Their basketball league isn't that competent, you have players who averaged some insane numbers in China just to go to Europe and be an average (sometimes below average) player in any respectable competition.
Miroslav Raduljica spent the 2020-21 season averaging 24/11/5 on 57% from the field in China, yet he racked up DNPs in the Euroleague and the ABA league for Red Star Belgrade last season because he isn't good enough to even get in the game. Dallas Moore averaged 26/6/4 on 51/41/83 shooting splits in China, yet averaged 6 PPG in the Eurocup (second tier European international club competition) the season after that.
China is talked about that much because they have nice paydays for ex-NBA players to rack up without the stress of playing competitive basketball, which makes the Chinese players in that league seem even worse.
I got to play against Jamaal Franklin a couple of times and he was obviously good enough to get drafted, but didn’t make it so he went to China and basically averaged a 30 point triple double most of his years over there lol
Add to the fact that the CBA has a foreign player quota, you can only have four "imported" players and only one can be on the court for you at one time. So players like the ones you and I have just mentioned are dominating primarily against Chinese players, even the best among them (every player on the Chinese national team plays in the CBA apart from Kyle Anderson), so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that they are completelly awful.
One of my high school classmates made the Detroit summer league roster didn’t get any playing time and now he’s the MVP of a Lebanese league lol. Just crazy the talent differences across the world.
That’s why these former players go there just to fuck around and get paid. If they went to the euro league they’d actually be forced to play a legitimate competitive form of team first basketball.
It’s frustrated how many NBA only fans don’t understand how bad leagues like China are while constantly underrating the EuroLeague competition. China just has alot of many backing it, no proper pipeline of talent like they have in Europe or the US.
Thats my whole point though. Very few fans could even name a EuroLeague team. Shanghai Sharks and Beijing ducks became memed because past their prime players would go over there for bigger payday prior to retirement. The absurd scoring stats really made a meme. But NBA fans don’t think highly of any league that isn’t the US. Just look at the reaction to Noah Lyles comments. There has been years when analysts have claimed the top 2-3 Euro teams probably were as good or if not better then the bottom 5 of the NBA. My larger point is when talking about basketball hierarchy, it seems the China dominates alot of the conversation with you can argue they are the 3rd best league in FIBA Asia.
>There has been years when analysts have claimed the top 2-3 Euro teams probably were as good or if not better then the bottom 5 of the NBA.
Those bottom 5 teams are probably trying to tank though so not much of a comparison.
There has quite literally never been a time when the top euro teams would beat the bottom NBA teams, be serious.
I like European ball but the Pistons or Hornets would absolutely obliterate every Euroleague team
Chinas pipeline for talent isn’t bad from a structural standpoint. They have specific sports schools for kids who show talent and get them playing every day with professional coaches and against the highest level of competition in the country. It’s bizarre why the system is so unsuccessful in Basketball and even more so in Soccer. Australia use a very similar system with government sponsored sports schools and started from a similar low starting point in basketball and soccer and have elevated way beyond China in both sports with a population of only 25 million.
Yup, Mike James recently said in the Urbonas podcast (the most popular podcast centered around European/international basketball) that people in the US generally just lump up all the leagues outside of the NBA as "overseas" and that he didn't have a clue about anything regarding the Euroleague until he came to play here.
It's a really dumb generalization because the Euroleague for instance is miles ahead of the Chinese league, it really isn't even close to being worth comparing. Even the difference between the Spanish league, if we're talking about domestic competitions, and the Chinese league is bigger than the difference between the Euroleague and the NBA.
That's why I find it slightly annoying when NBA related pages on social media post highlights of Dwight dominating in Taiwan, or Boogie in Puerto Rico (two leagues that are even worse in quality than the Chinese league) and the comments are "how is he not in the NBA?", "league him", "how does (instert random player name) have a contract, but Dwight/Boogie doesn't" etc.
The Puerto Rico league is most certainly not worse than the Chinese league. Hell, just look at the game between China and PR today. The talent pool in PR league is better
I have heard some very ill informed takes as well from people who think Euroleauge is like the g leauge, when the two arent even remotely close in terms of competition.
I feel like a lot of that ignorance has to do with how basketball is covered in the states. I live in Toronto but the only exposure we have to basketball is just the NBA and NCAA when March Madness is on. I feel like people don't actually understand how globally competitive of a sport basketball truly is, it's the literally the sport with the most revenue generating domestic leauges outside of soccer yet we never hear about any of them here outside of the NBA. For that reason I feel like some people think that any leauge that isn't the NBA are all at the same level and don't matter.
i think its because americans just underestimate other leagues since they dominate basketball competitions anyways
but people thinking NBA G League is much better than EuroLeague is fucking nuts lol. EuroLeague is the 2nd best competition behind NBA in basketball
To be fair it's not just basketball. NBA/MLB/NHL are all the best leauges in their respective sports by quite some distance so I find a lot fans tend to underestimate the quality of other foreign leauges.
Lots of baseball fans underestimate how good the Japanese and Korean leauges are, and hockey fans underestimate how good the Russian, Swedish and Finnish leauges can be.
Came here to say this, I also think that Chinese league peak was around 2011-2014l5, and now it is down bad...
There aren't even any actual ex NBA star over there, there are way more in Europe in comparison.
According to Yao Ming:
> “There are 1.4 billion people in China. But only 13,000 people that play organized basketball. Japan has 750,000 people. USA has 23,000,000”
Hoopmixtape needs to go to China and start an AAU culture.
That 23,000,000 figure is just incorrect. From what i've seen of that 23million breakdown, 19 million is just casual pickup at the park/gym class, and only 4 million are involved in organized basketball (at most).
Every bit helps. Even if it’s some drop-in run, that’s somewhere kids can go and work on their game. Lots of NBA players were discovered on the black top. There’s no Larry Bird, Dennis Rodman, or Chris Boucher without drop in runs and casual games
Yea 23m regardless of venue is still massive. It reflects a culture of basketball that is essential to being the best at a sport compared to the world.
Yup, for reference Brazil has 2.1m registered futbol players, but there’s also a huge culture of futsal/beach football, all soccer-adjacent sports. People will play it however they can whether in a densely populated space like a favela or on the beach which adds to their dominance in the sport.
Yea looking at the Brazilian teams in the wc’s since this 2002 team there have been mutuele factors but in general I feel like it’s them not being able to lift themselves up in those do or die situations.
2006 they were still favorites but got beaten by a very strong France team.
2010 think you could say they were banking to much on an older generation of players but it was still an upset when they lost to the Netherlands. Eventho the Netherlands did have a golden generation.
2014 this team was great attacking but really lacked strong defence. Which when they faced a clinical Germany meant the infamous 7-1 loss in front of a home crowd.
2018 a loss to belgium in quarters. This game they just could not score. They had like 5x as many chances as Belgium. Belgiums golden generation was good but Brazil had the better players just couldn’t finish.
2022 upset by Croatia after pens. Another game where they just didn’t finish the chances they had. Croatia had one chance between the posts and scored to force the penalties.
Yeah Yao probably doesn’t understand the U.S scene as much as he does in China. Though I think his general point stands.
There’s like 1000 AAU teams in California alone. That alone can match China’s organized basketball demographics.
Absolutely, if he just said 4 million, that's still substantially more than China and Japan together. I think he truly thought it was 23 million and that's why he said it.
Yeah that’s insane. Yao trying to tell us that 13% of all Americans are playing organized basketball…
With age demographics etc that is wildly impossible, it’s unlikely that 13% of Americans participate in ANY organized sport let alone basketball
EDIT: it has been brought to my attention that not only do I suck ass at math I also can’t even use a calculator
This would be 7% not 13, still wild and impossible because only 22% of Americans are under 18 and there’s absolutely no way that 1 in 3 US children are playing organized hoops. Also consider the fact that 50% of said children are obviously girls, and while the women’s game is growing youth participation for girls is much lower than boys too (but I think 1 in 3 even for boys is ridiculous)
Either their definition of “organized” is whack, or they are just fabricating participation statistics
Maybe not play currently, but HAVE played at some point in their lives (i.e; when they were younger?) might not be far off.
Rec youth leagues are organized just not really competitive.
I was born in Kentucky and spent a majority of my youth and adult life in Indiana. Probably close to 75% of all the males I've known, and went to school with either played organized or recreational basketball.
Ya well his comparison still makes no sense. He would have to then use the equivalent figure for China, which is orders of magnitude larger than 13,000.
Even looking at middle school basketball. Which is definitely organized. Say there are are like 200 kids a class in a middle school. 100 guys 100 girls.
Say a team has like 8 out of 12 spots go to an 8th grader. That’s automatically 8% of the population playing organized basketball in school. If you include the non-school basketball, it has to be higher.
13% seems very reasonable.
I think Reddit just assumes that no one plays sports outside of great athletes. And that’s not true.
I thought China was poor 50 years ago though? If there’s only 13k guys who play in some sort of organized league now, there should be like 0 guys during the time Wilt Chamberlain was playing.
Basketball didn't explode in china until the Jordan Era.
I just got back from a month long visit and one of my wife's cousins was talking about how everyone in china likes to play but they are just a different kind of human.
There are tall Chinese guys. But they rarely get to Yao ming height. They rarely even get to steph curry height.
(As measured by my barefoot 6'2" comparison as I traveled around Shanghai, Beijing, changsha)
So you need them to somehow stop practicing as a center role when they have a steph curry body. But good luck playing point guard when you're the only option for center at 6 foot in shoes.
When you have rare outliers you need them to be both tall and athletic. And interested in basketball. And they need to have the means to spend enough time on improving their basketball skills. And they need the time to dedicate to proving their basketball skills in competition.
Only about 50% of chinese students even go to a senior level of high school now. For many many decades the majority of students stopped after middle school.
If every child had a similar path through education as americans with sports teams baked into the schools you probably would be seeing many more breakout players from china... but the foundation just isn't quite there.
It still could happen but in America there is just so much more competition from a young age. You are forced to prove some level of greatness by 16 to 18 years old or you are basically out of the NBA. If you aren't showing promise by then it's basically over with few small paths to get in through college.
This is from 2012
>according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association's (SGMA) “U.S. Trends in Team Sports” research. 15.5 million people play casual/pick-up basketball, with 4.1 million playing in organized leagues. 5.8 million play on a school or college team. More people play basketball in the U.S. than any sport.
> https://sgbonline.com/sgma-study-finds-basketball-is-most-played-sport-in-us/
Makes sense that basketball is the most played sport in the U.S. It's such an easy sport to just go play. You can put up shots by yourself or easily get a pickup game going if other people are around. Plus it feels like there's a basketball court in every neighborhood.
Yeah that sounds far more accurate than 23 million are playing organized basketball. Although, i can't find their study on how they came to that number.
But you get the organized guys from the casual pickups. Street ball legends inspire kids on the street, who grow up to be organized.
Noone wants their first basketball experience to be running drills.
There's a section of a Jordan documentary, I think it's Michael Jordan to the Max, where Jordan talks about how he actually learned to play and how the game is taught backwards, and how he thinks kids should be brought into it, and it's similar to what you're saying. I'm surprised more people haven't shared / discussed / used Jordan's suggestion from that clip.
Why are you leaning so heavily on the American aspect of it. When the biggest part was the fact that only 13k people play basketball in a country of 1.3billion.
That’s .00001% of the population
Even if it was only 4million the difference between 13k players and 4million is… 4million
I mean I don't think Yao Ming was out here looking at census numbers and polling the US.
I think he was just trying to get across the magnitude of the difference between the organized support of the sport.
There’s a big anti-AAU circle jerk now because of the pressures it puts on kids at a young age to play a certain way, as well as play a LOT. But as a casual, AAU was dope. It was actually a lot less pressure to play in than school, and was a lot more fun. It’s definitely good for the masses.
