Scott, a good book to read is "The Sports Gene" by David Epstein. He discusses a lot of the genetic issues related to top performance in various sports. One thing you did get a "bit" wrong was the comment on baseball pitchers need for a great arm. The biomechanics of pitching involve the whole body and those pitchers who do not have good biomechanics end up with arm problems early in their career. I remember seeing former Reds pitch Don Gullett in the early 1970s while I was in grad school at Indiana. His pitching motion was almost all arm with very little lower body support. HIs career ended early. Contrast this to both Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan who had almost perfect whole body biomechanics and had very long careers with relatively few injury problems. I audited Doc Counselman's biomechanics course at Indiana (he was the preeminent swimming coach at the time and had a number of world class swimmers at IU; I asked him about pitchers and he was in general agreement even though it was not his sport).
With respect to basketball, there is also the intangible mental aspect which distinguishes outstanding players from run of the mill ones. Lots of players have the innate physical skills to succeed but they lack court awareness and the ability to visualize the game in real time. The same can be said about the greatest hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky, who was not the most physically gifted but had game anticipation that was far greater than any other player. Many of the Serbian basketball players also have this as does Luka Doncic. Larry Bird is another good example here. This aspect of the game cannot be measured in the same way reflex action or vertical jump can but only observed in game conditions.
LeBron another one with great court vision, which is how he dragged several mediocre teams to the finals. I'd be curious as to how he would have done as an NFL quarterback, given his great arm and ability to see the whole field.
I'm sticking with my claim that the arm is the single most important body part for pitchers, even though they use their whole body, as you say.
Soccer tends to be dominated by people who grow up in specific places that have really deep knowledge of soccer, or places close enough to the core soccer countries that talent there gets recognized early. So there isn’t really a clear racial component to it, except that people living Europe and South America are over represented, so people with European and African ancestry are over represented. My own personal opinion is that at the highest levels, every position in soccer requires the kinds of skills that quarterbacks have, and differences in effectiveness of players are as much about their ability to read and react to the game as it is about their ability to run, dribble, or kick the ball (though there are some players that are notably good at dribbling or being incredibly precise with their passing.) Take DeBruyne as an example. I don’t think that he is exceptional at dribbling, shooting, or in his ability to pass the ball very precisely. He is just really good at recognizing when and where to pass the ball, and that makes him one of the best players right now. Jokic seems to me to play basketball that way. He doesn’t look very fast or athletic, he just seems to be able to get himself in a position to shoot high percentage shots or make an assist. My guess is that Europe, over time, becomes even more significant for basketball, as they take what they know about teaching kids how to play soccer and apply that to basketball, and that knowledge starts to reach a critical mass where even people not connected to the higher levels of the sport know a great ball about how to play the game and teach that to the equivalent of players on a local high school basketball team.
The first part of the post is closest thing you've ever written to something that Steve Sailer would write. After a quick google, he did write something on the same topic several years ago. He compares height, reach/wingspan, and jumping height. The black players on average have better reach/wingspan and jumping height vs. the white players.
". The black players on average have better reach/wingspan and jumping height vs. the white players"
I did not put this in my post but what is interesting is that the US men's national volleyball team that won the bronze medal in the Olympics was all white. Most of the players other than the libero are all 6'5" or taller, have long arms that can generate great spike power, and outstanding vertical jump (Karch Kiraly, who played on two US Gold Medal teams and now coaches the women's NT had a reported 42 inch vertical jump). The women's NT does have a number of black players on its team. I've often wondered how some of the elite black basketball players might do in volleyball had they trained for it. Wilt Chamberlain did play a bit of beach volleyball after he moved to Los Angeles.
It's a noted issue, i.e. follow the money. In places like Russia where a pro volleyball player makes more money than a pro basketball player, they go into volleyball instead as they basically pull from the same pool of physical attributes.
Eg the GDP PPP per capita in Serbia is ~40% of Germany or the Netherlands. A young, tall, athletic kid in Serbia might rationally pursue sport as a career more seriously than a similar kid in a Nordic country, because the expected payout is higher compared to the alternative. The same logic would apply to a black kid in the US.
I recall reading that lower income kids are less likely to make the NBA in America. In any case, income can't really explain the strong showing of former Yugoslavia, as there are lower income people throughout much of eastern and southern Europe. It might be a factor, but the share of Yugoslavian athletes in the NBA is truly astounding.
