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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4381 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 22, 2026

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I thought NBA getting whiter was mostly a result of countries with very high average height began playing more basketball two decades ago. Basically the Balkans entering basketball.

At least in the former Yugoslavia, where some of the tallest people in Europe are, basketball was already very popular during the Cold War. The History section of the Wikipedia article on the European Basketball Championship has an entire subsection titled "Rise of Yugoslavia" about the 1970s. See also the team statistics – a number of wins in the 70s and 80s.

My perception is that Croatian basketball, at least, is, if anything, well past its prime. But I don't care for basketball at all and I've never watched a game, so take that with a grain of salt.

It might be that people from the region only started playing in the NBA more recently. I understand Dražen Petrović was (one of?) the first. But even that was nearly 40 years ago.

I think it's a combination of both. Balkans definitely a factor but also the European club systems are producing a lot of African talent as well. There seems to be some benefits to ostensibly being able to identify talent at a young age and keep the same structures around it for 8 years instead of the kinda-disjointed American system of school -> elite school -> University etcetera

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