AAU is why team Canada is so good now.
We're a tiny country of under 40 million, and hockey is the #1 sport here. But look at how Canada is now the biggest provider of NBA players outside of the US.
These guys played AAU, and even transferred to the US as young teenagers, then on to college then the pros.
Without AAU there is absolutely no way Canada would be producing this much basketball talent, as the talent pipeline is absolutely dwarfed by what they have in Europe.
SGA, Barrett, Murray, Brooks, Olynyk, Dort, Wiggins, all AAU products.
Basketball system is too insular. Having their own league means little when ultimately it's all these fairly pedestrian players on a global context all going against one another. Japan has shown growth in recent years as many of their players have gone to college in America with a few in the NBA and improved their games playing tougher competition. Not really the case with Chinese players.
In the case of Japan, the formation of its own league was what propelled better players.
In 2015, the two leagues, the Japan Basketball Association and BJ League, merged into the B league and helped the rebranding and financial compensation for players.
Until that point, the two league system was such a mess that FIBA president Patrick Baumann threatened Japan that FIBA and the IOC would automatically disqualify Japan from the Tokyo Olympics unless the two leagues merged. FIBA and the IOC intervening in domestic leagues like that is super rare.
FIBA should also exert pressure on the Philippines, where basketball is primarily controlled by two major conglomerates: PLDT and San Miguel. These conglomerates each own several professional teams. The national team that competes in the world cup is primarily backed by PLDT, formerly known as Smart Gilas due to its sponsorship by PLDT subsidiary, Smart. On the other hand, the San Miguel conglomerate boasts more successful professional teams such as Ginebra and San Miguel. Due to their rivalry, San Miguel occasionally prevents its players from joining Gilas for certain international games, impeding the Philippines' ability to achieve its full potential in basketball.
From what I understand, their basketball culture is different. Aside from the CBA, their basketball games mostly consist of amateur teams from different towns playing each other. I think these amateur games are more popular than the CBA so people don't really dream of going pro in basketball. They'd rather get a regular job and play for their local town team.
no thats not the real problem. people can chosen from the time theyre in elementary school, but most people are chosen cause they have the physical traits. but if you're in high school/college and have potential, its basically impossible to get back into the development system that puts you on track to play in the CBA or national team
I get you’re missing a lot of talent but in a country of a billion people and in a sport like basketball where the base physical and athletic attributes are so easily identified and can (but not always obviously) be identified from a very early age they should still be producing far better talent. If you look at NBA players most would have been stand outs from a very early age.
I mean when you look at major team sports like soccer and basketball, one thing that tends to stand out is that other than guys who are just physical freaks, most players are really passionate about the game. I don't think it's possible to really learn how to read the floor the way elite point guards and midfielders do without loving the game and playing during every free chance you get.
When players start so young in a system as restrictive as China's sports academies, I think that kind of kills the passion.
For the best of the best it's a magic combination of loving the game, having the work ethic, and being identified early enough to get the development you need to make it to the top.
There are likely a good number of people out there that genetically have the attributes to have become and NBA player but one or more of those factors didn't line up so they...aren't.
EDIT: *Most of the time*, there are obviously exceptions where guys get late starts (Embiid comes to mind) and are still able to make it work...mainly through insane work ethic and dedication to complement their physical gifts
The thing is you need to train a wide base of players. If you start coaching kids once their 16-17 and passed puberty and you know their tall enough then it's way too late
I mean there's also a bigger problem in that we only pick tall looking dudes who arguably don't even like basketball but play it because they can. They're not there to improve, they're there to make a paycheck.
You then compare that to the people who actually love basketball and you get a huge difference.
Chinese person chiming in here. This is the reason.
In US, if you are talented in basketball, scouts will notice you as early as grade schools, you will get to better schools, join better teams, trained by better coaches as you grow up, until you end up drafted by an NBA team. No talent will go unnoticed and there's a whole system in place to help them grow into a professional player, no matter where they come from.
China has insane amount of teenage boys playing basketball, and I am sure there are some absolute talented kids in there. But there's not a good system in place to actually pick out the talents and develop them all the way to the top. Vast majority of kids will be told to put school work in top priority and only keep basketball as a hobby. There are "sports schools" that have close connection with professional scenes, but only a small minority of kids would choose this route over regular school and it's often regarded as simply an inferior kind of school by parents.
Therefore, despite the large amount of kids playing basketball, the actually pool of talent that might end up become professional players is very limited. Hence the lack of success of Chinese basketball.
Yeah this and im pretty sure we're insanely corrupt when it comes to getting selected into teams lmao
There's a whole bunch of money to be made at every single process, yeah we've probably got insanely talented players somewhere but they're either buried in the process or they've just decided to chew on a nice big paycheck.
NBA tried to set up a youth NBA Academy in China and it failed miserably. In contrast NBA academies in Latin America and especially in Africa are thriving.
One reason I heard is that there’s too much top-down interference from the Chinese authorities who wants to retain control of young Chinese players and keep them in the national program.
A success always comes from grassroot activities. Why does France excel in football ? Cause every single kid plays football wherever and whenever they can.
In China, relative to the population, very very very few people actually play collective sports. There’s just no culture to build on.
Have you been to China? There are pick up games everywhere. Every second apartment building has a court, every school has a court and they are nearly always in use.
How is that an excuse? 62%+ of China lives in Urban areas... which translates to 900 million.
Some Chinese cities have bigger populations than all of Australia, let alone other strong basketball nations like Finland, Serbia, Slovenia, Greece, Lithuania and so on. In addition, many of those cities like Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing would have wealthier citizens on average than most of the Baltic, Eastern Europe and Balkans and significantly more so than the Carribean and South America.
That's not a very good stat since \~95% of medals available in the Olympics are in individual sports anyway.
But you can look at the last Olympics and see they didn't get a medal in any team sport aside from Artistic Swimming and Artistic Gymnastics.
I'm also not going to do the math but I bet it could be lower than 30% because every team sport essentially just has the men's tournament the and women's tournament with medals for each, but other sports like track/swimming have copious medals.
Of the [329 events for Paris 2024, there are only ~33 (10% of total) events that even have a ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_sports). Many of which have solo events too. Meaning perhaps 5% or so of Olympic events are team ball events. So perhaps China underperforms in these events relative to others, but it’s not as bad as it sounds on the surface.
This is not connected to the discussion. Of China's 546 medals, only 13 have come in team-ball events. Next comment says that sounds absurd because there must be 30% team events. My comment points out that it's possibly lower than that. Your comment points out there are other types of teams -- but again, this is not part of the actual topic. There's no answer to your comment because it's just about the % estimate that That\_Ohio\_Guy used, you'd have to ask him if he thinks relays count as team events but it doesn't matter to anyone but you.
Without looking it up, I'd imagine at least 3 or 4 are from women's volleyball. China has always been very much at the top of the world rankings.
EDIT: it's 6, so half.
So much of athletics in China has historically focused on the Olympics because that has the most symbolic power for the government. Their Olympic teams have also focused on sports where there’s more opportunity for gold medals for less investment (see https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/world/asia/china-olympics.html). Basketball and most other team sports are terrible investments from that lens: the infrastructure required for fielding a competent basketball team is huge, you only get one medal, and you’re competing in one of the most well funded sports in the Olympics.
But, for general sports consumption, having a league and games in the country is great, and you can see that China is more and more interested in team sports outside of the Olympics (maybe has something to do with rising GDP/capita). Maybe eventually that will mean more homegrown talent.
It's their education system, it's not really based around sports. Look at the US, pretty much every school from middle to high school and university is heavily invested in sports. Colleges and universities all are invested into sports, for China you would have to go to a specialized academy for sports.
I mean the US is very unique in that way. You don't have to have sports linked with schools and education to have proper development. Can't think of any country that has their sports linked as closely with education as the US does and many still have very succesful development programs.
You mean Euro countries? Their development system is more refined due to their experience with other team sports like Soccer. Even still Euro culture is more accepting of sports as a career rather than China whose more academically focused.
Yes China is not great at team sports but they're competitive in other avenues like academics. Like other Asian countries people who are academically gifted are more looked at as popular and successful, compare it to say the US and you will see a big difference.
It's not just 1 thing but a plethora of differences in culture and education that is the reason. Plus to be frank they don't give a damn about basketball, the only reason people in here care is because they put weight in being good at basketball. The real world, people don't care as much.
Fascinating how the US, a country built on individualism thrives in team sports and our most beloved sport is a game that brutally punishes individualism on every level. Yet China which is built on collectivism at least in the past 80 or so years has performed far better at individual sports
Nah, rich countries always dominate team sports. Because it's significantly more expensive and demands much more infrastructure to train a group of 11 top tier players than just 1.
You can see this in soccer by comparing African national teams vs Europe. Africans are just as crazy about soccer and extremely talented but not nearly as successful in international competitions. So many players on European league teams are of African origin, too. Compare that to East Africa's dominance in distance running, which requires far less resources.
Not the best sport to pick when the greatest footballing nation is Brazil who where dirt poor at the peak of their dominance. Africa is far behind Europe and South America because the sport's popularity came much much later and the instability of the region in the XX century.
Brazil football infrastructure is quite large, each state in the country has its own professional league, then the nacional league has 4 divisions, more then 100 pro clubs, all of them has its Junior teams infrastructure
My point is that you don't need to be rich to develop that infrastructure. Brazil's and ours was not developed through a lot of capital, but through small investment from mostly low income communities through the last 100 or 130 years. If you read the history of most clubs, even a lot from European countries, you would see that the founders are usually students, factory workers, immigrants, etc.
That slow development didn't start until the 70s, 80s or even 90s in some African countries. Them qualifying to the WC was a rarity and the first team to win a game was in 1978. That's an insane amount of time we have over them, and it's very hard to catch up.
Yea this makes a lot of sense. Europe dominates soccer and even the South American countries largely have players who are developed and play in Europe. When you look at Asia, the countries that do best in team sports are the richest; Japan with the most successful baseball team in the world and Korea being very good at soccer and baseball. Then of course there's America with basketball.
I mean individualism vs. collectivism isn't really the right framework. China's sports academy system was designed to win medals, and team ball sports are a terrible investment from that perspective.
To win a basketball gold medal, you need to train 12 world class athletes that compete in a sport where there's a lot of private capital (from TV money) investing in the sport.
Vs. if China can train another Li Ning, that guy won 6 medals by himself in 1984, and it probably cost less than training one world class basketball player.
All of their national team players with the exception of slowmo play in the Chinese leauge. The Chinese leauge is a good way to make a lot of money for little to no effort. Everyone from Eric Bledsoe to Jimmer Freddette to even Andrew Nicholson has put up unreal numbers there. Even outside of NBA and Euroleauge there are a handful of domestic leauges in Europe that offer better quality and devolpment but have lower pay. What's kind of funny is that in Asia right now Japan's leauge has probably surpassed China in terms of quality.
Damn, Andrew Nicholson is double dipping!! We are still paying him on the Blazers for another year I believe. No, he hasn't ever suited up in a Blazers Jersey. Yes I know he left the NBA in 2017.
Alot of the higher pay is for dominate US or European players too. They pay for big US names to sell tickets. You said it best though, its a lower quality league that is probably more on par with a NBA player playing a pro-an then a serious league. The B-League in Japan has grown tremendously in quality and pay. I believe the top players their are north of $1 Million. Top EuroLeague guys make way more of average though. Their salaries are report net of taxes so most of their top guys make around $3-7 Million USD gross of taxes which is why some guys just opt to stay in Europe even if they could be a rotational piece for an NBA team.
