You are about to read some of the smartest analysis from any NBA player,
coach or official about why it seems the Americans, when it comes to
international basketball play, couldn't beat a foreign team composed of
three French Poodles and two third-graders if their lives depended on it.
This is why we stink in international hoops, why we finish in third
place despite having delicious NBA stars on the roster, or at least how
Dallas owner Mark Cuban sees it. And he's right. He's so right that by
the time you are done reading this you will be nodding your head in
agreement.
"I can make it easy for you," Cuban said when I asked him to give me 10
steps to make America's international basketball experience more
successful -- and less like having a left testicle being hit with a ball
peen hammer. "Either we change all levels of basketball in the USA to
play by international rules, or we get them to play by U.S. basketball
rules.
"I would be willing to bet that if you brought back all the same teams
in the final eight and played under NBA rules," Cuban said, "with an NBA
ball on an NBA-sized court, we would torch them. The different rules
require different skill sets. It's that simple.
"If one set of rules isn't natural to you, you will struggle to adapt,"
Cuban continued in his e-mail. "We hear it all the time about
international players having to adapt to the NBA game. Here the rules
are geared towards entertainment, which is a good thing. But if we
changed to international rules, we would have a completely different set
of stars and teams would be constructed and coached completely
differently."
The international teams put more emphasis on pure shooting, for example.
They don't care as much about slam dunks. They want to make outside
shots, not highlight shows.
Don't stop reading. Cuban is just getting warmed up.
"And as far as wondering why the USA can't dominate the Olympics like
the original Dream Teams, there is an easy answer," he said. "We plugged
in our NBA stars to play against international teams that had been
comprised of non-professionals forever. While at the same time the
Soviet Union imploded, so the one team that also was filled with
professionals didn't exist any longer."
"Of course the U.S. teams were going to kill any and every team," Cuban
continued. "It was our stars against their amateurs. Well, 15 years
later, they have had plenty of time to integrate their professionals
into their teams. Their national teams not only start playing together
much younger, they play together every summer and their players go pro
younger. So they have professional players who are now playing together
every summer, year after year, for well-funded national teams. On top of
that, the top Euro (teams) play against each other. They get friendlies
that are competitive. The U.S. team played against creampuffs a couple
times before the tournament."
That makes so much sense my head hurts.
Cuban is not trying to diss the Dream Team, but what he says is true.
That team did not play a series of pro teams. They played scrubs. It was
like the Dallas Cowboys taking on a state college.
Then Cuban says something that at first I don't agree with, but then,
after reading what he says, his argument sways me.
"All that said, I personally think that the NBA, from a business
perspective, is stupid for letting our players play at all," Cuban
explains. "We absorb all the risk and we have gained little if anything
from it. Well, that's not completely true. (The) last six to 10 years of
international competition have led media to call our players selfish,
without basic basketball skills, ugly Americans and worse. This year's
team was far better behaved and that's great. But we put ourselves in a
no-win, everything-to-lose situation (just ask Memphis). That’s not good
business. Ever."
When I tell Cuban that -- to borrow a lame phrase being used about
another topic altogether -- refusing to play, instead of fixing the
problems, would be cutting and running, he responds: "It's just a
financial decision. The Olympics is nothing but a big business. It's not
a platform for national pride. They are a competitor for advertising and
TV dollars. Lending them our best players is a dumb business decision.
It has nothing to do with winning or losing."
The Americans have everything to lose while international clubs have
everything to gain. Keeping our NBA players out of it and reengineering
the international team to play a more international style might be the
best thing to do.
As usual, Cuban makes too much sense.