Most serbian NBA basketball players are from Herzegovina and Montenegro or their parents were. I am not sure about Jokic though. Also Serbia is presented on chart with much bigger regions. Western and south-western serbia are much taller then average because population originated from Herzegovina. But you don't see it there.
As for Slovenia all their NBA players are of Serbian origin (father or grandfather was a Serb).
And if these figures are accurate, the differences aren't that small. The average male height in the Dinaric Alps in Balkans is given as 184.6 cm, which is almost a cm heigher than that given for the Netherlands, and almost 3 cm heigher than Germany and Scandinavia.
(The list includes divergent numbers from different studies, and it's not quite fair to compare regions to whole countries; so you'd have to do a deeper dive to see what the real differences are. Still, it seems unlikely to be a pure coincidence. Height probably plays some role.)
Interesting. Yes, I think you've made the case that height plays some role. But consider that the Netherlands has ever had (AFAIK) only one NBA player. I'd like to see data on the absolute number of men above say 6' 6'' in various parts of Europe, not just average height.
"Unlike most NBA fans, I prefer the regular season over the playoffs. More games, and the experience of watching is less stressful."
This is a fun and perhaps even admirable viewpoint - perhaps there is a sort of purity or fairness to the regular season simply because people don't care about it as much, or don't care about the outcomes too much.
I.e. winning a championship sometimes can involve a lot of chance and luck and I think at times you see a team that is truly great not win a championship and they don't, and inevitably that team is denigrated and treated as second-rate and not celebrated as they should be. (I.e. it seems like excellence at winning should be the point of sports, not winning, if that makes sense, but most people seem to disagree).
The obvious example (for me) is the Rockets and Jazz in the 1990's; I think there is little doubt that the Jazz, all other things equal, had a higher probability (or "deserve") of winning x rings, for any x > 0, but the Rockets won two and the Jazz won zero. But all other things weren't equal.
Time is supposed to heal all wounds, so maybe in retrospect Jazz fans have become roughly as happy with their memories of the 90's teams as they'd be one of those teams had actually won a title. I have no idea. As a 90's Sonics fan, another "probably more deserving than the Rockets, really" Western Conference team, I think I'd be happier with a title, but I don't think their problem was bad luck.
"People often cite the 2004 Pistons as a rare team that won a championship without a superstar player. It's very hard, and I don't expect to live long enough to see it happen again."
The 2014 Spurs had a superstar player? At first glance, it's hard for me to believe that anyone who (somehow) didn't know about Duncan's past or Leonard's future would come to that conclusion. Then again maybe one of them (or both) was doing all sorts of things that don't show up in the trad stats, and they really were playing at a superstar level.
Both very good comments. In an earlier MoneyIllusion post I pointed out that the Bucks were lucky to win the title in 2021 (when they weren't the best team), but unlucky not to win in 2019 or 2020 (when they were the best team.). The 2014 Spurs team is one of my all time favorites---just a beautiful team to watch.
I am of Croatian descent, it is a combination of height and cultural factors. The average height statistics you quote does not convey the full picture, as older generations are not that much above the European average compared to the young (nutrition, etc.) Also: height varies across the regions somewhat with males close to the dinaric alps scoring (higher share of I haplogroeup) highest.
Last year there was a study conducted among 18 year olds across the former yugoslavia and it turns out that young men from dalmatia are the tallest in europe (average height: 187 cm, compared to 184 cm among the dutch, if I remember well). The mean was somewhat lower (184) in other regions and lower for Bosnian muslims (182) presumably due to lower protein consumption (pork). An average of 187 cm implies more that 30 percent of males are above 190 cm- so while the overall population size is rather small, there is a large sample of basketball suited males.
The rest has to do with culture ( ball sports, know how, team spirit) as well as financial motives: if you are good in sports in former yugoslavia, you skew to those sports where you can earn money, rather than some exotic niche...
As for the blacks, Steve Sailer had analyzed it into every detail
Nice piece. I think that for some athletes there is a kind of a trap you get from having great natural athletic skills. They neve learn to shoot as well as they could since they never needed to when young. I also think we underrate eye-hand coordination. Look at baseball and tennis. You dont have to be the fastest or strongest if you have great eye-hand skills, plus as others have noted court awareness or basketball smarts matter a lot.