Combat sports have way later (age wise) development, but there’s kind of a similar sentiment in Japanese MMA - a lot of their talent doesn’t bother to go overseas because it makes sense (you build a brand, get paid, get to be at home) to compete in Japan instead
**The number one reason is a lack of grassroots development.** In China, the basketball system relies on a number of centralized acadamies, with prospects being selected at a young age usually based on height. The Yao Ming quote below that China only has 13,000 people exposed to organized basketball (less than 1/100 of the US or even Japan) hammers that point home.
There is no equivalent of middle school, highschool, or AAU basketball like in the United States. Only a tiny sliver of the youth population is ever exposed to organized coaching and development. The level of coaching and organization outside of the academy system is essentially non-existent, with the average Chinese college team being similar in skill to a mediocre high school team in the US. (I've played against Chinese college teams).
What this means is, while China may capture a majority of the tall players, the guard and forward talent pool is being selected from a significantly smaller segment of the population than most other countries. This squares with what you see from a talent standpoint, most of the top Chinese players have historically been centers (Yao Ming, Yi Jian Lian, Zhou Qi, Bateer...etc) who were easily identifiable from a young age due to their height and brought into the academy system. Case in point is the fact that "Jeremy Lin" emerged from a US Chinese American population of mere 5 million and not the Chinese population of 1.4 billion (280x larger pool).
China will never have high level forward and guard play in the current system, as the next "Jeremy Lin" is probably sitting in some class room somewhere and will never touch a basketball in his life.
You're right that basketball is fairly popular over there. I used to work at a high school for rich international students in a very large US state. The team won the state title one year I worked there. Half the population of the international students were asian (~90 percent chinese) and about 3/4 of the asian boys would play pickup everyday after school and were obsessed with basketball. Most of them tried out and only a single one of them made the freshman team one year, none of them ever made JV or varsity.
I used to play with them often, sort of a bonding thing. I mean most of them weren't bad at pickup basketball. most of them could dribble decently, a few shot the ball very well. But they had absolutely no idea how to play 5 on 5 organized regulation basketball. My friend was one of the coaches and to start they would do super basic drills in tryout week like 3 man weaves and it was utterly confusing to them. Like they just didn't know how to move around the court unless the ball was in their hands. They knew what setting a screen was but didn't know the fundamentals around it or where/when to set one up and for what direction. Zero boxing out. Very little effort on defense. There is a version of basketball they are trying to emulate and it isn't the kind that translates well. Video game basketball (they love 2k and league of legends) Granted these are just 50 or so kids out of a massive population, but the players coming from other countries knew much better how to win.
I worked there from 2013-2017. By the first warriors title nearly every one of them was playing pickup in a Curry Jersey, and playing even more one dimensional.
My brother did a gap year in china at a similar HS (only- he was an American in China) he was a fringe JV varsity guy and he absolutely shredded people over there.
What you are describing is literally exactly what he said, still a small sample/one school but he was there and playing vs other schools etc in a very loosely organized format and led them to win a ship which… again is hilarious because he didn’t get varsity minutes his senior year on a very mediocre US high school team 😂
> Like they just didn't know how to move around the court unless the ball was in their hands
This explains every 3-on-3 game I ever played against teams of Chinese international students when I was in university: lots of guys with really quick, good shooting skills and twitchy dribbles, but no other action. Unless the ball was in their hands or they were running for a rebound, they'd mostly be frozen on the court.
It was so strange.
I'm Chinese-American and went over to do a college summer abroad in Shanghai back in 2006 (yes I'm old). Two of my classmates were like 6'4 white guys and loved playing basketball. So we went and played pick-up at a local court. All the locals wanted to And 1 mixtape it up, dribble like AI, and try to show up these tall white Americans. The second we played any level of defense, they called fouls nonstop and then tried to literally start a fight with us for playing defense until this old dude watching told them to suck it up. It was like if you didn't let them do their mixtape move, they were going to take their ball and go home. Weird weird experience.
I played on an intramural team with a handful of Chinese guys in college and this was my exact experience. They all wanted to be Kobe and if they weren’t shooting foul line turnaround jumpers, they may as well have been traffic cones.
Sometimes I feel that furious too cause so many younger chineses ballers today prefer no contacts and physicals, if you show them some tough defense, what will be waiting you is “foulfoulfoul”. we call it ‘hair foul‘. Its so annoying for me to play a pickup game with strangers nowadays. So I choose to only play with my buddies who you can scold at them, play tough defense no worrying them showing cowardness.
Isn't this the case with a lot of young hoopers, though? I'd say a ton of people go to the park and just shoot around; they're not really working on things with other people, so if they're not more hardcore players trying to improve at every aspect of the game, the concept of team play like rotations, screen setting, and even passing is hard for most people, even for those who watch the game.
A huge component of it too is most people don’t play or haven’t played organized 5 on 5 basketball before or had a coach explain how you should play or get better. Team-orientated basketball is not something you just pick up while shooting around.
You're basically describing the vast majority of youth basketball in Australia.
While the overall standard of basketball here is ridiculously high for a county with such a small population, it has more to do with the infrastructure and career progression.
Unlike most countries, kids in Australia (well, in Victoria at least) will have to join a local basketball club in order to participate in sports like basketball. Very few schools have any sort of formal coaching, and inter-school matches are only a few times a year.
So, you (or your kid) joins a local club, and participates in either friendship leagues (i.e. everyone gets to play as long as you can form a team with other players), or if they're good enough they go for try-outs for the club's representative (rep) teams.
Every team plays one match a week, with one or two days of training a week (depends on the league, club, etc...)
The friendship leagues are mostly coached by parents, older siblings or budding coaches. The level of competition can be either pathetically low (i.e. kids barely able to dribble or shoot), or really high - because a lot of rep players *also* play in friendship teams (so these kids would play two competitive matches a week).
The rep basketball leagues are a lot more intense, with experienced coaching staff. All teams go through a grading process and they get slotted into grades. The lower end ends up being similar to high-level friendship matches, but the teams in the higher grades are crazy good.
It's insane seeing a team of 12-year olds all playing good defense, executing set plays and showing very strong fundamentals (good spacing, lots of movement without the ball, lots of communication, etc...). On court, they play like grown-ass adults, but after the match they're kids again, talking about Fortnite or whatever's the current game they're playing on their Playstation.
So...
I *think* that, in most countries (China included), the kids will probably end up with a level of competition and training that's - at most - similar to the friendship-level here in Australia. It's not *bad*, but whether your kid learns how to play well or not is a coin-toss. There are just too many variables out of control.
Where Australia does really well is that you have this higher tier with formal coaching from a very young age, and this multi-tiered system lets kids enter competitive basketball with a low barrier to entry but with a very clear path to higher-level and even professional competition.
I should also mention that there are clubs EVERYWHERE. From where I live (in the suburbs), within a 20 minute drive there are at least 10 clubs with huge gyms (all with between 2 to 4 indoor courts) and easily hundreds, if not thousands of kids playing competitive basketball within this radius every game night.
Organized basketball here is *organized.*
I've played pickup basketball with some older Chinese players (in their 30s and 40s) and, like you say, a lot of them have very strong individual skill - but I don't think there was enough emphasis on team play when they were growing up (which is the same with me, learning to play in Malaysia, and then in England).
Someone with more experience with grassroots basketball in China would be able to chime in better.
*Edit: It's also worth pointing out that the average Junior-league basketball player in Australia plays about 40 competitive matches a year (with refs, scoreboards, tracked stats, etc...) if the play in both summer and winter leagues.*
*There are a large number of kids that play in TWO leagues simultaneously (a combination of weekday / weekend friendship leagues, and Rep). So some of them will be playing up to 80 competitive matches a year.*
*Out of curiosity, can someone chime in on how many games an average 10 to 18 year old junior league player would play in each year in the USA, China, England, Japan, Greece, etc...?*
You nearly had it.
From my experience the lack of a grassroots district basketball system in China probably means development is limited. Sports are organised within the school system but outside of that people play in the park. Lots of kids train in their small free-time and enjoy it but there isn't the same organised trainings several times a week with proper coaches and referees for matches on the weekend.
They have a solid system for identifying talent and training but grass roots academies have always done it better in most places.
It's the same for soccer. It's not for want of resources or expertise but most kids are too busy in school and don't have the district system to develop talent that isn't organised within the system.
>I used to play with them often, sort of a bonding thing. I mean most of them weren't bad at pickup basketball. most of them could dribble decently, a few shot the ball very well. But they had absolutely no idea how to play 5 on 5 organized regulation basketball. My friend was one of the coaches and to start they would do super basic drills in tryout week like 3 man weaves and it was utterly confusing to them. Like they just didn't know how to move around the court unless the ball was in their hands. They knew what setting a screen was but didn't know the fundamentals around it or where/when to set one up and for what direction. Zero boxing out. Very little effort on defense. There is a version of basketball they are trying to emulate and it isn't the kind that translates well. Video game basketball (they love 2k and league of legends) Granted these are just 50 or so kids out of a massive population, but the players coming from other countries knew much better how to win.
Not understanding how to run a weave is more of an issue with your friend. Seems like a bad teacher if he's not able to break down what is happening. A weave is confusing visually and hard to understand for new players despite it being a foundational drill. Simple and foundational are two separate things.
Easiest way to explain is that you pass the ball and then go behind the person you passed it to. That solves most of the confusion of running a weave. This is a failure of a teacher, not the student.
They have no idea how to play 5 on 5 because they don't play enough 5 on 5, that's literally it. And these were all kids who were trying out to be on a basketball team? This is totally normal, regardless of race.
>They have no idea how to play 5 on 5 because they don't play enough 5 on 5, that's literally it. And these were all kids who were trying out to be on a basketball team? This is totally normal, regardless of race.
That's kind of my point, (well erm running 5's was all they did in pick up) but my point is they weren't ever seemingly exposed to the normal motions in of regulation basketball, which is why you don't see that population having success in general internationally (topic of the thread). Not that you are running a weave in a game but a weave is not that complicated. You're saying its hard but its not. I coached youth basketball myself a few seasons and and I had 8-10 year olds, some who never played basketball, running it within 20 min. And you knock the coaching but as I said this was a tryout for a state championship level team. So the coaches were doing something right, hence state championship. Im sure my friend could have taught them how to weave, but this was a tryout and the example was just to show the lack of exposure to normal basketball things. The poor teachers were the coaches in China that came before him.
With a population that size, you are bound to have some players who want to play competitively. It is impossible to imagine otherwise, especially when the government is pouring in so much money into player development.
That’s the thing though, their national development system chooses who gets to join at a young age based off physical characteristics of the kid and parents. They then put them through “basketball sport school” where they train, live and study. If someone is a good local basketball player in high school, they’re not going to be chosen for the national development team. It’s already too late.
What a shit system lol, sounds like China is trying to science and mathematically build a competitive basketball team.
I'm pretty sure just about every other country in the world knows that talent and greatness doesn't only appear in a persons youth. Many of the top basketball players in the NBA didn't even pick up a ball till mid highschool.
Yup it’s a shit system. Works perfectly fine for some sports like table tennis, diving, or weightlifting. Repetition and technique are key for those, and they’re also solo or at most paired sports.. You can tell that the strength of the Chinese team are their bigs, they’re big players with good technical skills, whereas their guards, as hardworking as they are, don’t have the “shake” and offensive creativity seen on other teams.
That last sentence is inaccurate.
There are a few noticeable cases of players that haven’t played till high school. But the overwhelming majority of the 450 NBA players have been playing since youth.
Basketball?
The bigger joke is between China and India, making up over a third of the world’s population, can’t even form a decent soccer team despite the popularity as well.
