“Incredible what has happened to attitudes since then.”
Up until the Dream Team, Basketball was considered ‘an American Game’. Certainly that is the way we regarded it, and I’m sure that is the way most of the world saw it up to that point.
But now Basketball is played a high-level in several parts of the world. And a few of these places can field an Olympic team that can beat an NBA All-star squad. The players’ attitudes are driven by the NBA’s attempts to market the game all over the globe.
Baseball was once our “National Pasttime”, now look at the average MLB roster.