One of the prominent narratives in global sports coverage and with an emphasis on the Olympics in the last 30 years is that the world has closed the gaps from the USA.
But the truth is that if you compare the figures of the USA winning medals in athletics and swimming since Barcelona 1992, it is almost impossible to notice any trend.
Certainly not something that would justify all the talk of "narrowing the gaps".
Even when it comes to basketball, the dominant narrative is untrue.
Although the dream team's victory in Barcelona 1992 was followed by falls in the 2002 MondoBasket (sixth place) and 2006 (third place), as well as only a bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Athens 2004, and also in the 2019 MondoBasket the USA crashed (seventh place), but it can be explained This is because most of the top centers in the NBA are made up of foreigners, and at the top of the world talent there are many non-Americans such as Yanis Antetokounmpo (Greece), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), Luka Doncic (Slovenia) and Joel Embiid (France).
Jokic.
The giant did not help, photo: FIBA
If you put together a team from the countries of former Yugoslavia, they will give a crazy fight to the top of the American top.
If you put together the "rest of the world" team, the USA will need a fantasy scenario to win.
As mentioned, there is no doubt that the reduction of gaps has indeed happened in world basketball since 1992, but a quick look at the current Eurobasket is enough to understand that this process has pretty much stopped, and that the gap is still very large.
Yes, the aura of huge superstars like Janis and Jokic can dazzle and obscure the big picture, but look at what's going on underneath the crème de la crème of European/world talent.
What the failures of Serbia, Slovenia and Greece reveal is that, aside from their trio of superstars, they all sent to this tournament far less talented squads than we've seen from those exact countries in the last generation or two.
Luka Doncic.
He went home too early, photo: AFP
And one more thing, take the entire top tier of European teams - Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Serbia, Croatia, Lithuania and Russia - all of them have had a golden generation or two since 1992. For all of them, this is not the current generation.
By the way, this is also true if you leave Europe, to Brazil and Argentina.
Under the stardust
Could it be that the super-talented squads of the teams that beat the Americans or made life very difficult for them, from 2000 to the middle of the previous decade, were the result of a cosmic coincidence of talent that grew on the original dream team, but that has not been reproduced since?
If anything, the trend of narrowing the gaps has permeated the lower levels, but at the top there is not a single leading team that currently enjoys a more talented and deeper squad than those it had in the previous decade or two.
Lorenzo Brown.
Maccabi Tel Aviv is waiting impatiently, photo: AFP
In the end, in this EuroBasket we saw people like Lorenzo Brown (Spain), Kendrick Perry (Montenegro), Thaddeus McFadden (Georgia), John Roberson (Bosnia), AJ Slaughter (Poland), Tyler Dorsey ( Greece), Jaylin Smith (Croatia) and Shane Larkin (Turkey) - a group of guards that have no place in the NBA - come to lead entire teams, sometimes very far, in a tournament that is supposed to be a showcase of European talent.
And if a random gathering of Americans from the fringes of the industry is still able to set the tone in the competition of the European teams, then the stories about narrowing the gaps can be dismissed.
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