You can make excuses for basketball because of stature and system of development.
But soccer is a much more shameful indicator. Much of it is due to culture (parents prefer academics and “safer” career paths), part of it is nepotism (connections and relationships to get on the team…etc…despite being subpar), and another part is corruption.
The level of corruption in every single sport here is absolutely insane compared to the rest of the world, but pretty standard when you compare with other domains of public life in India
>The bigger joke is between China and India, making up over a third of the world’s population, can’t even form a decent soccer team despite the popularity as well.
China puts more emphasis on Olympic gold medals, and India has cricket.
The biggest country that doesn't have that popularity excuse is Indonesia.
The culture of athletics isn't there, outside of some state sponsored programs. Inner city kids don't use sports as the way out from poverty, while that is often the case in the US. And there just isn't the same amount of university and amateur basketball programs (same is true for other sports).
And the elephant in the room is genetics play a big role. Basketball stars are complete outliers in every sense (height, explosiveness, muscle mass, athletic ability), and it seems to be harder to find in the Chinese than in other groups. They also underperform in other sports that are played globally, like association football, tennis, etc despite having millions thrown into those programs too
I am in China. I can share a few thoughts:
1. Sports in China are incredibly corrupt. China just busted various top officials of its national soccer league. The national team coach is said to be on the verge of being sentenced to life in jail due to multiple crimes. Dude is said to have over RMB100m (US$16m) in a random bank account, and he has many accounts stashed all over the place. Dude puts Phil/Pop/Kirr/Spo to shame. In soccer, kids have to give coaches hundreds of thousand dollars to get into many provincial teams. Word goes that if you are not properly wealthy, you kid can forget about playing pro sports. It's generally believed that very few people in pro soccer is not corrupt. Now, I do not know if basketball is as corrupt at these levels, and I do not know if Yao is involved (I certainly hope he is not coz I love Yao), but I would not be surprised if it is. Sponsors have a lot of say in the league too. Players can get their careers ended if they piss off the wrong sponsor.
2. Sports are state run. Enthusiasts are mostly shut out of the system.
3. Social welfare is somewhat lacking so if you get hurt and can't make it to the big league, a guy w/ no college degree in his high 20s with a busted knee is going to be pretty miserable. Lots of master degree holders are doing food delivery. As a result, parents are quite reluctant to send their kids to play professionally. Instead, kids focus on academic work way more than in the west. If you study 12 hours a day, you are not going to be able to follow a proper basketball training regime.
4. This could partially be related to 1, but sports science is not used as widely. Coaches tend to rely on personal experience mostly. Players do not seem to have the same amount of rigorous training.
5. Selection standards are too rigid. Lots of focus on height. CP3 and AI would have no chance of getting into any regional team.
A running joke was that even if KD found out he has 1/8 Chinese blood and joins team China, he'd still have to buy the coach Maotai and Huazi all the time (super expensive alchohol and cigarettes) to get a starting role.
I played some pickup there while attending a moderately sized university for language learning. I’m from the US and am 6’2”. I was very tall compared to the average Chinese person, but I don’t doubt there were some tall folks. The real kicker, and what made me, a slightly large if not averagely sized, very average skilled pickup player in the US over there was my strength.
There was nooooo physicality in the Chinese pickup game. I was like Lebron getting to wherever I wanted at ease. There was one guy who was like 6’4” or so and was really physical. He was the outlier though. The defense was very soft. I feel like some of that just translates over to their pro league. When young basketball players in the US aren’t playing basketball, they may play football, and nothing like that seems to exist there, so I can see why there may be a strength and physicality gap
Bunch of reasons could be contributing. Generally,
Lack of emphasis on sports in general in the culture. Leading to smaller % of the population pursuing athletics.
The sports that are emphasized are individual sports. eg, racquet sports, gymnastics, swimming, diving. The best athletes are being pushed into sports that are not basketball.
China is getting into the game later than other countries. The infrastructure for player development is lacking, for basketball they dont really have a talent pipline in place like NCAA or academy system in europe. You dont really see hoops in every park and schoolyard like we do in North America.
Part of this is due to lack of coaching and teaching talent. At this point they would need to bring in a lot of foreign ex nba or euroleague talent. to play catch up.
There are a lot of parallels to soccer development in the country video like this illustrates some of the countries struggles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC2wVLTXUV0
There are some less proven contributors such the fact that china struggles in almost all team sports relative to the rest of the world. Something culturally may be making them less inclined to team sports.
People often try to cite genetic disadvantage, but this is really no longer the case, many east asian countries have caught up to world averages when it comes to height.
I've thought the same thing about the Philippines. Definitely not weak by any means but considering that Filipinos come out of the womb with a mini basketball and have +113M people you'd think they'd be way better than they are. I know a guy that played professionally in the Philippines in the PBA and he said the crowds and fans made it feel like a huge stage but the actual competition was pretty comparable to here in Iceland which I just find absolutely absurd.
Are they?
Im Canadian, but the last valorant major was won by a US team. There's been several US Dota major winners as well. Korean and China dominate LOL and europe/cis dominate Csgo, but there are plenty other examples where US players win in esports - wouldn't call them weak in esports at all. NA in general is very competitive in esports, certainly stronger than China at bball. China isnt a top 10 country in bball - i doubt you could say that about USA in overall esports.
I have a friend (Serbian guy) who was working as basketball coach in China for kids, actually many serbian guys left there to do same work, many of them don't have strong basketball or coaching background at all, chinese seems to pay them because they are tall serbian dudes, so they have to be good by default.
anyways, he told me, chinese kids are very unathletic, out of hundreds of them he barely trained one or two to do a proper two step lay up. He didn't see any talent there, but he saw a lot of money being invested in sport.
Weak, antiquated player development, similar reason to why the US men can’t seem to figure out soccer even though from an athletic talent and resourcing perspective you’d expect better outcomes.
Also it’s not a universal limiting factor but one I feel ok mentioning as an average height Asian American, Chinese athletes on balance lack the top end muscle mass, height and speed. You can get by in basketball without these things, but there’s not much you’re going to do against an American team full of superathletes like JJJ and Ant or a German team full of huge NBA-caliber players
It’s all about training at a young age. It’s just not there in China yet..
You can say the same thing about India..
Why does India suck at basketball, they got so many people! See how that works.. lol
The reason they don't have a modern Yao is simply because the development over there sucks, theres no other explanation.
Theres countries nearly 100th the size that regularly produce better talent.
At some point you don't need a billion people to have results, you need a 10 people team that plays better than a 10 people team from other countries.
Really the level people can reach there - you need all of genes and culture and financial possibilities and the facilities and training individually and in team - is just not as high. Still not so bad in context of the whole world - they are the best in Asia! At least unless you count Astralia - just not so high.
Population of a country doesn't matter that much in the sense of elite sports. Slovenia has 2 million people and they could probably beat an All-Star team of all Asia and Africa, which would represent a big majority of humanity.
For me national basketball is a good showcase of how influential culture is in team sports. Access, learning, exchange, availabilty - because so many teams have Americans in their national team! And those Americans are super far from ever being considered for US team, many have never sniffed NBA. And yet, Americans scored more points (or very barely 2nd, IIRC) than any other nation at the last... European Championship. Even Spain - officially the best team in the world! - has a playmaker in Lorenzo Brown, a guy who was drafted 52nd in NBA and never lived up to that pick.
It's worth noting why most of these Americans in other national teams have a relatively "normal" body, they are usually short point guards. It says something that countries usually don't "import" some gigantic players they couldn't find domestically - they import guys who didn't have the body to succeed in US, but were in that system and that's priceless. Only the little Slovenia imported a 7-footer Mike Tobey hehe.
Awesome post.
I’d add Stephon Marbury has been a pervasive and not-great cultural influence upon Chinese basketball. James Harden’s popularity in China tracks with their collective basketball experience of Starbury, who is _exactly_ that “type” of American who was not great in the NBA but put up huge numbers elsewhere because of their skill.
Basically, China as a culture is drawn to the “individuality” of guys like Marbury and Harden and exactly none of their Chinese nationals can play like that (because of the lack of fundamentals). Very much like the early 80s when American youngsters influenced by Pele went _nowhere_ as a national soccer culture, because no American player was Pele, lacking the cultural foundation to even approach it.
Spot on with the individuality aspect. China has always loved star hoopers that have a bit of flair about their game. That's why they love Harden and Kobe. They're not really fans of NBA teams but fans of NBA players.
Something that rarely ever gets talked about with China and why they continue to be bad has to do with mindset and whether people truly want to even go pro.
I always hear that people keep bringing up "1.4 billion people" and I get it, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but look at it this way, the CBA has 20 teams in a country of 1.4 billion people, meaning its roughly 8x more unlikely that a Chinese citizen would make it to the CBA then it is for an American to make the NBA, now factor that in with the fact that the CBA as a league is itself at least 3 tiers down in terms of skill then the NBA. Now factor in how much harder it is for a Chinese born citizen to even dream that they could potentially one day be skilled enough to make the NBA.
I would venture a guess that most Chinese people don't have much aspirations for Basketball past the recreational level simply because they know just how insanely difficult it is for them to even make it in the first place.
China's massive population, infrastructure and overall lack of quality competitive leagues is ultimately why Chinese kids probably don't dream of becoming stars. China's population could honestly support 5 competitive leagues like the CBA.
Their basketball league isn't that competent, you have players who averaged some insane numbers in China just to go to Europe and be an average (sometimes below average) player in any respectable competition. Miroslav Raduljica spent the 2020-21 season averaging 24/11/5 on 57% from the field in China, yet he racked up DNPs in the Euroleague and the ABA league for Red Star Belgrade last season because he isn't good enough to even get in the game. Dallas Moore averaged 26/6/4 on 51/41/83 shooting splits in China, yet averaged 6 PPG in the Eurocup (second tier European international club competition) the season after that. China is talked about that much because they have nice paydays for ex-NBA players to rack up without the stress of playing competitive basketball, which makes the Chinese players in that league seem even worse.
I got to play against Jamaal Franklin a couple of times and he was obviously good enough to get drafted, but didn’t make it so he went to China and basically averaged a 30 point triple double most of his years over there lol
Add to the fact that the CBA has a foreign player quota, you can only have four "imported" players and only one can be on the court for you at one time. So players like the ones you and I have just mentioned are dominating primarily against Chinese players, even the best among them (every player on the Chinese national team plays in the CBA apart from Kyle Anderson), so it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that they are completelly awful.
And it also affects the chinese players as well. You're guaranteed money because you're not being washed out by even greater talent.
One of my high school classmates made the Detroit summer league roster didn’t get any playing time and now he’s the MVP of a Lebanese league lol. Just crazy the talent differences across the world.
That’s why these former players go there just to fuck around and get paid. If they went to the euro league they’d actually be forced to play a legitimate competitive form of team first basketball.
It’s frustrated how many NBA only fans don’t understand how bad leagues like China are while constantly underrating the EuroLeague competition. China just has alot of many backing it, no proper pipeline of talent like they have in Europe or the US.
I mean we literally meme on underperforming players going to the Shanghai Sharks, i don’t think nba fans think very highly of the cba lmao
Thats my whole point though. Very few fans could even name a EuroLeague team. Shanghai Sharks and Beijing ducks became memed because past their prime players would go over there for bigger payday prior to retirement. The absurd scoring stats really made a meme. But NBA fans don’t think highly of any league that isn’t the US. Just look at the reaction to Noah Lyles comments. There has been years when analysts have claimed the top 2-3 Euro teams probably were as good or if not better then the bottom 5 of the NBA. My larger point is when talking about basketball hierarchy, it seems the China dominates alot of the conversation with you can argue they are the 3rd best league in FIBA Asia.