That said, will disagree with your assessment of your Bucks. I think Dame has clearly lost a step and just isn't the player he was 2 years ago. I dont have strong feelings about Middleton but can he stay healthy? Seems as reliable as Kawhi. Giannis has 2 MVPs so he is not underrated. He does have shooting limitations and while he has improved his passing he is by no means a great passer, maybe a bit above average, Overall, I just think Jokic and Embiid are better right now. (He reminds me of a young Julius Erving who made spectacular plays but whose game got better when he developed a reliable jumper.)
Dame admits he had an off year, but I expect him to bounce back this year. Middleton is more durable than Kawhi. Giannis should have been no lower than #2 in last year's MVP contest, and he's clearly better than Embid (who has done nothing in the playoffs.).
I think they are, but how much money is there in Olympic high jumping? If you have the skills to go into the NBA*, you go into the NBA. If the point is to make inferences about the upper end of the population, then using the NBA makes more sense than Olympic high jump.
*Skills needed for the NBA are also more multi-dimensional compared to high jumping.
Scott, how do you rate the popularity of the NBA amongst Americans? Has it increased, decreased, or stayed the same?
Where I live in Maryland, interest in basketball has really declined. Maryland left the ACC and ruined the rivalry with Duke. Maryland also became a non-factor in college basketball. Georgetown basketball has been worse!
At the NBA level, the Wizards haven't been contenders for forever, and have missed the playoffs 5 out of the past 6 years. The Sixers create some interest but only on the periphery - the Wizards are so bleh they are no ones rival.
Saying this to point out that in the Mid-Atlantic basketball is fourth - football, baseball and hockey rate higher.
SoCal has the Lakers and Clippers and California claims the Warriors as well as some top college teams. California may be the best state for basketball and the NBA!
I'm an extremely casual NBA fan, but as I was reading this I was expecting these 2 points to be addressed which didn't make it in:
From the outside looking in, the biggest thing in the NBA is it's massive popularity in China (and the influence it gets from that). Are you expecting a bigger generation of Chinese NBA players to come from that?
The other thing I've often seen complained about is how many players have ex NBA parents. Obviously height and athleticism are hereditary, but amongst the people I talked to it seems that this is worse for the NBA than other sports that also depend on hereditary factors. Does this make it less meritocratic?
There is no conflict between heredity being important and merit being important. A meritocracy is a system where people are awarded based on merit; regardless of how that merit was earned. I'd go even further and suggest that heredity and hard work don't necessarily conflict, as a propensity to work hard might be partly inherited.
China has had relatively little impact on the NBA, but the rest of Asia has had almost none.
Regarding effort I'm not sure I agree. I'm more familiar with football (soccer), where it's common to see the children of footballers fail to live up to the parents. I think the main reason behind it is effort.
Football is a low class sport, many children see it as a ticket out of poverty. National teams often look like the lower class of that country. In Argentina (where I'm from) it is common for footballers to use the proceeds of their first serious paychecks to buy their family a house in a nice neighborhood, and you can find similar stories from players all over the world.
The sons that grew up in privilege simply don't have the same pressure to provide a way out of poverty and turn out less driven, even if they're related to driven people.
Perhaps it's different in the US where even poor people have a (relatively) high standard of living.
"They found that among African-Americans, a child from a low-income family has 37 percent lower odds of making the NBA than a child from a middle- or upper-income family. Poor white athletes are 75 percent less likely to become NBA players than middle-class or well-off whites."
There are also major selection effects all throughout youth sports. Former NBA parents will spend the time and money it takes. Plus, what coach is going to cut Lebron James' 10 year old kid.
It seems that basketball is demonstrating consistent aspects of the flattening of great talent, but could a team with 10 great players win a championship over a team with 5 great players and one superstar? Also, are the great players getting closer to the superstars in terms of measurable performance?
People often cite the 2004 Pistons as a rare team that won a championship without a superstar player. It's very hard, and I don't expect to live long enough to see it happen again.
On your second question, what I've noticed is an increased quantity of superstars. People used to talk in terms of Magic, Bird and Jordan. Now it's hard to compile a top-5 list because there are ten players that seem like they belong.
Scott, a good book to read is "The Sports Gene" by David Epstein. He discusses a lot of the genetic issues related to top performance in various sports. One thing you did get a "bit" wrong was the comment on baseball pitchers need for a great arm. The biomechanics of pitching involve the whole body and those pitchers who do not have good biomechanics end up with arm problems early in their career. I remember seeing former Reds pitch Don Gullett in the early 1970s while I was in grad school at Indiana. His pitching motion was almost all arm with very little lower body support. HIs career ended early. Contrast this to both Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan who had almost perfect whole body biomechanics and had very long careers with relatively few injury problems. I audited Doc Counselman's biomechanics course at Indiana (he was the preeminent swimming coach at the time and had a number of world class swimmers at IU; I asked him about pitchers and he was in general agreement even though it was not his sport).
