AXIS OF HOOPS POWER SHIFTING.(Sports)(Column)

Byline: BUD POLIQUIN POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST

For years, we'd attempted to avoid the elephant in our basketball kitchen, stepping around the tusks and ignoring the roars coming from beneath the raised trunk. We were Americans, by God, and it was our right to be as ugly as we chose to be.

And, oh, we were uglier than 10 miles of bad road.

It was like this: We were the sneakered Rembrandts; everybody else was a finger-painter. And so, we laughed at those clanking, connect-the-dots strangers in the funny uniforms - the Spaniards and Frenchmen, the Brazilians and Dutch - who dared to step up to our easel.

We'd take the jump shots; the rest of the world could have the corner kicks. And that was that - from the dawn of basketball time right through the 1992 Olympics when our American Dream Team, which could have played in sandals, never bothered to call a timeout through the entire Barcelona competition.

But then ... well, then something shifted. Thinking changed. We slipped and the rest of the hoop world took notes. And now you can't swing a bag of dirty laundry without hitting a Ginobili or a Nowitzki or a Nash or a Yao or a Parker or a Stojakovic or some other fella with a lilt in his voice and a bunch of vowels in his name.

The point is, we are no longer alone. And the latest piece of evidence is last month's NBA Draft during which 18 of the 60 chosen athletes - all those Linus Kleizas and Erazem Lorbeks and Uros Slokars - were foreign-born and foreign-raised. That's nearly one out of every three. If you saw that coming 20 years ago, you're in the oracle business ... or should be.

"When you are the first, you are not looking behind you," Gianluca Petronio, an Italian coach who's come to town for the weekend from Jesi, said Thursday morning. "Europe and countries like Argentina are second, so we look in front of us to the United States. Now, we are closing. We expect you Americans to be first. You invented basketball; not us. But we are improving. My opinion is that we are still the second, but we are closer."

Facts are facts ... or, at least, impressions are impressions. And some serious ones have been lugged to our shores by those coaches who've crossed the pond to check out Roosevelt Bouie's basketball casting call which convened at Syracuse University Friday evening and will continue there through Sunday night's camp all-star game inside the Carrier Dome.

There are a bunch of them - coaches, that is, from Italy and Poland and Spain and Germany and Switzerland. And they're here to scout the talent imported by Bouie, the former Orangeman who played 13-plus seasons in Europe and has morphed into a kind of basketball beef merchant. And they are eager to see what there is to see.

"I am very interested in what is about to happen," said Roberto Cervino, a coach from Livorno, Italy. "My brain is clear, completely clear. I am excited to fill my head with basketball to a very high level."

Still, after observing too many dunks and not enough floaters, after watching fundamentals discarded like so many candy wrappers, after witnessing the steady erosion of defensive footwork, Roberto is a bit wary of the red-white-and-blue product. And he stands in a lengthening line.

"I believe the young Americans have a lot of skills, but mentally they are getting worse every year," said Andrea Mazzon, another Italian coach who's arrived from Napoli. "We were just at the ABCD Camp in New Jersey and we saw all the high-school guys. They jump. They do everything. Big athletes. Huge players. Seven-footers. There is everything there. There is no doubt. But the European and South American players, they know better how to play basketball. That is how I feel."

Not so long ago, of course, words such as those uttered by Mazzon would have inspired folks to toss a net over the heretic and haul him or her away. This, because the United States did almost nothing better than it played basketball. But in 1988, our amateurs lost on merit in the Olympics (unlike in'72 when the Soviets were awarded all those extra lives). And just last year our pros - our Duncans and Iversons and Stoudemires and LeBrons - tanked there on the grand international stage, too.

And so, the giant - a giant, according to Petronio, that focuses on individual competition while other countries focus on team competence - has shrunk before the world's very wide eyes.

"I think the American team thinks it was a mistake losing the Olympics," said Walter De Raffable, another Italian coach from Livorno. "And that is a big problem. I think they think, "Next time it will be easy.' But it is not this way. We have passed by competition that we used to lose to. And we try to learn something more all the time. We are growing up - mental and physical and technical."

Meanwhile ... um, we're regressing. At least according to some folks whose ancestors were once the targets of our smirks.

"The Americans have to open their brain to something else," said Alessio Marchini, one last Italian coach, this one from Castelfiorentino. "They cannot think they are the best. If you think you are the best, you don't try to improve or get better. When I see the NBA or NCAA on TV, I see great athletical level. Jump. Run. OK? But I don't see fundamental skills. I think the Americans have to improve in these aspects."

Imagine that. We have to get better. In basketball. Us. The inventors of the game. So speaks the elephant.

