres Nocioni now IMO (I love Nocioni). I consider Ginobli to be quite a good athlete anyway. Yes he is different, because he brings some Argentinian drive and physicality to the game (so does Nocioni). But this is the point, the NBA takes the best European and International players now. This is what I have been saying from the beginning, if you want to judge talent pool, see what and how many franchise players a country is able to send to the NBA.
USA lost and should use this as fuel to prepare for the Olympics.
Why do you think Duncan got p*ssed off? And I saw it this championship with my own eyes (For example, on a typical play in the round robin I saw Melo get hammered really good under the rim and he couldn't believe he didn't get the call... I mean it was a hard foul), but if you don't want to take me word for it, look at this article by Chris Sheridan from ESPN NBA Insider on the lead up to the championship: 
