Kobe Bryant to Yao Ming: Are NBA Stars Right For the Olympics?
The final week of the Beijing Olympics will include the basketball gold medal game. Barring the extraordinary, it should feature the United States and its squad of NBA stars.
Professional athletes compete in many other Olympic sports, but there’s still something about NBA players competing in the Olympics that remains unsettling.
The official FIBA Olympic basketball
The stars of the NBA, whether they compete for the United States or other countries, are among the world’s highest-paid professional athletes.
Basketball was first an Olympic sport as an outdoor competition in Berlin in 1936, four years after FIBA, its international federation, was organized.
Only amateur players competed in the Olympics and in 1948 basketball transitioned in the Olympics from an outdoor to indoor sport. The United States won every Olympic gold medal until its controversial loss to the Soviet Union in 1972. The U.S. refused to accept the silver medal after winning seven straight gold medals and a compiling a 63-0 win/loss record.
Professionals were permitted to compete in international competition, including the Olympics, in 1989. Since then, many of the NBA’s best players have competed for their respective countries.
Nonetheless, whether it’s Yao Ming or Kobe Bryant, I still wonder: Do these multi-millionaires really need gold medals?
Professional athletes compete in Olympic cycling, tennis and track and field, among other sports. But watching and listening to Bryant and teammates discuss the Olympics as the ultimate moment of their sports careers (particularly after they’ve just dismantled another country with a lopsided win) seems disingenuous.
Even if its against other countries’ pros, I’d like to see the U.S. again attempt the prove the strength of American basketball by selecting current or just-graduating college players to future Olympic teams.
