Stereotypes

I can see his point in the basketball context. Completely different styles of play played in America and outside of America (I prefer the European style of play) and some prominent “foreign” products have been considered soft (more willing to be jump shooters than physical post players, etc…)

Don’t blame Luc Longley. Toni Kukoc is your culprit.

Kukoc, Divac, yeah. Until very recently, non-American players played a notably less brutal style of ball. If you hear of a stereotype of foreign players having bad hands, that’ll be Longley’s fault.

Longley had a bit of a reputation as a punk. Often, when big men with obvious potential don’t meet with expected success, people claim that they are soft and lack toughness around the rim. You can see this is claims today about Ming and (to varying degrees) about Webber.

Come on Chris, there are loads of Canadian, Brazilian, Argentinan, African and even a few Mexican players in the NBA. I’d figure less than half of foreign players are European.

Yeah, what they said. This has nothing to do with a general stereotype of foreigners and everything to do with a difference in the style of play.

re Chris on the barbaroi:

I remember John Burgess at Princeton telling me a story about a kid who waited his table at a taverna in Greece, got part way through a multi-lingual conversation, then turned to his dad to ask “pos to lene sta xenika?”

I.e., how do you say that in foreign?

Given that kids in that situation have to learn a smattering of French, German, English, Italian, etc., you can hardly blame them for thinking that there are two languages, i.e. greek and foreign. Which dialect of foreign you use is largely a matter of whether the foreigner does or does not wear socks with their sandals.

It would probably have made more sense if he’d said “international big men.” The international style of basketball, which is dominant in Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, and South America produces big men who are finesse players, usually with a good shooting touch (even Yao has more range than any other player near his size). The stereotype holds for African (and Afro-Brazilian) international big men as well, though. There aren’t many African-born big men in the NBA right now, but there are several at the college level, and they tend to be finesse players as well. Olajuwon is a bad example, because he came into the league during a time of dominating, powerful centers, and before the number of international players in the league was anything like it is today.

In this case the categories are useful when understood in context. In general “foreign” in NBA terms means one did their apprenticeship someplace other than the American collegiate basketball system. Longley for example learned the game at the University of New Mexico and so can be considered to have learned the “American” version of the game. Compare that to Andrew Gaze who despite much promise never really flourished at the collegiate level, played only sporadically at the NBA level and never shook the tag of “foreign” in spite of his shared citizenship with Longley.

As with soccer there are definite styles to basketball and the United States’ border is a reasonable proxy for the region where you’ll find an emphasis on physical contact in the post, shoulder in the chest defense, and using individual strength to force ones way to the basket. As for the “foreign” (and given basketball’s origins that’s not a pejorative term) game being “soft”. In the 2004 Olympics it proved devastatingly effective against the more physical American style and it actually bears a close resemblance to the motion oriented offense and zone defense game played by Sacramento, Dallas, Minnesota and a few other teams.

Since NBA managers are as conservative as their counterparts in other American professional sports leagues though there is still a premium placed on players willing and able to play with more physical contact. Should professional leagues in Europe start attracting more players with the physical attributes of Karl Malone I’m sure that perceptions will change.

I agree with Nick. He really meant to say “the stereotype of white big men.”

Come on Chris, there are loads of Canadian, Brazilian, Argentinan, African and even a few Mexican players in the NBA. I’d figure less than half of foreign players are European

I don’t know. Eduardo Najera is Mexican. Who else? Manu Ginobili is Argentinan. Who else? Who are the African players on rosters this season? Are there more than 3 or 4? Are there any Australians on rosters this season?

Here are stats for foreign players for this season:

http://www.nba.com/statistics/international/interPlayersStats.html

Out of the 52 on the list, 30 look to be European. I guess I overstated it when I said “vast majority”, but it’s certainly still a majority.

What everybody else said. The cliche is that non-Americans play with finesse but not much power. And it got to be a cliche because there is a bit of truth to it.

One point I haven’t seen here is that because the lane is wider under international rules, it’s harder for big men to plant themselves near the basket and get nothing but dunks and layups. So in that way they are encouraged to be finesse players.

Fun thread! I should note that it would be weird to use foreign as a synonym for ‘not coming through the college system’ in this case, because the point of the quote was to describe Bogut as the best college player of the year.

By the way, I’m pretty sure there were more than 2 Australian NBA players. I thought that apart from Longley, at least Anstey, Heal and Gaze got cups of coffee (or whatever the basketball equivalent is).

The same stereotype applied for years in the NHL as well. Non-Canadians were soft — but also dirty, with the stickwork and everything. One still hears this, especially from Don Cherry.

