Professional Basketball: An Intercontinental Comparison

By Brendan Olski Kobe Bryant is a rare example of someone who was raised with two different styles of basketball. He was born in Philadelphia in 1978, but lived in Italy from 1984-1991 because his father retired from the NBA and began to play professionally overseas. When his father retired from this league in 1991, Bryant returned to the states to play high school basketball. He would come back to the U.S. each summer to play in a basketball summer league, but from age 6-14, Bryant spent the majority of his time learning the game of basketball the way that it is taught in Italy. Unlike the intensive, year-round AAU basketball system that has been pushed more and more in the U.S., Bryant was able to play more than one sport growing up. He credits his unbelievable fundamental abilities to the opportunity that he had to play soccer as a kid. This video does a great job breaking this down even further: https://www.instagram.com/p/BpxEOrZDSDT/ Bryant has been very outspoken in...

Will European basketball ever catch up to the NBA? By Matthew Brady Though there are many differences between European basketball and the NBA, the contrast in play style may indicate why the NBA stays in front of the pack. European games are much more team oriented as they rely heavily on passing to create scoring opportunities. The NBA revolves around star players carrying teams to wins. Though neither style can claim it is more effective on court, the NBA has far more star athletes than European basketball does, which puts it over the edge. Fans love to be able to identify with the stars on their teams. A heroic performance draws massive attention from the media and fans of other teams to games as well. Countless times I have watched Lakers basketball to see Lebron James play in Los Angeles when I am from Washington DC. These iconic players define the NBA play style and its finances as well. They bring in more revenue for their teams and sign massive con...

Many current and former college basketball players all have the same goal, make it to the NBA. Players will play in the NBA Developmental league, or what is called the D-league, in order to have the potential chance of being called up to the NBA. While this is the dream for many players, it is not always the reality. Each year in the NBA, there are roughly 40 or 50 call ups from the D-League to the NBA. While this sounds like a lot, this figure can be misleading. A lot of the time these call ups are due to a player getting injured or struggling with their performance, so they are sent down to the D-League to either rehab or get back into their rhythm as a player. While these players are rehabbing and getting back into the flow of their play, players from the D-League are called up, but only with 10-day contracts. Once these contracts are up, they are sent back down to the D-League in order to continue to prove their worth and to try and scratch their way back up to the NBA, but thi...

Why are NBA stars sitting out games?  Cavaliers rookie coach David Blatt Was recently asked if anything surprised him about his transition from European basketball to the NBA. He quickly responded with a somewhat unexpected answer: the schedule. Despite notable differences in style of play between the two leagues, Blatt mentioned the struggle of playing multiple games in a week as being the most difficult part about his transition. Though playing more games may seem like a good thing, practices and in-game strategy must be tailored to account for the extra strain being put on player’s bodies in any given week. Practices are few and far between in the NBA. They feature less physical training and instead focus on key strategy adjustments. Physical training takes place in the months leading up to the season, with the hope that players can maintain their form throughout the year. This is a lot to ask of players, and is why coaches have had to become more creative with both their pl...

By Brendan Olski This past weekend, I had the opportunity to meet up with an alum of the club basketball team that I played for in high school while travelling in Dublin. The player, Johnny McCarthy, played Division III basketball at a small liberal-arts university in Amherst, MA called Amherst College. He won Player of the Year for his conference his senior year, graduated this past May, and is currently playing professionally for a club called ITC Basketball based out of Carlow, Ireland. It is fairly common for Divison II, or very successful Division III, basketball players from the U.S. to spend a few years overseas playing professionally. The process begins with the player sending game film and highlights to lots of coaches and is then invited to play for a team if selected in their version of a draft. This is how it went for Johnny, who was able to flush out for me some of the positive and negative aspects of choosing this path instead of joining the workforce right out ...

In NBA basketball, there is a large focus on the "big plays" so to speak. By this, I mean the flashy dunks, or the long three-point shots, or the impossible shots made in traffic. Viewers of the NBA live for moments like these, and arguably watch games to see these moments. While some of the rules of the game are objectively different, there is also a huge difference in just the team mentalities from EuroLeague to the NBA. EuroLeague is much more focused on the team play aspect, where the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. This means more ball screens and much more fundamental play, rather than flashy, from the European teams. On the other hand, the NBA focuses heavily on the individual superstars and plays a much more 1-on-1 type of play, or isolation. This allows for these bigger and flashier plays by the superstars. In the NBA there is also a longer 3-point line, which allows for longer and more impressive shots, and longer quarters of play, which in turn al...