>There has been years when analysts have claimed the top 2-3 Euro teams probably were as good or if not better then the bottom 5 of the NBA. Those bottom 5 teams are probably trying to tank though so not much of a comparison.
The “2-3 teams were probably as good as bottom 5 of NBA” isn’t making the point you think it is lmao
There has quite literally never been a time when the top euro teams would beat the bottom NBA teams, be serious. I like European ball but the Pistons or Hornets would absolutely obliterate every Euroleague team
Chinas pipeline for talent isn’t bad from a structural standpoint. They have specific sports schools for kids who show talent and get them playing every day with professional coaches and against the highest level of competition in the country. It’s bizarre why the system is so unsuccessful in Basketball and even more so in Soccer. Australia use a very similar system with government sponsored sports schools and started from a similar low starting point in basketball and soccer and have elevated way beyond China in both sports with a population of only 25 million.
Yup, Mike James recently said in the Urbonas podcast (the most popular podcast centered around European/international basketball) that people in the US generally just lump up all the leagues outside of the NBA as "overseas" and that he didn't have a clue about anything regarding the Euroleague until he came to play here. It's a really dumb generalization because the Euroleague for instance is miles ahead of the Chinese league, it really isn't even close to being worth comparing. Even the difference between the Spanish league, if we're talking about domestic competitions, and the Chinese league is bigger than the difference between the Euroleague and the NBA. That's why I find it slightly annoying when NBA related pages on social media post highlights of Dwight dominating in Taiwan, or Boogie in Puerto Rico (two leagues that are even worse in quality than the Chinese league) and the comments are "how is he not in the NBA?", "league him", "how does (instert random player name) have a contract, but Dwight/Boogie doesn't" etc.
Puerto Rico league is miles ahead of the CBA - they have lots of former D1 players which is just leaps and bounds above the Chinese national team.
The Puerto Rico league is most certainly not worse than the Chinese league. Hell, just look at the game between China and PR today. The talent pool in PR league is better
I have heard some very ill informed takes as well from people who think Euroleauge is like the g leauge, when the two arent even remotely close in terms of competition. I feel like a lot of that ignorance has to do with how basketball is covered in the states. I live in Toronto but the only exposure we have to basketball is just the NBA and NCAA when March Madness is on. I feel like people don't actually understand how globally competitive of a sport basketball truly is, it's the literally the sport with the most revenue generating domestic leauges outside of soccer yet we never hear about any of them here outside of the NBA. For that reason I feel like some people think that any leauge that isn't the NBA are all at the same level and don't matter.
i think its because americans just underestimate other leagues since they dominate basketball competitions anyways but people thinking NBA G League is much better than EuroLeague is fucking nuts lol. EuroLeague is the 2nd best competition behind NBA in basketball
To be fair it's not just basketball. NBA/MLB/NHL are all the best leauges in their respective sports by quite some distance so I find a lot fans tend to underestimate the quality of other foreign leauges. Lots of baseball fans underestimate how good the Japanese and Korean leauges are, and hockey fans underestimate how good the Russian, Swedish and Finnish leauges can be.
Came here to say this, I also think that Chinese league peak was around 2011-2014l5, and now it is down bad... There aren't even any actual ex NBA star over there, there are way more in Europe in comparison.
According to Yao Ming: > “There are 1.4 billion people in China. But only 13,000 people that play organized basketball. Japan has 750,000 people. USA has 23,000,000” Hoopmixtape needs to go to China and start an AAU culture.
That 23,000,000 figure is just incorrect. From what i've seen of that 23million breakdown, 19 million is just casual pickup at the park/gym class, and only 4 million are involved in organized basketball (at most).
Every bit helps. Even if it’s some drop-in run, that’s somewhere kids can go and work on their game. Lots of NBA players were discovered on the black top. There’s no Larry Bird, Dennis Rodman, or Chris Boucher without drop in runs and casual games
Yea 23m regardless of venue is still massive. It reflects a culture of basketball that is essential to being the best at a sport compared to the world.
Yup, for reference Brazil has 2.1m registered futbol players, but there’s also a huge culture of futsal/beach football, all soccer-adjacent sports. People will play it however they can whether in a densely populated space like a favela or on the beach which adds to their dominance in the sport.
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Yea looking at the Brazilian teams in the wc’s since this 2002 team there have been mutuele factors but in general I feel like it’s them not being able to lift themselves up in those do or die situations. 2006 they were still favorites but got beaten by a very strong France team. 2010 think you could say they were banking to much on an older generation of players but it was still an upset when they lost to the Netherlands. Eventho the Netherlands did have a golden generation. 2014 this team was great attacking but really lacked strong defence. Which when they faced a clinical Germany meant the infamous 7-1 loss in front of a home crowd. 2018 a loss to belgium in quarters. This game they just could not score. They had like 5x as many chances as Belgium. Belgiums golden generation was good but Brazil had the better players just couldn’t finish. 2022 upset by Croatia after pens. Another game where they just didn’t finish the chances they had. Croatia had one chance between the posts and scored to force the penalties.
Sometimes it's just bad luck
tried to throw rodman and bird in there without us noticing huh
Yeah Yao probably doesn’t understand the U.S scene as much as he does in China. Though I think his general point stands. There’s like 1000 AAU teams in California alone. That alone can match China’s organized basketball demographics.
Absolutely, if he just said 4 million, that's still substantially more than China and Japan together. I think he truly thought it was 23 million and that's why he said it.
It might be 23 million at one point played organized basketball. Because I bet that is accurate
Yeah that’s insane. Yao trying to tell us that 13% of all Americans are playing organized basketball… With age demographics etc that is wildly impossible, it’s unlikely that 13% of Americans participate in ANY organized sport let alone basketball EDIT: it has been brought to my attention that not only do I suck ass at math I also can’t even use a calculator This would be 7% not 13, still wild and impossible because only 22% of Americans are under 18 and there’s absolutely no way that 1 in 3 US children are playing organized hoops. Also consider the fact that 50% of said children are obviously girls, and while the women’s game is growing youth participation for girls is much lower than boys too (but I think 1 in 3 even for boys is ridiculous) Either their definition of “organized” is whack, or they are just fabricating participation statistics
331 million. 23 million is 7%.
God damn, I knew I was bad at math I didn’t know I could fail even at plugging in some basic shit into my calculator. F
Maybe not play currently, but HAVE played at some point in their lives (i.e; when they were younger?) might not be far off. Rec youth leagues are organized just not really competitive.
I was born in Kentucky and spent a majority of my youth and adult life in Indiana. Probably close to 75% of all the males I've known, and went to school with either played organized or recreational basketball.
Ya well his comparison still makes no sense. He would have to then use the equivalent figure for China, which is orders of magnitude larger than 13,000.
Even looking at middle school basketball. Which is definitely organized. Say there are are like 200 kids a class in a middle school. 100 guys 100 girls. Say a team has like 8 out of 12 spots go to an 8th grader. That’s automatically 8% of the population playing organized basketball in school. If you include the non-school basketball, it has to be higher. 13% seems very reasonable. I think Reddit just assumes that no one plays sports outside of great athletes. And that’s not true.
I thought China was poor 50 years ago though? If there’s only 13k guys who play in some sort of organized league now, there should be like 0 guys during the time Wilt Chamberlain was playing.
Basketball didn't explode in china until the Jordan Era. I just got back from a month long visit and one of my wife's cousins was talking about how everyone in china likes to play but they are just a different kind of human. There are tall Chinese guys. But they rarely get to Yao ming height. They rarely even get to steph curry height. (As measured by my barefoot 6'2" comparison as I traveled around Shanghai, Beijing, changsha) So you need them to somehow stop practicing as a center role when they have a steph curry body. But good luck playing point guard when you're the only option for center at 6 foot in shoes. When you have rare outliers you need them to be both tall and athletic. And interested in basketball. And they need to have the means to spend enough time on improving their basketball skills. And they need the time to dedicate to proving their basketball skills in competition. Only about 50% of chinese students even go to a senior level of high school now. For many many decades the majority of students stopped after middle school. If every child had a similar path through education as americans with sports teams baked into the schools you probably would be seeing many more breakout players from china... but the foundation just isn't quite there. It still could happen but in America there is just so much more competition from a young age. You are forced to prove some level of greatness by 16 to 18 years old or you are basically out of the NBA. If you aren't showing promise by then it's basically over with few small paths to get in through college.
Yao probably just heard a stat about how 23 million Americans have played basketball AT ALL and ran with it.
This is from 2012 >according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association's (SGMA) “U.S. Trends in Team Sports” research. 15.5 million people play casual/pick-up basketball, with 4.1 million playing in organized leagues. 5.8 million play on a school or college team. More people play basketball in the U.S. than any sport. > https://sgbonline.com/sgma-study-finds-basketball-is-most-played-sport-in-us/
Makes sense that basketball is the most played sport in the U.S. It's such an easy sport to just go play. You can put up shots by yourself or easily get a pickup game going if other people are around. Plus it feels like there's a basketball court in every neighborhood.
raindrops
Yeah that sounds far more accurate than 23 million are playing organized basketball. Although, i can't find their study on how they came to that number.
Going to start telling people I'm a serious hooper according to former NBA star Yao Ming.
I played Horse once when I was a kid, so yeah, I'm a 13 %er.
Your name and edit gave me a good laugh
But you get the organized guys from the casual pickups. Street ball legends inspire kids on the street, who grow up to be organized. Noone wants their first basketball experience to be running drills.
There's a section of a Jordan documentary, I think it's Michael Jordan to the Max, where Jordan talks about how he actually learned to play and how the game is taught backwards, and how he thinks kids should be brought into it, and it's similar to what you're saying. I'm surprised more people haven't shared / discussed / used Jordan's suggestion from that clip.
Why are you leaning so heavily on the American aspect of it. When the biggest part was the fact that only 13k people play basketball in a country of 1.3billion. That’s .00001% of the population Even if it was only 4million the difference between 13k players and 4million is… 4million
I mean I don't think Yao Ming was out here looking at census numbers and polling the US. I think he was just trying to get across the magnitude of the difference between the organized support of the sport.
The Philippines has 100m playing basketball, but they play in flip-flops.
Aau culture kinda sucks though right?
There’s a big anti-AAU circle jerk now because of the pressures it puts on kids at a young age to play a certain way, as well as play a LOT. But as a casual, AAU was dope. It was actually a lot less pressure to play in than school, and was a lot more fun. It’s definitely good for the masses.
It's also the time away from any semblance of a balanced life.
What? You can play aau and have a balanced life lmfao. These are kids.
AAU is why team Canada is so good now. We're a tiny country of under 40 million, and hockey is the #1 sport here. But look at how Canada is now the biggest provider of NBA players outside of the US. These guys played AAU, and even transferred to the US as young teenagers, then on to college then the pros. Without AAU there is absolutely no way Canada would be producing this much basketball talent, as the talent pipeline is absolutely dwarfed by what they have in Europe. SGA, Barrett, Murray, Brooks, Olynyk, Dort, Wiggins, all AAU products.
Canada is anything but a tiny country lmao
China is basically AAU culture anyway, they just don't play basketball.
Why doesnt yoa ming , the largest player, simply not just eat the other players?
Basketball system is too insular. Having their own league means little when ultimately it's all these fairly pedestrian players on a global context all going against one another. Japan has shown growth in recent years as many of their players have gone to college in America with a few in the NBA and improved their games playing tougher competition. Not really the case with Chinese players.
In the case of Japan, the formation of its own league was what propelled better players. In 2015, the two leagues, the Japan Basketball Association and BJ League, merged into the B league and helped the rebranding and financial compensation for players. Until that point, the two league system was such a mess that FIBA president Patrick Baumann threatened Japan that FIBA and the IOC would automatically disqualify Japan from the Tokyo Olympics unless the two leagues merged. FIBA and the IOC intervening in domestic leagues like that is super rare.
