The World at the Hoop

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The World at the Hoop

• Basketball as a Geographic Tool for Political and
  Historical Analysis
  
• Matthew Blair
• October 12, 2004

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Objectives

• A PowerPoint lesson package
• Grades 9 through 12
• World Geography
• World History
• Students will learn specific concepts in history
  and geography with the game of basketball as a
  reference point. Students will practice looking
  for context clues that identify cultural
  characteristics in photographs.

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Materials Needed

• This PowerPoint presentation
• Internet access
• 2 to 3 days
• Paper for students to take notes from the internet

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Recommended Web-Sites

• EuroBasket
• InterBasket.Net
• EuroLeague
• Angola Press
• Zalgiris Basketball
• Yao Ming Club
• Hoops for Africa
• Machine Translation.Com

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Student Activities

• In the following activities, students will
• Learn about cultural and national imperialism
• Learn about the Cold War and how it effected the
  game of basketball

• Identify lingering effects of the Cold War
• Describe how people in other societies play the
  game of basketball
  
• Identify similarities between the US and other
  countries

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Student Activity One

• Arvydas Sabonis
• Identify major aspects of his life, including
  where he is from, what teams he played for (and
  what teams he played against), etc.
  
• Who was the major rival of his first team? Why?
• How could he play for two different National
  Teams?
  
• Bonus In the photograph, Sabonis holds the ball.
  Who is he man with the moustache?

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Student Activity Two

• James Francis Akpabio
• How are conditions different for a pro Nigerian
  player like Akpabio than for HS players in the
  US?
  
• Why isnt Akpabio technically a pro?
• Describe the life of most Nigerian pro players.

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Student Activity Three

• US Player Abroad
• List a US-born player, his/her team, and where
  the team is located for each of the following
  countries China, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Russia
  
• Why did each player chose to play in that
  country?
  
• Bonus where are the Northeast Tigers from?

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Student Activity Four

• Myong-Hun Ri
• Indentify Ris country
• Ri and NBA coaches wanted him in the NBA. Why
  couldnt he join?
  
• What were the geo-political concerns regarding
  Ri?
  
• When was he last seen?
• Could a player from Ris country play in the US
  today?
  
• Bonus why is Ri wearing a Russian-style hat?

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Student Activity Five

• Indiana and Lithuania
• Identify similarities of Lithuanian and Indianan
  teenage basketball players
  
• Where is basketball played in both regions?

How did basketball arrive in both regions?
Identify similarities of basketball fans in both
regions
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- The World at the Hoop ClassPresentation -

• Basketball is played the world over. From Madison
  Square Garden in New York and the Peoples Palace
  in Beijing to the barns of Indiana and the
  streets of Zimbabwe.
• Professional basketball players from all over the
  world compete in different leagues, like the
  National Basketball Association and Midwest
  Correctional League in the US, the Police League
  in India, and the Confederación Argentina de
  Basquetbol in Argentina.
• Why is basketball such a popular sport?
• Why is soccer such a popular sport?

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Where Players Come From

• Many people believe that the NBA is the only
  professional basketball league. This is not true.
  By conducting a simple internet search, you can
  find literally hundreds of leagues around the
  world. Dozens of leagues in dozens of countries
  pay players a living wage.
• Many retired NBA superstars were born outside the
  US, including Patrick Ewing, Hakeem Olajuwan, and
  Drazen Petrovic among others.

• Many international players play basketball in the
  NBA, like Tim Duncan , Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki,
  and Yao Ming. Many players from the US play in
  international leagues, like Priest Lauderdale,
  Anthony Parker, and Andre Patterson.

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Players in History

• There are too many players of historical
  significance in the world to identify all of
  them however, coaches and basketball fans from
  the US have said that many international players
  from the past 50 years could have played in the
  NBA. There is nothing unique in US culture that
  makes US players better.

