this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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What I think is interesting about this trend is that the last 3 MVPs have been foreign big men with skills or athleticism that very few big men possess. The ridiculous percentage of US 7 footers who make the NBA - and the associated lack of talent that you get from such a tiny sample size - has been a point of discussion for a long time (Pablo Torre has the exact percentage somewhere). I wonder if what we're seeing with the international growth of the game is a significant deepening of the talent pool of very tall men. I also wonder if it has anything to do with how players are developed in the US. AAU is probably a crime against basketball, but that hasn't stopped plenty of great American players from developing of course. Has it done harm specifically to centers maybe? The traditional American "unicorn" player is a guy like AD, who famously has his skills because he was a guard until he hit a late growth spurt. If he was 6' 6" by 8th grade would he still have those skills? What if he had developed in the European club basketball system? I have no clue what the answers are, but it's a lot of fun to watch the international players coming in.
People in the youth basketball world talk about it all the time.
Youth basketball has become so much about money, and making a kid into a star that they can profit off of, a lot of kids don’t even get a chance to become good in the AAU system. The kids whose parents pay the most money and have the physical gifts early get priority.