Nik Khamenia came back from Lausanne, where he helped Team USA to gold in the FIBA U19 World Cup with an interesting perspective on how far basketball has advanced around the rest of the world.
He said this on this week’s Brotherhood Podcast:
“I mean for sure the game is growing in other parts of the world, but I still don’t think the world is catching up like they say they are. The U.S. is always going to be the U.S. I know they talk about the MVPs and all that, but you only have a selective few guys
that are like that — whereas a lot of Americans are like that, though.”
Ah, youth.
Khamenia obviously has standing here since he's quite literally been in the arena and most of us have not.
However, he is too young to remember anything but U.S. success, largely accomplished under the Mike Krzyzewski-engineered turnaround.
Things got ugly for awhile though before they got better. He might be shocked to learn that the US won bronze in Athens and bombed in other events as well prior to Coach K taking over.
One of the more remarkable things about the turnaround that K and Jerry Colangelo engineered is that American dominance, after faltering, is now once again a given.
That’s what Khamenia misses, or rather, through no fault of his own, lacks the perspective to fully understand.
And he may be right: the K formula - put together a highly athletic team built around defense and transition basketball - and so far no one else has been able to compete with it very much.
However, they have come close and some teams - notably France and Canada - are not that far off. France has Victor Wembanyama and a bushel of young talent be close to great. Canada isn’t bad either.
So yes, in many ways he’s correct. But not in every way. The US is winning again, but no one is standing still.
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