With respect to basketball, there is also the intangible mental aspect which distinguishes outstanding players from run of the mill ones. Lots of players have the innate physical skills to succeed but they lack court awareness and the ability to visualize the game in real time. The same can be said about the greatest hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky, who was not the most physically gifted but had game anticipation that was far greater than any other player. Many of the Serbian basketball players also have this as does Luka Doncic. Larry Bird is another good example here. This aspect of the game cannot be measured in the same way reflex action or vertical jump can but only observed in game conditions.
LeBron another one with great court vision, which is how he dragged several mediocre teams to the finals. I'd be curious as to how he would have done as an NFL quarterback, given his great arm and ability to see the whole field.
I'm sticking with my claim that the arm is the single most important body part for pitchers, even though they use their whole body, as you say.
Ha! Was also going to recommend that book
Soccer tends to be dominated by people who grow up in specific places that have really deep knowledge of soccer, or places close enough to the core soccer countries that talent there gets recognized early. So there isn’t really a clear racial component to it, except that people living Europe and South America are over represented, so people with European and African ancestry are over represented. My own personal opinion is that at the highest levels, every position in soccer requires the kinds of skills that quarterbacks have, and differences in effectiveness of players are as much about their ability to read and react to the game as it is about their ability to run, dribble, or kick the ball (though there are some players that are notably good at dribbling or being incredibly precise with their passing.) Take DeBruyne as an example. I don’t think that he is exceptional at dribbling, shooting, or in his ability to pass the ball very precisely. He is just really good at recognizing when and where to pass the ball, and that makes him one of the best players right now. Jokic seems to me to play basketball that way. He doesn’t look very fast or athletic, he just seems to be able to get himself in a position to shoot high percentage shots or make an assist. My guess is that Europe, over time, becomes even more significant for basketball, as they take what they know about teaching kids how to play soccer and apply that to basketball, and that knowledge starts to reach a critical mass where even people not connected to the higher levels of the sport know a great ball about how to play the game and teach that to the equivalent of players on a local high school basketball team.
The first part of the post is closest thing you've ever written to something that Steve Sailer would write. After a quick google, he did write something on the same topic several years ago. He compares height, reach/wingspan, and jumping height. The black players on average have better reach/wingspan and jumping height vs. the white players.
Aren't white athletes somewhat competitive in the Olympic high jump contest? (I haven't followed it closely in recent years.)
Accidentally replied in the main thread rather than here. Apologies.
". The black players on average have better reach/wingspan and jumping height vs. the white players"
I did not put this in my post but what is interesting is that the US men's national volleyball team that won the bronze medal in the Olympics was all white. Most of the players other than the libero are all 6'5" or taller, have long arms that can generate great spike power, and outstanding vertical jump (Karch Kiraly, who played on two US Gold Medal teams and now coaches the women's NT had a reported 42 inch vertical jump). The women's NT does have a number of black players on its team. I've often wondered how some of the elite black basketball players might do in volleyball had they trained for it. Wilt Chamberlain did play a bit of beach volleyball after he moved to Los Angeles.
It's a noted issue, i.e. follow the money. In places like Russia where a pro volleyball player makes more money than a pro basketball player, they go into volleyball instead as they basically pull from the same pool of physical attributes.
Parts of Yugoslavia (Montenegro, Herzegovina and Dalmatia) have the most tallest people in the world (Serbs and Croats). Taller than Netherland.
Article:
https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/not-dutch-montenegro-tallest-people/
Yugoslavian mean height (image):
https://bigthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Mean-height.png
Thanks, that's very interesting. Still, Slovenia and Serbia don't seem taller than the Nordics. And that's where the NBA stars seem to come from.
Does "opportunity cost" explain some of it?
Eg the GDP PPP per capita in Serbia is ~40% of Germany or the Netherlands. A young, tall, athletic kid in Serbia might rationally pursue sport as a career more seriously than a similar kid in a Nordic country, because the expected payout is higher compared to the alternative. The same logic would apply to a black kid in the US.
I recall reading that lower income kids are less likely to make the NBA in America. In any case, income can't really explain the strong showing of former Yugoslavia, as there are lower income people throughout much of eastern and southern Europe. It might be a factor, but the share of Yugoslavian athletes in the NBA is truly astounding.
