bleedspeed177 wrote:This has me thinking. The All-Star weekend it should be like hockey. US vs World. Best US player against the best European players in the league. Would be interesting.
The thing I don't know is. Do we really put as much time into this as other countries? Do we prep as much as them?
Well, US teams in basketball did not need to put much work into beeing best, back then in 70s-80s NCAA players teams were absolutely able to crush opponents internationally, but then the world improved so in 1992 after long negotiations finally Dream Team started in Barcelona, since then it looked like dominance will last forever and teams were just coming to the championships without any preparations, but like 10 years later finally some countries became strong enough to challenge even best US team and then Argentina won World Championships (with Scola,Manu etc.). And since then US actually takes preparations really serious, heck now they are already camping and it is like month before Championships starts.
I dont know how american fans feel and care about US team, but i would suppose that if US team would lose, it would be a big surprise for everybody in the USA. And when you face Spain playing at home with Gasols/Ibaka/Rubio etc. you have to prepare for them, also Spurs just won NBA and Parker/Diaw were big part of that, i would expect them to start for France etc.
All-Star weekend in suggested format would actually not work, that is already proven by NHL who tried that for some time and Ice Hockey is much stronger in many big European countries, but we in here dont care too much about All-Star weekends and show in generall. Also it is actually not that appealing to root for world team if you are outside USA i guess.
