Baskeball "World Cup" gets no respect

Wow... I don't think you could be more wrong. You can't compete internationally in football, because we're the only people good at it. We will eventually compete internationally in baseball as it's one of Bud Selig's dreams to create a baseball world cup, though hopefully his ass won't be around much longer. I hope an actually competent Commish can get this together. We do compete internationally in hockey, but I think think the only international competition that matters is the olympics and now that NHL players are playing, people will start showing more and more support for the US team. '98 was a disgrace and hurt the image of the team quite a bit, and I was pretty shocked and how into hockey people were these olympics because of what happened in '98.

Now the one for the discussion, basketball. Why doesn't it matter much? Becuase, as it was said above, we're the best, far and away. Maybe if there was actual need for Kobie to be there he might decide to play, but we might as well just send college kids out there and provide some competition for the other teams vs. getting their asses kicked. I can't imagine they get paid a whole lot either vs. playing in the World Cup where they get paid quite a bit of money.

People totally prefer country vs. club, it's just when club competitions are actually more meaningful it might appear that way. When any given single NBA team is better than any other country, club seems to be the obvious choice.

That US vs. Cuba game a few years back in Baltimore showed how supportive this country is for international baseball. Next time we'll let Cuba play a true national team and not just a MLB team and we'll see how much they win by.

Give this country's people a little more credit than that. I'd prefer to not send an NBA all-star team there cause what would the point of even playing the competition be?

 

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Canadian Football is hardly so different not to count it. NFL is doing better and better in Mexico. The attendance in Germany has been fairly impressive, but we can ignore that if you like. Basically, American football is very popular in North America.

 

No they wouldn't

 

US is still the basketball equivalent of a Brazil?

What is Brazil's longest winning streak in history? Can it boost a winning streak of 10 years?

Name an era that 21 of the Brazilian squad of 22 are simply the best 21 players in the world. Don't kid yourself that in 1970, Felix, Brito, Everaldo, and Piazza are 4 of the best 21 players in the world.

When was Brazil considered a failure when winning the World Cup but only won the semi-final by 1 goal and the final by something like 2 goals?

I mean, when the whole country went into a carnival for days for beating Turkey by 1-0 and Germany by 2-0, it tells me the Brazilian standards are low. Here in the U.S., we all moaned for beating Lithuania by 2 points and beating France by 10 points, IN THE WORLD CUP EQUIVALENT OF BASKETBALL!!!

Brazil's dominance in football is nowhere near the U.S. dominance in basketball. Wait until Brazil win every World Cup game by at least 5 goals, that a 4 goal win is considered a failure, then they are getting into the neighborhood.

In the history of international competition in football, there was only 1 team that was close to the U.S. domination in basketball: England from the 1900s to 1920s, when they had a winning streak that spanned 15 years against continental competition, and an unbeaten streak that spanned 21 years. Their record in that span was:

P22 W21 D1 L0 F109 A23

Had the World Cup started at the same time as the Olympics (1896), England would have racked up at least 3-4 trophies. Uruguay wouldn't have won the 1924 and 28 Olympics as well as the first WC had England participated.

 

In my experience, football (American) is not much more than a curiousity, outside of Mexico. Since much of Mexico seems to be Dallas fans, no one cares .

Back on basketball:
While the FIBA World Championship isn't quite top billing yet, the growth of the game overseas has. Just look at the sports media coverage of this past NBA draft. And the top story wasn't why Caron Butler had to wait so long.

 

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yeah, it helps that NFL Hemmorage (Europe) is based in cities with US military bases and about 80% of the fans are American based in those cities...

Canadian football...buch of sore losers after an American Team won the Grey Cup in the mid-90s so they decided to move all the US teams back to US Jr....

 

this is what i see the world popular.
i votoed football at 5. because of the superbowl.
i live in germany and i can watch the superbowl on tv but nothing about baseball.

this is my personal ranking:
1. soccer
2. nothing
3. nothing
4. cycling
5. formula one
6. boxing
7. funsports
8. ice hokey
9. tennis
10. basketball

 

When I was at the University of Buckingham in England in the late 80's, I used to go to a local gym for some pick-up hoops. It was easily the worst basketball I've ever experienced. But the key point was their love for the game. Each player would be calling themselves different NBA players (everyone wanted to be Magic) and while waiting for the next game, everyone would be talking about the NBA.

Some of it may have been related to the fact that there was an American in their presence and I could answer all of their questions about the NBA but they already had a strong interest in the game.

Murf

 

The US was one of the only countries in the world that voted against allowing NBA players in international competitions.

So, you are proposing that the NBA was putting a lot of pressure on USA Basketball and the other basketball federations to allow NBA players into the Olympics yet USA Basketball voted against the NBA's wishes???