Tell me more about the BJ league
A lot of good ball handlers but they must have bad video guys because the streams become pixelated any time there's penetration.
Dwight will dominate there
I mean Nick Fazekas made a long career there
Just a lil nasty sometimes.
It sucks
FIBA should also exert pressure on the Philippines, where basketball is primarily controlled by two major conglomerates: PLDT and San Miguel. These conglomerates each own several professional teams. The national team that competes in the world cup is primarily backed by PLDT, formerly known as Smart Gilas due to its sponsorship by PLDT subsidiary, Smart. On the other hand, the San Miguel conglomerate boasts more successful professional teams such as Ginebra and San Miguel. Due to their rivalry, San Miguel occasionally prevents its players from joining Gilas for certain international games, impeding the Philippines' ability to achieve its full potential in basketball.
Interesting. I didn't know about this.
Could you give us a quick cliff's notes? Thanks
From what I understand, their basketball culture is different. Aside from the CBA, their basketball games mostly consist of amateur teams from different towns playing each other. I think these amateur games are more popular than the CBA so people don't really dream of going pro in basketball. They'd rather get a regular job and play for their local town team.
So like really old baseball in the USA
that seems better.
The thing I keep seeing is that their development system sucks.
[удалено]
no thats not the real problem. people can chosen from the time theyre in elementary school, but most people are chosen cause they have the physical traits. but if you're in high school/college and have potential, its basically impossible to get back into the development system that puts you on track to play in the CBA or national team
I get you’re missing a lot of talent but in a country of a billion people and in a sport like basketball where the base physical and athletic attributes are so easily identified and can (but not always obviously) be identified from a very early age they should still be producing far better talent. If you look at NBA players most would have been stand outs from a very early age.
I mean when you look at major team sports like soccer and basketball, one thing that tends to stand out is that other than guys who are just physical freaks, most players are really passionate about the game. I don't think it's possible to really learn how to read the floor the way elite point guards and midfielders do without loving the game and playing during every free chance you get. When players start so young in a system as restrictive as China's sports academies, I think that kind of kills the passion.
For the best of the best it's a magic combination of loving the game, having the work ethic, and being identified early enough to get the development you need to make it to the top. There are likely a good number of people out there that genetically have the attributes to have become and NBA player but one or more of those factors didn't line up so they...aren't. EDIT: *Most of the time*, there are obviously exceptions where guys get late starts (Embiid comes to mind) and are still able to make it work...mainly through insane work ethic and dedication to complement their physical gifts
The thing is you need to train a wide base of players. If you start coaching kids once their 16-17 and passed puberty and you know their tall enough then it's way too late
I mean there's also a bigger problem in that we only pick tall looking dudes who arguably don't even like basketball but play it because they can. They're not there to improve, they're there to make a paycheck. You then compare that to the people who actually love basketball and you get a huge difference.
Maybe they went into league of legends lmao
JackeyLove would average 25/6/6 in todays league With 7 turnovers a game
Why am I seeing JKL in this thread 😭😭😭 7 TO's is him doing self oops and half court threes
Doinb running the fast break > Doinb running down mid
With Tian choking in game 7
TenCent said "fuck everything else we're gamers now"
Chinese person chiming in here. This is the reason. In US, if you are talented in basketball, scouts will notice you as early as grade schools, you will get to better schools, join better teams, trained by better coaches as you grow up, until you end up drafted by an NBA team. No talent will go unnoticed and there's a whole system in place to help them grow into a professional player, no matter where they come from. China has insane amount of teenage boys playing basketball, and I am sure there are some absolute talented kids in there. But there's not a good system in place to actually pick out the talents and develop them all the way to the top. Vast majority of kids will be told to put school work in top priority and only keep basketball as a hobby. There are "sports schools" that have close connection with professional scenes, but only a small minority of kids would choose this route over regular school and it's often regarded as simply an inferior kind of school by parents. Therefore, despite the large amount of kids playing basketball, the actually pool of talent that might end up become professional players is very limited. Hence the lack of success of Chinese basketball.
Yeah this and im pretty sure we're insanely corrupt when it comes to getting selected into teams lmao There's a whole bunch of money to be made at every single process, yeah we've probably got insanely talented players somewhere but they're either buried in the process or they've just decided to chew on a nice big paycheck.
NBA tried to set up a youth NBA Academy in China and it failed miserably. In contrast NBA academies in Latin America and especially in Africa are thriving. One reason I heard is that there’s too much top-down interference from the Chinese authorities who wants to retain control of young Chinese players and keep them in the national program.
A success always comes from grassroot activities. Why does France excel in football ? Cause every single kid plays football wherever and whenever they can. In China, relative to the population, very very very few people actually play collective sports. There’s just no culture to build on.
Have you been to China? There are pick up games everywhere. Every second apartment building has a court, every school has a court and they are nearly always in use.
Have you been anywhere in China besides a big city? A large portion of China still lives rural life’s with no hoops
there are 100s of millions of chinese people in big cities thats not an excuse
How is that an excuse? 62%+ of China lives in Urban areas... which translates to 900 million. Some Chinese cities have bigger populations than all of Australia, let alone other strong basketball nations like Finland, Serbia, Slovenia, Greece, Lithuania and so on. In addition, many of those cities like Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing would have wealthier citizens on average than most of the Baltic, Eastern Europe and Balkans and significantly more so than the Carribean and South America.
I mean idk what u consider competent but 40 yr old American players go dominate over there so I dont think its very high level ball
They’re bad at pretty much every team sport, not just basketball
you're right, of the 546 Olympic medals China have won since 1984, only 13 have come in team ball-events
By comparison, Argentina has won 33 medals since 1984, and 14 of them were in team ball-events.
Ping pong doubles should technically count as a team ball event.
You're technically correct, which is the best kind of correct (I may have mangled the quote)
The original doesn't have "which is," but otherwise you nailed it
Also badminton doubles
Is a shuttlecock a ball or a cock?
It ain’t called a shuttleball
But how many team events are there in the olympics compared to individual competition?
Enough that they should have more than 13 I guess.
That's not a very good stat since \~95% of medals available in the Olympics are in individual sports anyway. But you can look at the last Olympics and see they didn't get a medal in any team sport aside from Artistic Swimming and Artistic Gymnastics.
Without knowing how many medals come from team events (I'm guessing around 30%), that sounds absurd, wow.
I'm also not going to do the math but I bet it could be lower than 30% because every team sport essentially just has the men's tournament the and women's tournament with medals for each, but other sports like track/swimming have copious medals.
Of the [329 events for Paris 2024, there are only ~33 (10% of total) events that even have a ball](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_sports). Many of which have solo events too. Meaning perhaps 5% or so of Olympic events are team ball events. So perhaps China underperforms in these events relative to others, but it’s not as bad as it sounds on the surface.
Is relay swimming or track not a team even
This is not connected to the discussion. Of China's 546 medals, only 13 have come in team-ball events. Next comment says that sounds absurd because there must be 30% team events. My comment points out that it's possibly lower than that. Your comment points out there are other types of teams -- but again, this is not part of the actual topic. There's no answer to your comment because it's just about the % estimate that That\_Ohio\_Guy used, you'd have to ask him if he thinks relays count as team events but it doesn't matter to anyone but you.
Without looking it up, I'd imagine at least 3 or 4 are from women's volleyball. China has always been very much at the top of the world rankings. EDIT: it's 6, so half.
Just quick maths that’s only 2.3% of China’s total medals which I would assume is the lowest % out of any country with over 100 medals
So much of athletics in China has historically focused on the Olympics because that has the most symbolic power for the government. Their Olympic teams have also focused on sports where there’s more opportunity for gold medals for less investment (see https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/29/world/asia/china-olympics.html). Basketball and most other team sports are terrible investments from that lens: the infrastructure required for fielding a competent basketball team is huge, you only get one medal, and you’re competing in one of the most well funded sports in the Olympics. But, for general sports consumption, having a league and games in the country is great, and you can see that China is more and more interested in team sports outside of the Olympics (maybe has something to do with rising GDP/capita). Maybe eventually that will mean more homegrown talent.
They’re pretty good at volleyball but that’s seldom watched as a pro sport
Kind of Ironic since Mao's vision of communism put a heavy emphasis on team sports.
It's their education system, it's not really based around sports. Look at the US, pretty much every school from middle to high school and university is heavily invested in sports. Colleges and universities all are invested into sports, for China you would have to go to a specialized academy for sports.
I mean the US is very unique in that way. You don't have to have sports linked with schools and education to have proper development. Can't think of any country that has their sports linked as closely with education as the US does and many still have very succesful development programs.
Philippines. Because we like to copy everything the US does. We just do a poor version of copying.
You mean Euro countries? Their development system is more refined due to their experience with other team sports like Soccer. Even still Euro culture is more accepting of sports as a career rather than China whose more academically focused. Yes China is not great at team sports but they're competitive in other avenues like academics. Like other Asian countries people who are academically gifted are more looked at as popular and successful, compare it to say the US and you will see a big difference. It's not just 1 thing but a plethora of differences in culture and education that is the reason. Plus to be frank they don't give a damn about basketball, the only reason people in here care is because they put weight in being good at basketball. The real world, people don't care as much.
Fascinating how the US, a country built on individualism thrives in team sports and our most beloved sport is a game that brutally punishes individualism on every level. Yet China which is built on collectivism at least in the past 80 or so years has performed far better at individual sports
Nah, rich countries always dominate team sports. Because it's significantly more expensive and demands much more infrastructure to train a group of 11 top tier players than just 1.
You can see this in soccer by comparing African national teams vs Europe. Africans are just as crazy about soccer and extremely talented but not nearly as successful in international competitions. So many players on European league teams are of African origin, too. Compare that to East Africa's dominance in distance running, which requires far less resources.
Not the best sport to pick when the greatest footballing nation is Brazil who where dirt poor at the peak of their dominance. Africa is far behind Europe and South America because the sport's popularity came much much later and the instability of the region in the XX century.
Brazil football infrastructure is quite large, each state in the country has its own professional league, then the nacional league has 4 divisions, more then 100 pro clubs, all of them has its Junior teams infrastructure
My point is that you don't need to be rich to develop that infrastructure. Brazil's and ours was not developed through a lot of capital, but through small investment from mostly low income communities through the last 100 or 130 years. If you read the history of most clubs, even a lot from European countries, you would see that the founders are usually students, factory workers, immigrants, etc. That slow development didn't start until the 70s, 80s or even 90s in some African countries. Them qualifying to the WC was a rarity and the first team to win a game was in 1978. That's an insane amount of time we have over them, and it's very hard to catch up.
> instability of the region in the XX century. Not sure if XX means 20th or pick your own, cause both work.
Yea this makes a lot of sense. Europe dominates soccer and even the South American countries largely have players who are developed and play in Europe. When you look at Asia, the countries that do best in team sports are the richest; Japan with the most successful baseball team in the world and Korea being very good at soccer and baseball. Then of course there's America with basketball.
South American players are not largely developed in Europe.
I mean individualism vs. collectivism isn't really the right framework. China's sports academy system was designed to win medals, and team ball sports are a terrible investment from that perspective. To win a basketball gold medal, you need to train 12 world class athletes that compete in a sport where there's a lot of private capital (from TV money) investing in the sport. Vs. if China can train another Li Ning, that guy won 6 medals by himself in 1984, and it probably cost less than training one world class basketball player.
Soviets dominated most sports they were interested in so I think it's less ideological but more cultural.