This concept isn’t limited to American sports. Take the stereotype of foreigners in English football: good ball skills and creativity, but lack strength and work rate. Plus they go down like tissue paper.

As far as Australians go, if you are a big, tough, tall young kid, who doesnt mind a bit of biff, you dont tend to play basketball, because outside the US basketball is a non-contact sport with a “travel” rule that requires the ball to be bounced rather than carried.

Australian kids who dont mind a bit of biff end up playing Aussie Rules or rugby league (or possibly union, depending on which school you went to).

Finally, Luc Longely getting into fights is just natural for an Australian sportsman.

Ian Whitchurch

No one would ever call Eduardo Najera soft. Even though his Mexican nationality is touted, he’s not considered foreign. Foreign in the NBA refers to players who avoid contact. Since this is only really important to the 4-5 slots, only big men really get the label. Hakeem Olajawun was never labeled soft because of his blocks and rebound numbers.

The US Olympic team was the victim of replacing coaching values with marketing values. They could have replace Carmilo with Lindsy Hunter (pure shooter) and had a far superior team. Carmilo is the better of the two players but not what international play requires. The other thing the US team needed was a pass first point guard. Move Iverson to the two spot and have him shoot set 3’s.

26,113 of the 48,458 (54%) minutes played by the 77 players on the link were played by non-Europeans

Point taken. A lot of the Eastern Europeans on that list are pretty far down the depth chart. The way it’s going, in 10 years the majority of international players will be non-European. I was particularly surprised at the number of Latin American and Caribbean players.

There’s an Australian-born ball payer who plays for Georgia Tech, Luke Schenscher and he also has a reputation for playing soft. That could be due to teh fact that he was very thin when he first came to the US.

Of course it’s a silly stereotype, based on a small sample of players and certain desire to portray America and American ball-players in a certain way. If I recall, the stereotype of African ballplayers (Olajuwon, Mutumbo, and Manute Bol) is often that they’re “untutored,” at least when they first enter the American game at the college level, which is also not the best stereotype.

Yeah, “foreign” here means mostly “non-black.” A black Canadian wouldn’t be thought of as having a “foreign” game, but I’ll bet a white Canadian would. Doesn’t Steve Nash?

Similar here in China – people often say things like ‘oh you foreigners do X’ or ‘all think X’ to me, though it seems to mean Westerners in practice.

The comparison with hockey is interesting, because there the reaction to the contrast has been (or was) different.

In hockey too the contrast has been between skilled but soft Europeans and tougher Canadians (and Americans). And twenty years ago the contrast worked very much against the Europeans. More than in other sports, I think, hockey becomes a different game in the playoffs, played at a level of intensity, especially physical intensity, that you couldn’t keep up over an 80-game schedule. (It’s not dirtier — there are fewer fights — but tougher and more competitive within the rules.) And twenty years ago lots of skilled European players would “disappear” in the playoffs. They would rack up lots of points in the regular season but be literally frightened off their game in the playoffs. (Kent Nilsson of my then hometown Calgary Flames was a prime example.)

But over time the Europeans toughened up and, say, five years ago the contrast went all in the other direction. Something like 8 of the top 10 scorers in the NHL were Europeans; they had all the skill while Canada was turning out just 3rd-line grinders; and what had we done to fall so far behind? At that point it was the European game that was commonly thought to be the better. And that’s the interesting comparison: how much would it take to get Americans to take that type of view?

More recently the contrast has swung in the other direction. Now the top scorers in the league are Canadian — Jarome Iginla, Martin St. Louis, Brad Richards — and Canada holds all the international trophies: Olympic gold, World Championship, World Cup. So now Canadians are both skilled and tough. But not so long ago the common view (Don Cherry aside) was that Euro skill was better than Canadian toughness.

Right, a lot of it is the international lane, which is trapezoidal. The American lane is rectangular, and much closer to the basket, especially in college. And foreign-born players like Olajuwon and Duncan who played American college ball aren’t really considered “foreign”. (For that matter, both are American citizens, as is Patrick Ewing, another foreign-born, American-trained center.) American basketball is much more inside-oriented than elsewhere, and the officials generally don’t call any but the most egregious fouls.

Plus, yeah, Toni Kukoc was supposed to be the best player outside the United States and turned out to be both soft and something of a stiff, and that didn’t help.

Aah, Don Cherry…
I remember quite a few years back, the Swedish Navy had discovered an “unidentified” (but obviously Soviet) submarine in Sweden’s waters. After a few days hide-and-seek it was announced that the submarine had managed to evade contact.

Cherry: “They probably just went into a corner. Everybody knows a Swede won’t go into a corner.”