That is nutty. The NBA is the 900lb. gorilla of basketball in the US. If it had wanted to have the NBA players in the Olympics, they would have instructed USA Basketball to vote in favor of it and the weanies at USA Basketball would have been compliant.

Murf

 

I think you and I have both been on BS long enough for everyone to have a pretty clear idea of which one of us is naive and which one of us sees a conspiracy theory at every turn.

 

Re: Re: Basketball "World Cup" gets no respect

So does the World Championships.

This is a really weird statement. FIBA IS an international sports body. Just like the ICC, just like the IRB, just like the IIHF, just like FIS.

Why in the world is soccer the only sport that should get it's own international governing body? Do you really think the IOC whould be the authority for every other sport, including ones not in the Olympic Movement like rugby, cricket, and Formula One?

Some group? FIBA is 70 years old, and the BWC is over 50!

You don't want to follow it? Fine, but don't be so friggin' provincial about it.

 

Venezuela follows baseball much as well.

 

FIBA could be 700 years old and it wouldn't matter to US basketball fans. What interest there is in international "competition" is focused on the Olympics. The FIBA cup is just not a big deal here-just like europe doesn't seem to care about Olympic soccer.

Why would american fans want to go out of their way for this? If any of the the foreign players are any good, they'll end up in the NBA anyway.

 

The FIBA World Cup just seems to be odd man out in comparison to the Olympics, which seem to accomplish the same goal of declaring an international champion. No big mystery, just bad luck for them. Why is the Masters bigger than the John Deere Classic? Why is Wimbledon bigger than any other tennis tournament? Who knows, but they are and FIBA just happens to have lost to the Olympics in terms of perceived importance.

 

FIBA WC lost to the Olympics because of one simple reason: the American audience are interested in the Olympics leaps and bounds more than the FIBA tournament. You get the interest of the richest audience in the world, then you prevail.

Same logic for the World Cup. The European audience are more interested in the World Cup than the European Championship. The S. American audience are more interested in the World Cup than in Copa America, albeit Copa America had a ~17 years head start over the World Cup. These type of preferences have been programmed into the culture for decades. It's almost impossible to change.

 

I'd like to see some numbers to back up that WC v EC assertion. The EC is really a pretty big tournament now and I wouldn't be surprised if its per-game viewship wasn't as high as the World Cup.

 

In Australia basketball had a blip of popularity in the early-mid 90's, but has dropped away a lot now. No sponsor, no TV contract and clubs going broke. It basically grew on the back of the Jordan/Nike/Bulls thing - as well I think as kids thinking it was cool to play a game that their parents knew absolutely nothing about.

One of the women's teams couldn't afford the $45,000 registration fee this year, and its players have had to go back to being amateur.

 

http://www.afworldcup99.com/

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Basketball "World Cup" gets no respect

So there's been one close game and some 30 blowouts. Yeah, sounds competitive to me. Ooo, there's also France--THEY ALMOST TOOK THE LEAD!

 

Hey, at least the Americans didn't sit out international championships for 20 years, unlike some other English-speaking nation.

 

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Where the hell's rugby and cricket? I mean, cricket only has the second most populous support in the whole world (though basketball's catching up, due to China). Come to think of volleyball also has a huge fan base (due to China).

Oh,and badminton probably outranks tennis in terms of popular support.

 

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80%? No chance it's that high.

 

I only have anecdotal evidence.

In this era of TV and satellite, England's highest
achievement in the European championship was
the semi-final berth in 1996, against Germany.
That game was watched by 18M viewers in
England.

In 1998, the 2nd round game against Argentina attracted 23M viewers. I think that's still the highest rated game in England.

In 2002, the Argentina match attracted estimated viewers of 21-24M, including out-of-home viewing. As we all saw, they put up giant screen TV in city squares for massive viewing.

The estimates for home TV alone:

vs Argentina 11.9M
vs Denmark 15.6M
vs Brazil 13.1M

Of course that cannot be accurate, because I have a hard time believing a quarter-final against Brazil in 2002 would have 10M fewer viewers than a 2nd round game against Argentina in 1998. In other words, the TV ratings for WC games nowadays are about 50% accurate, because massive public viewing is the trend. In the U.S., public viewers are limited to bars and restaurant, but it pales in comparison to the thousands of viewers at an open-air city square.

Tag in the # public viewers, I think each of the above 2002 games can easily outnumber the Euro 96 game against Germany.

EC is big, but I don't think the EC is bigger than the World Cup in Europe.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Basketball "World Cup" gets no respect

One close game is not good enough. Our basketball team is NOT the Brazilian football team. Brazil is ecstatic simply by winning the World Cup, by squeaking 2-1 and 1-0 wins over Turkey, and 2-1 win over England.

That type of close call is UNACCEPTABLE for the USA basketball team. After the Dream Team set the standard, we expect to win every game by at least 30 points. Look, the standard for USA Basketball is not to win all the games, but to beat the point spreads for all the games.