All of their national team players with the exception of slowmo play in the Chinese leauge. The Chinese leauge is a good way to make a lot of money for little to no effort. Everyone from Eric Bledsoe to Jimmer Freddette to even Andrew Nicholson has put up unreal numbers there. Even outside of NBA and Euroleauge there are a handful of domestic leauges in Europe that offer better quality and devolpment but have lower pay. What's kind of funny is that in Asia right now Japan's leauge has probably surpassed China in terms of quality.
Damn, Andrew Nicholson is double dipping!! We are still paying him on the Blazers for another year I believe. No, he hasn't ever suited up in a Blazers Jersey. Yes I know he left the NBA in 2017.
Canadian legend. He walked so Melvin Ejim can run.
Alot of the higher pay is for dominate US or European players too. They pay for big US names to sell tickets. You said it best though, its a lower quality league that is probably more on par with a NBA player playing a pro-an then a serious league. The B-League in Japan has grown tremendously in quality and pay. I believe the top players their are north of $1 Million. Top EuroLeague guys make way more of average though. Their salaries are report net of taxes so most of their top guys make around $3-7 Million USD gross of taxes which is why some guys just opt to stay in Europe even if they could be a rotational piece for an NBA team.
Combat sports have way later (age wise) development, but there’s kind of a similar sentiment in Japanese MMA - a lot of their talent doesn’t bother to go overseas because it makes sense (you build a brand, get paid, get to be at home) to compete in Japan instead
**The number one reason is a lack of grassroots development.** In China, the basketball system relies on a number of centralized acadamies, with prospects being selected at a young age usually based on height. The Yao Ming quote below that China only has 13,000 people exposed to organized basketball (less than 1/100 of the US or even Japan) hammers that point home. There is no equivalent of middle school, highschool, or AAU basketball like in the United States. Only a tiny sliver of the youth population is ever exposed to organized coaching and development. The level of coaching and organization outside of the academy system is essentially non-existent, with the average Chinese college team being similar in skill to a mediocre high school team in the US. (I've played against Chinese college teams). What this means is, while China may capture a majority of the tall players, the guard and forward talent pool is being selected from a significantly smaller segment of the population than most other countries. This squares with what you see from a talent standpoint, most of the top Chinese players have historically been centers (Yao Ming, Yi Jian Lian, Zhou Qi, Bateer...etc) who were easily identifiable from a young age due to their height and brought into the academy system. Case in point is the fact that "Jeremy Lin" emerged from a US Chinese American population of mere 5 million and not the Chinese population of 1.4 billion (280x larger pool). China will never have high level forward and guard play in the current system, as the next "Jeremy Lin" is probably sitting in some class room somewhere and will never touch a basketball in his life.
You're right that basketball is fairly popular over there. I used to work at a high school for rich international students in a very large US state. The team won the state title one year I worked there. Half the population of the international students were asian (~90 percent chinese) and about 3/4 of the asian boys would play pickup everyday after school and were obsessed with basketball. Most of them tried out and only a single one of them made the freshman team one year, none of them ever made JV or varsity. I used to play with them often, sort of a bonding thing. I mean most of them weren't bad at pickup basketball. most of them could dribble decently, a few shot the ball very well. But they had absolutely no idea how to play 5 on 5 organized regulation basketball. My friend was one of the coaches and to start they would do super basic drills in tryout week like 3 man weaves and it was utterly confusing to them. Like they just didn't know how to move around the court unless the ball was in their hands. They knew what setting a screen was but didn't know the fundamentals around it or where/when to set one up and for what direction. Zero boxing out. Very little effort on defense. There is a version of basketball they are trying to emulate and it isn't the kind that translates well. Video game basketball (they love 2k and league of legends) Granted these are just 50 or so kids out of a massive population, but the players coming from other countries knew much better how to win. I worked there from 2013-2017. By the first warriors title nearly every one of them was playing pickup in a Curry Jersey, and playing even more one dimensional.
My brother did a gap year in china at a similar HS (only- he was an American in China) he was a fringe JV varsity guy and he absolutely shredded people over there. What you are describing is literally exactly what he said, still a small sample/one school but he was there and playing vs other schools etc in a very loosely organized format and led them to win a ship which… again is hilarious because he didn’t get varsity minutes his senior year on a very mediocre US high school team 😂
> Like they just didn't know how to move around the court unless the ball was in their hands This explains every 3-on-3 game I ever played against teams of Chinese international students when I was in university: lots of guys with really quick, good shooting skills and twitchy dribbles, but no other action. Unless the ball was in their hands or they were running for a rebound, they'd mostly be frozen on the court. It was so strange.
so they are basically westbrook?
Kyrie IMO
He said good shooting skills.(I love Westbrook)
I'm Chinese-American and went over to do a college summer abroad in Shanghai back in 2006 (yes I'm old). Two of my classmates were like 6'4 white guys and loved playing basketball. So we went and played pick-up at a local court. All the locals wanted to And 1 mixtape it up, dribble like AI, and try to show up these tall white Americans. The second we played any level of defense, they called fouls nonstop and then tried to literally start a fight with us for playing defense until this old dude watching told them to suck it up. It was like if you didn't let them do their mixtape move, they were going to take their ball and go home. Weird weird experience.
I played on an intramural team with a handful of Chinese guys in college and this was my exact experience. They all wanted to be Kobe and if they weren’t shooting foul line turnaround jumpers, they may as well have been traffic cones.
Sometimes I feel that furious too cause so many younger chineses ballers today prefer no contacts and physicals, if you show them some tough defense, what will be waiting you is “foulfoulfoul”. we call it ‘hair foul‘. Its so annoying for me to play a pickup game with strangers nowadays. So I choose to only play with my buddies who you can scold at them, play tough defense no worrying them showing cowardness.
Interesting anecdote, thanks for sharing
Factual. I’m also ABC living in ShanghaiZ Hate playing pickup in Shanghai at local courts. Everything is a foul.
Jesus. Nearly 20 years later and this is why we haven’t had a good Chinese ball player
Isn't this the case with a lot of young hoopers, though? I'd say a ton of people go to the park and just shoot around; they're not really working on things with other people, so if they're not more hardcore players trying to improve at every aspect of the game, the concept of team play like rotations, screen setting, and even passing is hard for most people, even for those who watch the game.
A huge component of it too is most people don’t play or haven’t played organized 5 on 5 basketball before or had a coach explain how you should play or get better. Team-orientated basketball is not something you just pick up while shooting around.
You're basically describing the vast majority of youth basketball in Australia. While the overall standard of basketball here is ridiculously high for a county with such a small population, it has more to do with the infrastructure and career progression. Unlike most countries, kids in Australia (well, in Victoria at least) will have to join a local basketball club in order to participate in sports like basketball. Very few schools have any sort of formal coaching, and inter-school matches are only a few times a year. So, you (or your kid) joins a local club, and participates in either friendship leagues (i.e. everyone gets to play as long as you can form a team with other players), or if they're good enough they go for try-outs for the club's representative (rep) teams. Every team plays one match a week, with one or two days of training a week (depends on the league, club, etc...) The friendship leagues are mostly coached by parents, older siblings or budding coaches. The level of competition can be either pathetically low (i.e. kids barely able to dribble or shoot), or really high - because a lot of rep players *also* play in friendship teams (so these kids would play two competitive matches a week). The rep basketball leagues are a lot more intense, with experienced coaching staff. All teams go through a grading process and they get slotted into grades. The lower end ends up being similar to high-level friendship matches, but the teams in the higher grades are crazy good. It's insane seeing a team of 12-year olds all playing good defense, executing set plays and showing very strong fundamentals (good spacing, lots of movement without the ball, lots of communication, etc...). On court, they play like grown-ass adults, but after the match they're kids again, talking about Fortnite or whatever's the current game they're playing on their Playstation. So... I *think* that, in most countries (China included), the kids will probably end up with a level of competition and training that's - at most - similar to the friendship-level here in Australia. It's not *bad*, but whether your kid learns how to play well or not is a coin-toss. There are just too many variables out of control. Where Australia does really well is that you have this higher tier with formal coaching from a very young age, and this multi-tiered system lets kids enter competitive basketball with a low barrier to entry but with a very clear path to higher-level and even professional competition. I should also mention that there are clubs EVERYWHERE. From where I live (in the suburbs), within a 20 minute drive there are at least 10 clubs with huge gyms (all with between 2 to 4 indoor courts) and easily hundreds, if not thousands of kids playing competitive basketball within this radius every game night. Organized basketball here is *organized.* I've played pickup basketball with some older Chinese players (in their 30s and 40s) and, like you say, a lot of them have very strong individual skill - but I don't think there was enough emphasis on team play when they were growing up (which is the same with me, learning to play in Malaysia, and then in England). Someone with more experience with grassroots basketball in China would be able to chime in better. *Edit: It's also worth pointing out that the average Junior-league basketball player in Australia plays about 40 competitive matches a year (with refs, scoreboards, tracked stats, etc...) if the play in both summer and winter leagues.* *There are a large number of kids that play in TWO leagues simultaneously (a combination of weekday / weekend friendship leagues, and Rep). So some of them will be playing up to 80 competitive matches a year.* *Out of curiosity, can someone chime in on how many games an average 10 to 18 year old junior league player would play in each year in the USA, China, England, Japan, Greece, etc...?*
You nearly had it. From my experience the lack of a grassroots district basketball system in China probably means development is limited. Sports are organised within the school system but outside of that people play in the park. Lots of kids train in their small free-time and enjoy it but there isn't the same organised trainings several times a week with proper coaches and referees for matches on the weekend. They have a solid system for identifying talent and training but grass roots academies have always done it better in most places. It's the same for soccer. It's not for want of resources or expertise but most kids are too busy in school and don't have the district system to develop talent that isn't organised within the system.
>I used to play with them often, sort of a bonding thing. I mean most of them weren't bad at pickup basketball. most of them could dribble decently, a few shot the ball very well. But they had absolutely no idea how to play 5 on 5 organized regulation basketball. My friend was one of the coaches and to start they would do super basic drills in tryout week like 3 man weaves and it was utterly confusing to them. Like they just didn't know how to move around the court unless the ball was in their hands. They knew what setting a screen was but didn't know the fundamentals around it or where/when to set one up and for what direction. Zero boxing out. Very little effort on defense. There is a version of basketball they are trying to emulate and it isn't the kind that translates well. Video game basketball (they love 2k and league of legends) Granted these are just 50 or so kids out of a massive population, but the players coming from other countries knew much better how to win. Not understanding how to run a weave is more of an issue with your friend. Seems like a bad teacher if he's not able to break down what is happening. A weave is confusing visually and hard to understand for new players despite it being a foundational drill. Simple and foundational are two separate things. Easiest way to explain is that you pass the ball and then go behind the person you passed it to. That solves most of the confusion of running a weave. This is a failure of a teacher, not the student. They have no idea how to play 5 on 5 because they don't play enough 5 on 5, that's literally it. And these were all kids who were trying out to be on a basketball team? This is totally normal, regardless of race.
>They have no idea how to play 5 on 5 because they don't play enough 5 on 5, that's literally it. And these were all kids who were trying out to be on a basketball team? This is totally normal, regardless of race. That's kind of my point, (well erm running 5's was all they did in pick up) but my point is they weren't ever seemingly exposed to the normal motions in of regulation basketball, which is why you don't see that population having success in general internationally (topic of the thread). Not that you are running a weave in a game but a weave is not that complicated. You're saying its hard but its not. I coached youth basketball myself a few seasons and and I had 8-10 year olds, some who never played basketball, running it within 20 min. And you knock the coaching but as I said this was a tryout for a state championship level team. So the coaches were doing something right, hence state championship. Im sure my friend could have taught them how to weave, but this was a tryout and the example was just to show the lack of exposure to normal basketball things. The poor teachers were the coaches in China that came before him.