• A few players of note
• Sergei Belov (Russia, USSR)
• Kresimir Cosic (Croatia)
• Andrew Gaze (Australia)
• Nikos Gkalis (Greece)
• José Ortíz (Puerto Rico)
• Zarko Paspalj (Yugoslavia, SM)
• Oscar Mão Santo Schmidt (Brazil)
• Uljana Semjanova (Russia, USSR)
• Identify one anecdote for each player. Why didnt
  each player play in the NBA?
  

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The Iron Rim

• Many international players were rarely seen by
  the US and Western media. Many players were kept
  behind the Iron Curtain. Some of them were
  incredible talents, but Cold War political
  tensions kept them hidden.
• What were those Cold War political tensions?
• Do you think such players would have wanted to
  play in leagues in the West?

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Basketball as Resistance

• Because different sports are important to
  different cultures, basketball has been used in
  many cultures as a tool of resistance. East of
  the Iron Curtain, several countries used
  basketball as a tool of resistance against
  Moscow. One of these countries was Lithuania, a
  former Soviet Republic. Another was Yugoslavia,
  where the regions played against one another for
  cultural supremacy, but joined together when play
  against the USSR.

• What are some of the regions of the former
  Yugoslavia?
  
• What basketball game in the 2004 Athens Games was
  considered by many people to be an
  anti-imperialist sports victory?
  

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Interpreting Photographs A Class Activity

• In the following pages, look at the photographs
  of basketball players carefully. Look for
  cultural context clues, such as writing on
  uniforms, artifacts, and flora to determine where
  each picture was taken.

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Where was this picture taken?
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Where was this picture taken?

• Can you identify the Sierra Nevada mountains in
  the background? The preceding photographs was
  taken in the United State at Manzanar,
  California. US citizens of Japanese descent were
  forced to live in internment camps during World
  War Two, because many people in the military were
  afraid they were spies. Basketball was one form
  of recreation for men and women in such camps,
  because basketball required little more than a
  hoop and a ball.

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Where was this picture taken?

• Can you identify the word Scavolina on
  Roosevelt Bouies jersey? What language does
  Scavolina sound like? The preceding photograph
  was taken in 1981, in Pesaro, Italy. Roosevelt
  Bouie played in the NBA before moving to Italy.

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Where was this picture taken?

• Could you see the East Asian architectural style
  in the buildings of the background? This unique
  style of Asian architecture with pipped roofing
  is found in Thailand.

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Where was this picture taken?

• Did you notice the colorful clothing worn by the
  players? What about the clay-tiled roof and the
  adobe benches? And the dense vegetation in the
  background? This picture was taken in the
  southern Mexican town Zinacantán.

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Where was this picture taken?

• Why would anyone abandon an indoor basketball
  court that could be used during a snowy winter,
  as seen in the picture? This is a basketball
  court from the abandoned city of Chernobyl in
  Ukraine. What happened at Chernobyl?

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When was this pictures taken?

• Could you tell that the woman was wearing the
  jersey of her National Team? The preceding
  picture is of Perfila Helén, from Brazil. Brazil,
  notorious for its machista culture, encourages
  women to wear tight-fitting clothes should they
  play sports.

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Where was this pictures taken?

• In the previous picture, did you notice the sign
  in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet? Did you notice
  the barren, sandy ground? This picture was taken
  in Mongolia, where the Gobi Desert takes up much
  of the land area. The Soviet Union used Mongolia
  as a puppet-country and a buffer with China until
  the fall of the Soviet Union.
• To identify those pictures, we needed to look for
  specific contents clues that reveal pieces of
  information about a subject, in this case,
  photographs of basketball themes.

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Extra Activities

• Students will select any player born outside the
  50 US states and write a one page biography on
  him/her. Identify major competitions, teammates,
  and specific reasons why the player picked up a
  basketball.
• Students will research a basketball league
  outside the US. They will identify major teams in
  the league, where the teams play, when the teams
  play, and any cultural factors that effect the
  game.

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Contact Information

• To make suggestions to this presentation, please
  send an e-mail to Matthew Blair at
  mvblair_at_yahoo.com.
  
• Created October 9, 2004