Most serbian NBA basketball players are from Herzegovina and Montenegro or their parents were. I am not sure about Jokic though. Also Serbia is presented on chart with much bigger regions. Western and south-western serbia are much taller then average because population originated from Herzegovina. But you don't see it there.
As for Slovenia all their NBA players are of Serbian origin (father or grandfather was a Serb).
Just to add to this, Wikipedia makes the same claim:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_human_height_by_country#Measured_and_self-reported_figures
And if these figures are accurate, the differences aren't that small. The average male height in the Dinaric Alps in Balkans is given as 184.6 cm, which is almost a cm heigher than that given for the Netherlands, and almost 3 cm heigher than Germany and Scandinavia.
(The list includes divergent numbers from different studies, and it's not quite fair to compare regions to whole countries; so you'd have to do a deeper dive to see what the real differences are. Still, it seems unlikely to be a pure coincidence. Height probably plays some role.)
Interesting. Yes, I think you've made the case that height plays some role. But consider that the Netherlands has ever had (AFAIK) only one NBA player. I'd like to see data on the absolute number of men above say 6' 6'' in various parts of Europe, not just average height.
Because every kid in Netherlands wants to be DJ
"Unlike most NBA fans, I prefer the regular season over the playoffs. More games, and the experience of watching is less stressful."
This is a fun and perhaps even admirable viewpoint - perhaps there is a sort of purity or fairness to the regular season simply because people don't care about it as much, or don't care about the outcomes too much.
I.e. winning a championship sometimes can involve a lot of chance and luck and I think at times you see a team that is truly great not win a championship and they don't, and inevitably that team is denigrated and treated as second-rate and not celebrated as they should be. (I.e. it seems like excellence at winning should be the point of sports, not winning, if that makes sense, but most people seem to disagree).
The obvious example (for me) is the Rockets and Jazz in the 1990's; I think there is little doubt that the Jazz, all other things equal, had a higher probability (or "deserve") of winning x rings, for any x > 0, but the Rockets won two and the Jazz won zero. But all other things weren't equal.
Time is supposed to heal all wounds, so maybe in retrospect Jazz fans have become roughly as happy with their memories of the 90's teams as they'd be one of those teams had actually won a title. I have no idea. As a 90's Sonics fan, another "probably more deserving than the Rockets, really" Western Conference team, I think I'd be happier with a title, but I don't think their problem was bad luck.
"People often cite the 2004 Pistons as a rare team that won a championship without a superstar player. It's very hard, and I don't expect to live long enough to see it happen again."
The 2014 Spurs had a superstar player? At first glance, it's hard for me to believe that anyone who (somehow) didn't know about Duncan's past or Leonard's future would come to that conclusion. Then again maybe one of them (or both) was doing all sorts of things that don't show up in the trad stats, and they really were playing at a superstar level.
Both very good comments. In an earlier MoneyIllusion post I pointed out that the Bucks were lucky to win the title in 2021 (when they weren't the best team), but unlucky not to win in 2019 or 2020 (when they were the best team.). The 2014 Spurs team is one of my all time favorites---just a beautiful team to watch.
Scott,
I am of Croatian descent, it is a combination of height and cultural factors. The average height statistics you quote does not convey the full picture, as older generations are not that much above the European average compared to the young (nutrition, etc.) Also: height varies across the regions somewhat with males close to the dinaric alps scoring (higher share of I haplogroeup) highest.
Last year there was a study conducted among 18 year olds across the former yugoslavia and it turns out that young men from dalmatia are the tallest in europe (average height: 187 cm, compared to 184 cm among the dutch, if I remember well). The mean was somewhat lower (184) in other regions and lower for Bosnian muslims (182) presumably due to lower protein consumption (pork). An average of 187 cm implies more that 30 percent of males are above 190 cm- so while the overall population size is rather small, there is a large sample of basketball suited males.
The rest has to do with culture ( ball sports, know how, team spirit) as well as financial motives: if you are good in sports in former yugoslavia, you skew to those sports where you can earn money, rather than some exotic niche...
As for the blacks, Steve Sailer had analyzed it into every detail
Nice piece. I think that for some athletes there is a kind of a trap you get from having great natural athletic skills. They neve learn to shoot as well as they could since they never needed to when young. I also think we underrate eye-hand coordination. Look at baseball and tennis. You dont have to be the fastest or strongest if you have great eye-hand skills, plus as others have noted court awareness or basketball smarts matter a lot.
