Why Is China So Bad At Basketball

Why Europeans Are So Good At Basketball : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF9yZRDF8X8

If you make a video about Philippines basketball, you can recycle most of the talking points and still be right.

One time I talked with a guy who taught in china, and as a American he was a big fan of basketball. He noticed that the kids there loved the sport, just loved it and worked hard at it, but that they had no concept of playing as a team. They lacked any kind of youth leagues so these kids were technically skilled but when he organized games they all fell apart. Obviously this is anecdotal but does carry weight with what you talked about in the video.

As a Chinese basketball fan, I would agree with every point you mentioned. Another thing I want to add is, those professional athletics programs have never been connected with common education in China. In China, a child has to decide to become a professional athlete or not in their middle school age or even in their primary school age. But how can anyone know if a child is talented enough to play professional sports when he is only 12 years old??? So coaches only choose kids who is tall enough, or whose parents are tall enough, and that's why China has better center and big forward than its guard. After that, those chosen professional athlete kids doing training everyday, those unchosen kids study everyday and has no chance to get in touch with any real basketball team, totally separate no intersection at all. That's why Chinese sports population isn't coming from 1.4 billion of people, but only a small group of chosen kids. While in other countries, children can still enjoy and play competitive sports in their high school and college age, even 95% of them will not become a professional athlete eventually.

我是中国人，非常惊讶博主能如此客观真实地解析中国篮球的问题，就好像在中国生活过很久一样，这条视频值得更多的播放!

I used to play in the CBA youth league. In addition to the points you mentioned, there are common problems with the age of Chinese players. When Zhou Qi was 16 years old, he was actually 19 years old. The Chinese team defeated Serbia under his leadership. What I want to say is that they have not had enough training since childhood and grew up in a relaxed environment. Easily beating players like me. Who didn't hide their true age. Chinese coaches are a piece of shit too, you have to bribe them for playing time, same goes for table tennis. In addition, China's team culture is very fragile internally, and everyone is plotting against everyone else. They play like gangsters in the league, and many of their moves are aimed at causing permanent damage to their opponents.

I teach in China. There are few youth leagues and even fewer school leagues for Chinese students, for any sports. They are focused more on their studies.

Cultural mindset plays the most important role, and the league is not strong enough to change its. There is in China a joke that says:"If a Micheal Jordan popped up in China, he wouldn't get a shot at hoops, he'd be drowned in cram school.", this because mostly of chinese children have their time filled with classes or tutoring activities since very young age. In a enviroment that value academic achievements far more than sports, there is rarely conditions needed to develop top class basket players.

You can´t produce talents if the country isn´t enthusiastic about the game of basketball, no matter how much money you pour into the youth developing programms. In such countries, like China, you would need an basketball academy, where kids are 5 days a week occupied with basketball, to bring them on the same level the Balkan´s kids are, for example. The reason for it is, on Balkans kids grow up watching grown ups play 3 on 3 every day in front of their house. They pick up basketball talk from the elders at a young age, they pick up certain movement, style of play (pass first mentality). During breaks kids are all proud to shoot the ball and they might get an advice on shooting or dribbling. Most of the time the parents also know a lot about the game and they watch it so kids grow up with the game. It was like that 30 years ago, while I was a child, and it still is now. To give you a picture, last summer I went back to Balkans for a vacation. Got on the court at 9:30 to get some shots up. At 10:00, 10:15 first kids arrived. Watched me for a while and then asked if they can shoot too, even knowing the unwritten rule. You rebound until the other guy misses his shot. 10 minutes later I was watching 10/11 years old kids playing 3 on 3. Later that day, in the evening, you have like 8 teams playing each other 3 on 3 on both baskets and a bunch of kids running around and cheering for their local "idols". They hear phrases like, set the screen, cut through, just slip, play d or you ain´t getting the ball, pass or get out, aso. As a youth coach in a western country with enough ressources, but not a basketball nation, you get kids with no basic knowledge for the game and with 3 practices a week à 1,5 hours you can´t teach them what kids from basketball nations learn on the streets, or at home, day in day out.

Great video, since like 2020 I’ve been really interested how different countries handle different popular American sports. Mainly just looked up American Football/baseball but this is a good jumping off point for me when it comes to basketball/FIBA

You need at least a 30' video to explain all the nuances to developing young coaching and young player talent along with the basketball identity. My best guess is that China is overly relying on foreign influence, such as NBA players and European coaches to develop the game. Sending coaches abroad that will coach a younger generation would be a smarter move than bringing over European coaches. Also, as you pointed out, too much money is spent on NBA players, again most of that money should go towards developing a coaching mentality that will shape the generations to come. Sjajan video brat moj!

There’s one player with hope of being selected in the first round in the following 1-3 years called Hansen Yang. Has the shooting and passing, kind of like a skinny and slower version of Jokic. If he could get stronger and more stable defensively (mainly because faster) he could be in the NBA and that’s pretty much our only hope.

Philippine Basketball is improving talent wise but corporate politics is fuckin up the system leaving talented players switch to Japanese and Korean Leagues.

Thanks for the video. This Q happened to come into my head a couple of days ago so coming across this video without searching was quite cool. Great work. I've subscribed.

It's wild that they haven't gotten players to the NBA in the past decade. I'm from The Bahamas which has 400k people and we've sent 3 people to the NBA over the past decade and we have another on the way next year.

As a Chinese I can confirm that if basketball is a subject of our college entrance test then we will have millions of MJs

Great content man! Good watch, thanks.

Chinese political and social practices really haven't seemed to change much in the last 1500 years.

the problem is more around development like he mentioned, and it's tough to really compare apples to oranges in the snese of the nations being compared to China. the countries he even compares China to in Asia have really different society and challenges thtat there isn't a fair comparison. Japan and RoK are nations with high levels of economic development that have resources to teach players young and make sure it's economically viable for them in the future when they become adult prospects. The reason CHinese players don't want to leave is that they know to a level theyre lacking skills wise, but it's not their fault and if they were to leave then they'd be out of a job. Players are people to and often have to take care of their families interest. Not sure why that's hard for people to understand. In the Philippines, that's why our version of Wang Zhelin didnt really go anywhere abroad (Jun Mar Fajardo). If he were to go overseas, it would've been too late for him to develop a jumper or mobility. He was poor and went to relatively small college in the Visayas. That's not his fault that he didn't have the resources. But now as a pro in the domestic league, he's got money and income security. Why jeopardize that?

Watching the vid right now, but I wanted to mention Hansen Yang is dominating the CBA at 18 years old and will most likely be drafted in the 2024 draft. Their first prospect in a while.