In the dying and much disputed seconds of the men's 1972 Olympic basketball final, the Soviet Union sunk a long, arcing shot to snatch the gold from the US. In that cold war era, American bitterness was compounded by the sense that the Soviet threat was real and duplicitous. By Barcelona in 1992—the first post-amateur Olympics—the arrival of the US "dream team" of NBA players stood for the triumph of American capitalism and culture over the sclerotic Europeans and the now broken socialist economies.
US dominance in both global economics and Olympic basketball is now in question. Untouchable in 1992, the US went on to win gold in Atlanta and Sydney. But in 2004 they were beaten by Argentina in the semi-finals. Declinists attributed this calamity to the inevitable catching-up of competitors, US complacency bordering on disrespect for the opposition and a poisonous commercialism that sets individuals above the collective.
Beijing 2008 was always going to be different. America has a new opponent, and unlike the elusive phantasm of global jihadism, it will meet them on the court and in the marketplace. Though it lacks the deep ideological basis of the clash with the Soviet Union, the subtext of the medal table is the contest between the US and China. Tension ran particularly high in men's basketball, where the group match between the two countries is said to have received the sport's highest ever television viewing figures. These Olympics were deemed important enough for the US basketball-media complex to come together to build a real team. Patriotism aside, there are, of course, commercial considerations here.
In the US, markets for the big sports are at or near saturation level and are finding international expansion difficult. Ice hockey faces real competition from established north European leagues. Major League Baseball draws prodigious talent from Latin America but finds too few well-off consumers there. As for American football, the NFL has tried and failed to start a European league.
These sports are ultimately thwarted in their global ambitions by the established dominance of football. The two major markets where this does not apply are India, which has settled on cricket as its national commercial game, and China, whose sporting landscape is not yet settled. Football, though immensely popular in China, is by no means the national sport. The new urban China increasingly wants to watch and play basketball.
Basketball arrived in China via the YMCAs that sprung up in every major city before the first world war. It became popular enough for the Chinese to field a team at the 1936 Olympics. Intriguingly, unlike football and many other foreign sports, it survived the cultural revolution with its ideological reputation and sporting infrastructure intact. There are now 300m players in the country and a thriving national professional league.
This interest is being nurtured by the NBA, which has been selling television rights and marketing its brand in China for years. At the start of 2008, its subsidiary, NBA China, was valued at $2.5bn. But the NBA is doing more than just flogging jerseys. With an eye on future consumers, it helps fund the Chinese government's plan to build 800,000 basketball courts. It also recruits talent, most notably Yao Ming, centre for the Houston Rockets, who at 7'6" is the tallest man in the NBA. Ming's presence has sent Chinese NBA television viewing figures through the roof. There has been talk of an NBA-branded Chinese league and a "world series" playoff between Chinese and US champions.
The US won the Olympic match 107-70. The Chinese held their own for the first 15 minutes of the game and showed considerable drilled skills. But in the third and fourth quarters, the Americans pulled away with ease. If the Chinese performance reminds us of how far they still have to go, was the American performance a herald of something new?
Perhaps it was a show of good behaviour for the sponsors, or a function of the much tighter contact rules in Olympic basketball, but the demeanour of the Americans was quite different from games in the NBA. Shorn of the usual roughhouse defence and trash-talking, the Americans looked totally focused and completely at ease with themselves. They showed collective guile and inventiveness, their passing, feints and twists close to the basket outwitting the Chinese at every turn. LeBron James's perfect high rebounds and Dwyane Wade's balletic reverse dunks were joyous.
This is what the Chinese really love about the NBA—expressive individuality, experimentation and spontaneity. Kobe Bryant's was the top-selling jersey in China last year (Yao Ming was tenth, but is a previous top seller). Both the aesthetics and the calibre of US basketball are deeply indebted to the African-American culture and players it first rejected and then absorbed. African-Americans make up over 60 per cent of the NBA and 100 per cent of the Olympic squad. China, no doubt, will produce the same levels of grotesque urban inequality that furnish America with such prodigious basketball talents. Whether it can find the cultural resources that transform raw hunger into sporting innovation and brilliance is another matter.
