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The sport of basketball is huge in China and there are a billion of them.
Why do they not dominate?
If NFL is A level athleticism
- Thread starter TheLastEmperorReurns
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The sport of basketball is huge in China and there are a billion of them.
Why do they not dominate?
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You guys stop white knighting a bunch of people you will never meet. A level athletes train at Dragon Claw MMA and are hence barred from competition.
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My definition of a Supreme A-level Athlete - Bo Jackson
Played Pro football & Pro baseball at th same time
6'1 - 230lb / 40yd @ 4.13
No doubt we would have been a beast in Ruby. Soccer well that's a finesse sport, so probably not.
No doubt we would have fared well in MMA, he was a bully when he was young much like Mike Tyson
Played Pro football & Pro baseball at th same time
6'1 - 230lb / 40yd @ 4.13
No doubt we would have been a beast in Ruby. Soccer well that's a finesse sport, so probably not.
No doubt we would have fared well in MMA, he was a bully when he was young much like Mike Tyson
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The answer to that is simple common sense.. Huge as a hobby and sport, not as a career choice. But we have had multiple Chinese NBA players, most of whom either started or got significant playing time, while in the NBA. The sport of Soccer is huge in Africa, yet you do not see African's dominating Soccer.. same reason, huge as a sport and hobby, but not a realistic career choice with no promises.
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Um..are you laughing cause South Koreans are Asians or something? South Korea is a legit sports country, and has been for a long time.
Also, these stats are relatively worthless. Many of the best athletes in USA do not participate in sports that are played in the Olympics. Many of the best athletes in the USA are also basketball players, and naturally they can only get one medal from that even though basketball teams obviously have more than one athlete.
The NFL is filled with olympic caliber athletes, obviously they do not participate in the Olympics.
Yeah, that’s just a shit excuse.
For the majority of the world, real football >>>>>> the Olympics.
In fact, as much as the US like American Fatball, it isn’t as big as something like real football is to Europeans. Not by a long shot.
So when you are presented with proof that the US aren’t nearly as good at producing Olympic gold calibre athletes as you’ve been led to believe, using the excuse of ‘well we focus on other sports’ doesn’t wash. Every country focuses on other sports .
Saying ‘the NFL is full of Olympic calibre athletes’ is as weak as me saying the English Premiership is full of Olympic calibre athletes, and that’s why the UK don’t punch even further above their weight. It’s pure conjecture. What we do know is, lots of countries, including about a dozen European nations, are better at producing Olympic gold calibre athletes than the US. That is a fact.
My definition of a Supreme A-level Athlete - Bo Jackson
Played Pro football & Pro baseball at th same time
6'1 - 230lb / 40yd @ 4.13
No doubt we would have been a beast in Ruby. Soccer well that's a finesse sport, so probably not.
No doubt we would have fared well in MMA, he was a bully when he was young much like Mike Tyson
This is a fair post.
People who have successfully crossed over have about as much claim to being ‘A-level’ as anyone. My point is, you have to actually do it (like this guy did), rather than just talk about doing it, which seems to be the barometer of athletic success here.
Didn’t you hear, America’s best athletes all play ball. Clearly America would dominate every sport but with all their tall black guys playing basketball there’s none left for other sports apparently.
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That doesn't make any sense. Athleticism in American football and soccer are entirely different. Most positions in the NFL rely on pure athletics and not a particular skill - it is nothing like soccer. You do not need to be a supreme athlete to be a great soccer player, it is a sport that requires much more skill and knowledge. Many NFL players could be (or in fact were in college) great Track and Field athletes. You are just simply not knowledge of the sport you are critiquing, and it is very painfully obvious.
Many positions in the NFL merely require a person to run or jump - that naturally means raw athleticism is more important than a sport that would require dribbling, vision or precision. Hence why gymnast and wrestlers are great athletes despite them not having the benefits of playing in professional sports. This is not comparable to football (soccer) at all - soccer is more comparable to hockey in those regards.
And there are other sports other than American Football that is popular in the US that are not Olympic sports...USA is not as tunnel visioned on a particular sport as the U.K is. The fact that you seem to think that there are athletes like JJ Watt and Adrian Peterson running around in the Premier league makes me think you really have no idea what you're talking about.
You also have a very arbitrary standard of determining what countries generate elite athlete by limiting it to gold medalist. The fact that you do not see the variables that go in or why that is a weak standard is somewhat alarming. The argument that the UK is better at producing athletes than the USA because it has a better ratio of gold medalist to population is basically surface level logic, it doesn't have much depth at all.
And I still have no idea how you think that not having a lot of athletes tied up in the NFL and NBA does not make a difference - considering those sports rely significantly more on physicality than soccer does.
You literally cannot be an NBA player if you do not have certain measurements, or an NFL player for that matter bar a few positions. More rugby players would transition to the NFL for higher pay if they were all just slow fat guys as you suggest.
