Basketball is one of the most popular sports across the globe. Quickly growing on the street and at the professional level, the international reach of basketball has been one of the sport’s and the NBA’s greatest achievements.
Basketball fully burst into life around the world during the 1992 Olympics, due in full to the American ‘dream team,’ featuring legends such as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird.
Basketball, like soccer, hockey, and rugby, cannot be fully quantified by stats because there is no way to calculate every step taken on the floor. This, combined with the physical skill demanded by the game and the accessibility of courts everywhere has allowed basketball to develop culturally in both style and practice.
American athletes emphasize more physical, strength-based plays, and because sports are such a massive part of American culture, those skills are often developed at a very young age. In European playing styles, however, there is a lot more emphasis on movement and passing and shooting.
European style has been creeping into the professional American game as well.
This team-oriented, pass first, tricksy shifty identity of the European game is definitely more cerebral than our typical understanding of American ball. If you can’t overpower, outrun, or jump your opponent, you have to fake them out. The European style of play tends to focus on plays that lend themselves to an airy, dynamic, and strategic game, not a brutish and physical one.
In the NBA, where everyone is vying for the renowned championship, the physical playing field is evened out, making the tricks of Europe quite relevant.
Teaching these gifted players the tricks of the European game has sparked incredible production from some truly special players, but none more than Giannis Antetokounmpo, power forward for the Milwaukee Bucks. Appropriately nicknamed “The Greek Freak,” Antetokounmpo is six foot 11 inches with a wingspan of seven foot three inches. He runs like the wind, jumps like a gazelle, and is chiselled like he was carved out of marble.
And yet he couldn’t be the two-time most valuable player he is today on his physical talent alone. In a training video from the Bucks, Antetokounmpo talks about one of his signature moves, the ‘Euro step’: “Wherever you commit, I go the other way… If you don’t commit, I just go the same way.”
The ‘Euro step’ is a signature European invention that was brought into the NBA by the Argentinean superstar Manu Ginobili. It emphasizes a change of direction during the two steps before a layup, taking one step to one side and then taking the second step to the other side, faking out your defender.
Ginobili was six foot six inches and a solid athlete for his position, but his smart moves were what made him great. Now, brain and brawn combine as Antetokounmpo barrels down the floor like a fury and then out-thinks you at the rim. This combination has some NBA general managers sending their talent scouts out to foreign countries, trying to find the next diamond in the rough.
Once we get to grace the bleachers of our beloved Blues’ basketball games again, remember to keep a keen eye out for the playing styles you see on the court. Which of our players are more strategic, and which are more physical? Does the team have an overall style? In the globalized sport of basketball, the sky is the limit for styles of play.
