Over the past couple of decades, the United States have been the big brother to other countries when it comes to olympic basketball. Since the start of the Dream Team featuring Micheal Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird, the US olympic basketball teams have dominated every country for a long term. Over time, a stereotype was thrown over international teams when it came to US sports.
International teams have taken the lower seed to the United States and it has caused others to doubt the talent of international teams compared to the US. In the article, Why Team USA’s World Cup Defeats were Good for Basketball, it states, “That’s the open secret about the Fiba World Cup: it simply doesn’t matter as much to the US as it does to other countries. There’s a glory of playing in front of gigantic global audiences at the Olympics that just doesn’t compare to playing 8.30am EST games that have been relegated to ESPN+. If there’s one lesson to be learned from the US’s flameout, it’s that the other countries had more invested this time around.
This goes to show that the US took other countries for granted however, it ended up biting them in the butt in the end. Furthermore, this article is trying to say that the stereotype that the US has relied on for so long was indeed a crutch for the US, or seen as a wake up call. Moving forward the US will look to continue to be dominant in these games and not take their competition for granted.
“A type is a simple, vivid, memorable, easy grasped and widely recognized characterization in which a few traits are foregrounded and change or “development” is kept to a minimum. Within this, however, we may make distinctions between social types, stereotypes and member types.” In other words, we make stereotypes that are based off certain thoughts that change.
Within International and US basketball, tension has been created over the years and it has caused many countries and even the US to gain stereotypes that have only been a crutch. Furthermore, the stereotypes have negatively impacted these countries when it comes to international and olympic sports
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