Furthermore, if a basketball team has 15 players or so - then they have essentially won 15 gold medals. But naturally that is not how gold medals are counted in official standings. Lebron James, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant are all clearly Olympic caliber athletes, gold medal caliber athletes at that - yet using your standard they only amount to one gold medal despite being 3 distinct athletes.
I don't live in USA by the way. I do find it funny that Europeans say things like Americans think the world revolves around them, when they are quite blind of their own Euro centrism.
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Specifically, what country are you from? Say it proudly.
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Also, the idea that because the US has say 6-7x the population of the UK, therefore they need 6-7x amount of gold medals and not just "2x" is a laughably moronic statement. As if the interest in all Olympic sports are equal, or genetic variance in breeding elite athletes scales on a perfect 1:1 ratio.
Statements like "this country generates better athletes than this country is taken into account" works well for nations like Croatia or Cuba. For the UK, which has a large sample size of athletes to chose from due to having 60 million people - doesn't really make the "P4P" logic that sound (you are basically saying that because they are still smaller than the US, they should have the same handicap...it seems like you are not aware of what goes into making or breeding elite athletes) - they still have more than enough athletes to compete evenly with countries much bigger than them - the same is not said with a country like the Netherlands.
After a certain amount of population it becomes rather arbitrary to say so and so country is better than another because they have less people. I feel like you are well aware of this and are intellectually being dishonest.
By the way - using your crude and ridiculous method the best country in the world at athletics would be Fiji. Fiji is not in Europe.
Statements like "this country generates better athletes than this country is taken into account" works well for nations like Croatia or Cuba. For the UK, which has a large sample size of athletes to chose from due to having 60 million people - doesn't really make the "P4P" logic that sound (you are basically saying that because they are still smaller than the US, they should have the same handicap...it seems like you are not aware of what goes into making or breeding elite athletes) - they still have more than enough athletes to compete evenly with countries much bigger than them - the same is not said with a country like the Netherlands.
After a certain amount of population it becomes rather arbitrary to say so and so country is better than another because they have less people. I feel like you are well aware of this and are intellectually being dishonest.
By the way - using your crude and ridiculous method the best country in the world at athletics would be Fiji. Fiji is not in Europe.
I think he gave you a subtle hint...
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What are you rambling on about? It’s simply a question of sample size.
Anyone would expect a first world country with a population of 300m to produce more gold medal calibre athletes than a country with 60m. There is absolutely no debating this. It doesn’t need to be a perfect extrapolation in terms of gold per capita, but there’s absolutely no doubt that at the most recent olympics, the UK demonstrated a better efficiency in producing the mythical “A-level athlete” (if you use Olympic gold as a barometer of that), than the US.
The comparatively large sample size of both nations actually supports that idea. If we had a population of 100 people with a gold medalist equestrian Olympian, I could accurately state that 1% of our population are Olympic gold medalists, however our tiny sample size would rightfully have us as an outlier in any distribution.
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Rank Country Gold Medals
1 United States 1,126
2 Soviet Union 473
3 Germany 319
4 Great Britain 273
Rank Country Total Medals
1 United States 2,827
2 Soviet Union 1,204
3 Germany 992
4 Great Britain 876
This is why you have to resort to a per capita argument, because you are losing the real argument.
Having all these world class athletes play in a sport only played within the bounds of one country is just sooooo convenient <45>
The US is a the sporting equivalent of a guy walking around stating he’s the best in the world at everything, but rarely actually putting it to the test. When the big test does arrive every 4 years, they demonstrate that they’re pretty good, but far from anything truly special, and then quickly retreat to the safety of their home turf again.
Because they’re the only country in the world with sportsmen that gravitate towards team focused, ball sports apparently.....<45>
Or......or....because per capita output of Olympic gold medalists is the true measure of how successful a population is at producing....Olympic gold medalists?
Again, that it simply me stating a fact. It isn’t up for debate that there are countries who are more successful are producing Olympic gold medalists. Not taking their population into account is a bizarre ‘head in the sand’ position to take.
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Rank Country Gold Medals
1 United States 1,126
2 Soviet Union 473
3 Germany 319
4 Great Britain 273
Rank Country Total Medals
1 United States 2,827
2 Soviet Union 1,204
3 Germany 992
4 Great Britain 876
^This is the U.S. rarely putting it to the test.
Maybe, just maybe, it's not the best idea to choose as a physical performance metric the number of medals in a competition that includes:
Table tennis
bow shooting
pistol shooting
walking (yeah there is a fucking walking olympic champ)
curling
sailing
horse riding
golf
What's next? Quidditch and Fortnite?
Table tennis
bow shooting
pistol shooting
walking (yeah there is a fucking walking olympic champ)
curling
sailing
horse riding
golf
What's next? Quidditch and Fortnite?