AXIS OF HOOPS POWER SHIFTING.(Sports)(Column)

Byline: BUD POLIQUIN POST-STANDARD COLUMNIST

For years, we'd attempted to avoid the elephant in our basketball kitchen, stepping around the tusks and ignoring the roars coming from beneath the raised trunk. We were Americans, by God, and it was our right to be as ugly as we chose to be.

And, oh, we were uglier than 10 miles of bad road.

It was like this: We were the sneakered Rembrandts; everybody else was a finger-painter. And so, we laughed at those clanking, connect-the-dots strangers in the funny uniforms - the Spaniards and Frenchmen, the Brazilians and Dutch - who dared to step up to our easel.

We'd take the jump shots; the rest of the world could have the corner kicks. And that was that - from the dawn of basketball time right through the 1992 Olympics when our American Dream Team, which could have played in sandals, never bothered to call a timeout through the entire Barcelona competition.

But then ... well, then something shifted. Thinking changed. We slipped and the rest of the hoop world took notes. And now you can't swing a bag of dirty laundry without hitting a Ginobili or a Nowitzki or a Nash or a Yao or a Parker or a Stojakovic or some other fella with a lilt in his voice and a bunch of vowels in his name.

The point is, we are no longer alone. And the latest piece of evidence is last month's NBA Draft during which 18 of the 60 chosen athletes - all those Linus Kleizas and Erazem Lorbeks and Uros Slokars - were foreign-born and foreign-raised. That's nearly one out of every three. If you saw that coming 20 years ago, you're in the oracle business ... or should be.

"When you are the first, you are not looking behind you," Gianluca Petronio, an Italian coach who's come to town for the weekend from Jesi, said Thursday morning. "Europe and countries like Argentina are second, so we look in front of us to the United States. Now, we are closing. We expect you Americans to be first. You invented basketball; not us. But we are improving. My opinion is that we are still the second, but we are closer."

Facts are facts ... or, at least, impressions are impressions. And some serious ones have been lugged to our shores by those coaches who've crossed the pond to check out Roosevelt Bouie's basketball casting call which convened at Syracuse University Friday evening and will continue there through Sunday night's camp all-star game inside the Carrier Dome.

There are a bunch of them - coaches, that is, from Italy and Poland and Spain and Germany and Switzerland. And they're here to scout the talent imported by Bouie, the former Orangeman who played 13-plus seasons in Europe and has morphed into a kind of basketball beef merchant. And they are eager to see what there is to see.

"I am very interested in what is about to happen," said Roberto Cervino, a coach from Livorno, Italy. "My brain is clear, completely clear. I am excited to fill my head with basketball to a very high level."

Still, after observing too many dunks and not enough floaters, after watching fundamentals discarded like so many candy wrappers, after witnessing the steady erosion of defensive footwork, Roberto is a bit wary of the red-white-and-blue product. And he stands in a lengthening line.

"I believe the young Americans have a lot of skills, but mentally they are getting worse every year," said Andrea Mazzon, another Italian coach who's arrived from Napoli. "We were just at the ABCD Camp in New Jersey and we saw all the high-school guys. They jump. They do everything. Big athletes. Huge players. Seven-footers. There is everything there. There is no doubt. But the European and South American players, they know better how to play basketball. That is how I feel."

Not so long ago, of course, words such as those uttered by Mazzon would have inspired folks to toss a net over the heretic and haul him or her away. This, because the United States did almost nothing better than it played basketball. But in 1988, our amateurs lost on merit in the Olympics (unlike in'72 when the Soviets were awarded all those extra lives). And just last year our pros - our Duncans and Iversons and Stoudemires and LeBrons - tanked there on the grand international stage, too.

And so, the giant - a giant, according to Petronio, that focuses on individual competition while other countries focus on team competence - has shrunk before the world's very wide eyes.

"I think the American team thinks it was a mistake losing the Olympics," said Walter De Raffable, another Italian coach from Livorno. "And that is a big problem. I think they think, "Next time it will be easy.' But it is not this way. We have passed by competition that we used to lose to. And we try to learn something more all the time. We are growing up - mental and physical and technical."

Meanwhile ... um, we're regressing. At least according to some folks whose ancestors were once the targets of our smirks.

"The Americans have to open their brain to something else," said Alessio Marchini, one last Italian coach, this one from Castelfiorentino. "They cannot think they are the best. If you think you are the best, you don't try to improve or get better. When I see the NBA or NCAA on TV, I see great athletical level. Jump. Run. OK? But I don't see fundamental skills. I think the Americans have to improve in these aspects."

Imagine that. We have to get better. In basketball. Us. The inventors of the game. So speaks the elephant.