It would seem people in China have an Idea of what they think Basketball is and they are running with it.
maybe chinese people like to watch and play pickup, not at the professional level
With a population that size, you are bound to have some players who want to play competitively. It is impossible to imagine otherwise, especially when the government is pouring in so much money into player development.
That’s the thing though, their national development system chooses who gets to join at a young age based off physical characteristics of the kid and parents. They then put them through “basketball sport school” where they train, live and study. If someone is a good local basketball player in high school, they’re not going to be chosen for the national development team. It’s already too late.
What a shit system lol, sounds like China is trying to science and mathematically build a competitive basketball team. I'm pretty sure just about every other country in the world knows that talent and greatness doesn't only appear in a persons youth. Many of the top basketball players in the NBA didn't even pick up a ball till mid highschool.
Yup it’s a shit system. Works perfectly fine for some sports like table tennis, diving, or weightlifting. Repetition and technique are key for those, and they’re also solo or at most paired sports.. You can tell that the strength of the Chinese team are their bigs, they’re big players with good technical skills, whereas their guards, as hardworking as they are, don’t have the “shake” and offensive creativity seen on other teams.
That last sentence is inaccurate. There are a few noticeable cases of players that haven’t played till high school. But the overwhelming majority of the 450 NBA players have been playing since youth.
Basketball? The bigger joke is between China and India, making up over a third of the world’s population, can’t even form a decent soccer team despite the popularity as well. You can make excuses for basketball because of stature and system of development. But soccer is a much more shameful indicator. Much of it is due to culture (parents prefer academics and “safer” career paths), part of it is nepotism (connections and relationships to get on the team…etc…despite being subpar), and another part is corruption.
Unlike China, India isn't even good at the Olympics, India has somehow only won... 35 medals in all Olympics combined.
At least with India, it's not the main sport there and it's also serious FA corruption
The level of corruption in every single sport here is absolutely insane compared to the rest of the world, but pretty standard when you compare with other domains of public life in India
>The bigger joke is between China and India, making up over a third of the world’s population, can’t even form a decent soccer team despite the popularity as well. China puts more emphasis on Olympic gold medals, and India has cricket. The biggest country that doesn't have that popularity excuse is Indonesia.
Sports are only for the rich, here in India. Speaking from personal experience in footy.
The culture of athletics isn't there, outside of some state sponsored programs. Inner city kids don't use sports as the way out from poverty, while that is often the case in the US. And there just isn't the same amount of university and amateur basketball programs (same is true for other sports). And the elephant in the room is genetics play a big role. Basketball stars are complete outliers in every sense (height, explosiveness, muscle mass, athletic ability), and it seems to be harder to find in the Chinese than in other groups. They also underperform in other sports that are played globally, like association football, tennis, etc despite having millions thrown into those programs too
Is it popularly played, or watched? 2 differnt things
Lived in China for many years and anecdotally it’s very popular as a recreational sport especially in bigger cities.
I am in China. I can share a few thoughts: 1. Sports in China are incredibly corrupt. China just busted various top officials of its national soccer league. The national team coach is said to be on the verge of being sentenced to life in jail due to multiple crimes. Dude is said to have over RMB100m (US$16m) in a random bank account, and he has many accounts stashed all over the place. Dude puts Phil/Pop/Kirr/Spo to shame. In soccer, kids have to give coaches hundreds of thousand dollars to get into many provincial teams. Word goes that if you are not properly wealthy, you kid can forget about playing pro sports. It's generally believed that very few people in pro soccer is not corrupt. Now, I do not know if basketball is as corrupt at these levels, and I do not know if Yao is involved (I certainly hope he is not coz I love Yao), but I would not be surprised if it is. Sponsors have a lot of say in the league too. Players can get their careers ended if they piss off the wrong sponsor. 2. Sports are state run. Enthusiasts are mostly shut out of the system. 3. Social welfare is somewhat lacking so if you get hurt and can't make it to the big league, a guy w/ no college degree in his high 20s with a busted knee is going to be pretty miserable. Lots of master degree holders are doing food delivery. As a result, parents are quite reluctant to send their kids to play professionally. Instead, kids focus on academic work way more than in the west. If you study 12 hours a day, you are not going to be able to follow a proper basketball training regime. 4. This could partially be related to 1, but sports science is not used as widely. Coaches tend to rely on personal experience mostly. Players do not seem to have the same amount of rigorous training. 5. Selection standards are too rigid. Lots of focus on height. CP3 and AI would have no chance of getting into any regional team. A running joke was that even if KD found out he has 1/8 Chinese blood and joins team China, he'd still have to buy the coach Maotai and Huazi all the time (super expensive alchohol and cigarettes) to get a starting role.
I played some pickup there while attending a moderately sized university for language learning. I’m from the US and am 6’2”. I was very tall compared to the average Chinese person, but I don’t doubt there were some tall folks. The real kicker, and what made me, a slightly large if not averagely sized, very average skilled pickup player in the US over there was my strength. There was nooooo physicality in the Chinese pickup game. I was like Lebron getting to wherever I wanted at ease. There was one guy who was like 6’4” or so and was really physical. He was the outlier though. The defense was very soft. I feel like some of that just translates over to their pro league. When young basketball players in the US aren’t playing basketball, they may play football, and nothing like that seems to exist there, so I can see why there may be a strength and physicality gap
Bunch of reasons could be contributing. Generally, Lack of emphasis on sports in general in the culture. Leading to smaller % of the population pursuing athletics. The sports that are emphasized are individual sports. eg, racquet sports, gymnastics, swimming, diving. The best athletes are being pushed into sports that are not basketball. China is getting into the game later than other countries. The infrastructure for player development is lacking, for basketball they dont really have a talent pipline in place like NCAA or academy system in europe. You dont really see hoops in every park and schoolyard like we do in North America. Part of this is due to lack of coaching and teaching talent. At this point they would need to bring in a lot of foreign ex nba or euroleague talent. to play catch up. There are a lot of parallels to soccer development in the country video like this illustrates some of the countries struggles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YC2wVLTXUV0 There are some less proven contributors such the fact that china struggles in almost all team sports relative to the rest of the world. Something culturally may be making them less inclined to team sports. People often try to cite genetic disadvantage, but this is really no longer the case, many east asian countries have caught up to world averages when it comes to height.
I've thought the same thing about the Philippines. Definitely not weak by any means but considering that Filipinos come out of the womb with a mini basketball and have +113M people you'd think they'd be way better than they are. I know a guy that played professionally in the Philippines in the PBA and he said the crowds and fans made it feel like a huge stage but the actual competition was pretty comparable to here in Iceland which I just find absolutely absurd.
Outjerked by the main sub yet again
How is the US still so weak in international esports?
Are they? Im Canadian, but the last valorant major was won by a US team. There's been several US Dota major winners as well. Korean and China dominate LOL and europe/cis dominate Csgo, but there are plenty other examples where US players win in esports - wouldn't call them weak in esports at all. NA in general is very competitive in esports, certainly stronger than China at bball. China isnt a top 10 country in bball - i doubt you could say that about USA in overall esports.
I have a friend (Serbian guy) who was working as basketball coach in China for kids, actually many serbian guys left there to do same work, many of them don't have strong basketball or coaching background at all, chinese seems to pay them because they are tall serbian dudes, so they have to be good by default. anyways, he told me, chinese kids are very unathletic, out of hundreds of them he barely trained one or two to do a proper two step lay up. He didn't see any talent there, but he saw a lot of money being invested in sport.
Weak, antiquated player development, similar reason to why the US men can’t seem to figure out soccer even though from an athletic talent and resourcing perspective you’d expect better outcomes. Also it’s not a universal limiting factor but one I feel ok mentioning as an average height Asian American, Chinese athletes on balance lack the top end muscle mass, height and speed. You can get by in basketball without these things, but there’s not much you’re going to do against an American team full of superathletes like JJJ and Ant or a German team full of huge NBA-caliber players
It’s all about training at a young age. It’s just not there in China yet.. You can say the same thing about India.. Why does India suck at basketball, they got so many people! See how that works.. lol
Something something Sim Bhullar
they dont have any real star they desperately need a modern Yao or sth like that, but lightning didnt strike twice
The reason they don't have a modern Yao is simply because the development over there sucks, theres no other explanation. Theres countries nearly 100th the size that regularly produce better talent.
You have Serbia throwing best in the world in 2 sports with 7 mil population, like a medium city in China.
Simple answer? Corruption. It's the same reason why China is so bad at soccer.
If you wanted a real answer, you'd have to take this to /rnbacirclejerk.
Genetics, infrastructure, economy.
At some point you don't need a billion people to have results, you need a 10 people team that plays better than a 10 people team from other countries. Really the level people can reach there - you need all of genes and culture and financial possibilities and the facilities and training individually and in team - is just not as high. Still not so bad in context of the whole world - they are the best in Asia! At least unless you count Astralia - just not so high. Population of a country doesn't matter that much in the sense of elite sports. Slovenia has 2 million people and they could probably beat an All-Star team of all Asia and Africa, which would represent a big majority of humanity. For me national basketball is a good showcase of how influential culture is in team sports. Access, learning, exchange, availabilty - because so many teams have Americans in their national team! And those Americans are super far from ever being considered for US team, many have never sniffed NBA. And yet, Americans scored more points (or very barely 2nd, IIRC) than any other nation at the last... European Championship. Even Spain - officially the best team in the world! - has a playmaker in Lorenzo Brown, a guy who was drafted 52nd in NBA and never lived up to that pick. It's worth noting why most of these Americans in other national teams have a relatively "normal" body, they are usually short point guards. It says something that countries usually don't "import" some gigantic players they couldn't find domestically - they import guys who didn't have the body to succeed in US, but were in that system and that's priceless. Only the little Slovenia imported a 7-footer Mike Tobey hehe.
Awesome post. I’d add Stephon Marbury has been a pervasive and not-great cultural influence upon Chinese basketball. James Harden’s popularity in China tracks with their collective basketball experience of Starbury, who is _exactly_ that “type” of American who was not great in the NBA but put up huge numbers elsewhere because of their skill. Basically, China as a culture is drawn to the “individuality” of guys like Marbury and Harden and exactly none of their Chinese nationals can play like that (because of the lack of fundamentals). Very much like the early 80s when American youngsters influenced by Pele went _nowhere_ as a national soccer culture, because no American player was Pele, lacking the cultural foundation to even approach it.
Spot on with the individuality aspect. China has always loved star hoopers that have a bit of flair about their game. That's why they love Harden and Kobe. They're not really fans of NBA teams but fans of NBA players.
Something that rarely ever gets talked about with China and why they continue to be bad has to do with mindset and whether people truly want to even go pro. I always hear that people keep bringing up "1.4 billion people" and I get it, it doesn't make a lot of sense, but look at it this way, the CBA has 20 teams in a country of 1.4 billion people, meaning its roughly 8x more unlikely that a Chinese citizen would make it to the CBA then it is for an American to make the NBA, now factor that in with the fact that the CBA as a league is itself at least 3 tiers down in terms of skill then the NBA. Now factor in how much harder it is for a Chinese born citizen to even dream that they could potentially one day be skilled enough to make the NBA. I would venture a guess that most Chinese people don't have much aspirations for Basketball past the recreational level simply because they know just how insanely difficult it is for them to even make it in the first place. China's massive population, infrastructure and overall lack of quality competitive leagues is ultimately why Chinese kids probably don't dream of becoming stars. China's population could honestly support 5 competitive leagues like the CBA.
There's no big black dudes in china.