Basketball And Globalization Summary

This is a critique on the article, “Basketball and Globalization”, published by The New Yorker. The author of this article is Sam Riches who didn’t published any work before this one. Basically, Riches talked about the N.B.A.’s current situation which is very globalized. He also argued that globalization in N.B.A. is needed and beneficial for its own growth. Due to the fact that this article was published by The New Yorker magazine, the ideas introduced in this article are very American centered and biased.
Most of the contents of this article are about how N.B.A. is globalized today. There were a few things Riches mentioned in his article. The first thing was the Nets, an N.B A. team, which is owned by a non-American. According to Riches

However, there a few things weakened his argument. In the beginning of the article, Riches talked about that the Nets was international and it looked for international players. It is necessary to point out that all of the international players in the Nets are Russians. It’s undeniable that the Nets might recruit Russian players for personal preference, because the Nets is owned by a Russian boss. Therefore, this doesn’t really support the point which the Nets was seeking for globalization. Also, in the 6th paragraph, Riches tried to make the point which American culture is already becoming less dominant. He used three examples which are really weak. The first one he used was Weibo. Weibo is extreme popular because its a Chinese microblogging site. Due to the huge population China has and the fact that foreign social-media platform is forbade in China, it’s reasonable for Weibo to become the most popular one. Also, the examples he used doesn’t really say anything. They can’t just simply support that American culture is less popular today. Therefore, the supports he used here might weaken his point. Riches also used Jeremy Lin as an example to show globalization stage the comeback of N.B.A. which is also lack of evidence. This whole paragraph is actually his own opinion. No one can simply prove it. However, I do like his opinion which “The N.B.A.’s willingness to adapt to a new set of economic and cultural