That said, will disagree with your assessment of your Bucks. I think Dame has clearly lost a step and just isn't the player he was 2 years ago. I dont have strong feelings about Middleton but can he stay healthy? Seems as reliable as Kawhi. Giannis has 2 MVPs so he is not underrated. He does have shooting limitations and while he has improved his passing he is by no means a great passer, maybe a bit above average, Overall, I just think Jokic and Embiid are better right now. (He reminds me of a young Julius Erving who made spectacular plays but whose game got better when he developed a reliable jumper.)
Steve
Dame admits he had an off year, but I expect him to bounce back this year. Middleton is more durable than Kawhi. Giannis should have been no lower than #2 in last year's MVP contest, and he's clearly better than Embid (who has done nothing in the playoffs.).
I think they are, but how much money is there in Olympic high jumping? If you have the skills to go into the NBA*, you go into the NBA. If the point is to make inferences about the upper end of the population, then using the NBA makes more sense than Olympic high jump.
*Skills needed for the NBA are also more multi-dimensional compared to high jumping.
Scott, how do you rate the popularity of the NBA amongst Americans? Has it increased, decreased, or stayed the same?
Where I live in Maryland, interest in basketball has really declined. Maryland left the ACC and ruined the rivalry with Duke. Maryland also became a non-factor in college basketball. Georgetown basketball has been worse!
At the NBA level, the Wizards haven't been contenders for forever, and have missed the playoffs 5 out of the past 6 years. The Sixers create some interest but only on the periphery - the Wizards are so bleh they are no ones rival.
Saying this to point out that in the Mid-Atlantic basketball is fourth - football, baseball and hockey rate higher.
SoCal has the Lakers and Clippers and California claims the Warriors as well as some top college teams. California may be the best state for basketball and the NBA!
Based on the money being earned, I'd say the NBA is more popular than ever. But yes, I feel for Wizards fans. Bucks fans like me are truly blessed.
I'm an extremely casual NBA fan, but as I was reading this I was expecting these 2 points to be addressed which didn't make it in:
From the outside looking in, the biggest thing in the NBA is it's massive popularity in China (and the influence it gets from that). Are you expecting a bigger generation of Chinese NBA players to come from that?
The other thing I've often seen complained about is how many players have ex NBA parents. Obviously height and athleticism are hereditary, but amongst the people I talked to it seems that this is worse for the NBA than other sports that also depend on hereditary factors. Does this make it less meritocratic?
There is no conflict between heredity being important and merit being important. A meritocracy is a system where people are awarded based on merit; regardless of how that merit was earned. I'd go even further and suggest that heredity and hard work don't necessarily conflict, as a propensity to work hard might be partly inherited.
China has had relatively little impact on the NBA, but the rest of Asia has had almost none.
Thanks for the response!
Regarding effort I'm not sure I agree. I'm more familiar with football (soccer), where it's common to see the children of footballers fail to live up to the parents. I think the main reason behind it is effort.
Football is a low class sport, many children see it as a ticket out of poverty. National teams often look like the lower class of that country. In Argentina (where I'm from) it is common for footballers to use the proceeds of their first serious paychecks to buy their family a house in a nice neighborhood, and you can find similar stories from players all over the world.
The sons that grew up in privilege simply don't have the same pressure to provide a way out of poverty and turn out less driven, even if they're related to driven people.
Perhaps it's different in the US where even poor people have a (relatively) high standard of living.
How about this:
"They found that among African-Americans, a child from a low-income family has 37 percent lower odds of making the NBA than a child from a middle- or upper-income family. Poor white athletes are 75 percent less likely to become NBA players than middle-class or well-off whites."
https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/6777581/importance-athlete-background-making-nba
There are also major selection effects all throughout youth sports. Former NBA parents will spend the time and money it takes. Plus, what coach is going to cut Lebron James' 10 year old kid.
It seems that basketball is demonstrating consistent aspects of the flattening of great talent, but could a team with 10 great players win a championship over a team with 5 great players and one superstar? Also, are the great players getting closer to the superstars in terms of measurable performance?
People often cite the 2004 Pistons as a rare team that won a championship without a superstar player. It's very hard, and I don't expect to live long enough to see it happen again.
On your second question, what I've noticed is an increased quantity of superstars. People used to talk in terms of Magic, Bird and Jordan. Now it's hard to compile a top-5 list because there are ten players that seem like they belong.