Strengthening the weakest links

CHARLOTTE (Steve Goldberg’s Wheel World) - If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, the chain of basketball around the world is growing more resilient every day as more athletes gravitate to the game, coaching progresses, and the level of play continues to improve.

This has been most evident via the shifting balance in the Olympic Games.

The USA Olympic Men’s Team dominated up to 1988 – yeah, I’m still holding a grudge about that 1972 thing where the refs gave the Russians more chances than a birthday boy at a piñata – when the Soviets soundly whipped the Yanks for real.

That ushered in, or should I say ushered out, the pretense of amateurism with the assault of the Dream Team in 1992. Athens proved that wasn’t invincible. London should be interesting.

Balance on the Paralympic side while improving is still much further behind on the growth curve.

This was quite evident at the Parapan American Games held last November in Guadalajara, Mexico where the gap between the top and bottom wheelchair basketball teams was vast. There were games with differentials of 50, 60, even 70 plus points.

Games like that are never fun for either team. But they have to be played because if they’re not, the gaps will never close.

If basketball is a niche sport for standing players, in competition against football, volleyball, baseball, and other games for athletes, imagine the problem for wheelchair basketball. Perhaps the biggest reason for the talent gap is the much smaller player pools to begin with in already small countries when it comes to athletes with a disability. The disparity for the women is even greater when it comes to disability sports.

In the Parapan Games, the minnows were the men and women of Guatemala and El Salvador and the women of Argentina and Peru. To put it in football terms, these teams are the Faroe Islands. No team from South or Central America has medaled in the Paralympic Games or World Championships.

The American men and women were dominant as expected, both winning gold. Canada, the other tower of power from the north was less than expected. The women won silver, no surprise there, but the men settled for bronze after losing to surprise silver medalists Colombia in the semis. That’s a big deal as it put the South American team in the Paralympic Games for the first time.

Leading Colombia were Nelson Jaime Sanz who averaged 16.5 points and 6ft 7in (2.01m) Rodney Hawkins, a Dwight Howard doppelganger who’s been playing in the United States for the Dallas Wheelchair Mavericks. He was the only player to average a double-double with 13.2 points and 12.5 rebounds.

Colombia showed that teamwork built around a couple of standout players can have results. That’s an incentive to some of the women’s teams who are now developing some star players. The leading scorer on the women’s side was Mexico’s Floralia Estrada. Three of the top 10 scorers came from Brazil. Another to watch will be Guatemala’s Alva Yovadina Puac who averaged 13 points and 11.8 rebounds.

Cheers to the Guatemalas and El Salvadors of the world who step out onto the courts knowing that that they are going to get pasted but also understanding that what doesn’t kill them will only make them stronger.

The moral of this story though is that things can change.

When my sister played high school basketball at a relatively new school, I remember one game where they gave up close to a hundred points, two of which they scored themselves by mistake. That same school has now become a girls’ basketball powerhouse with numerous state championships.

And about that Faroe Islands comparison, there’s hope there as well. On any given day. That’s why we play the games.

In a Euro qualifier one day the Faroe Islanders stepped up and beat Austria. Colombia found their day against Canada.

Who will find theirs in London?
 
Perhaps Turkey. Like Colombia, Turkey’s men will make their inaugural Paralympics this summer and they are feeling good about it. If you believe the ongoing gold medal poll on the IWBF website, the Turks are favored to win by 32% of voters so far.

On my way out the door here, I'd like to give a shout out to German club RSV Lahn-Dill who bested Turkish side Galatasaray on their home turf to win their fifth Champions Cup, which ties the record set by the Dutch team BC Verkerk which won five times in the 1990s. 

RSV was led by a couple of North American players who will face off in London, playmaker Steve Serio of the USA and Canada’s big man Joey Johnson. It completed a triple for the team that had already captured the German league and cup titles. You can read more about it here.

Steve Goldberg

FIBA

FIBA’s columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

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