9781422288009 Players & the Game Around the World

A reproduction of an ancient drawing shows the “basketball game,” played in Mexico about 1500 years ago.

BASKETBALL IN LATIN AMERICA Today, from Mexico to Chile, kids are playing basketball in the streets and on dusty out- door courts. At the professional level, though, the game has to compete with this region’s number-one sport: futból (soccer). Soccer’s influence on basketball is very obvious in Latin America’s informal street games. Players raised on soccer tend to pass more than dribble. In some countries, however, like Argentina and Brazil, where basketball has been around longer and is more established, coaches take advantage of this tendency to build players who have very strong teamwork and footwork skills.

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PLAYERS & THE GAME AROUND THE WORLD