The emotion provided by the orange ball: a review through the history of men's basketball in the Olympic Games (1936-2024)

Abstract

The objective of this article is to delve into the history of men's basketball at the Olympic Games, from its implementation in 1936 to the last edition in 2024, through the results, participants in the editions and with the support of topics such as the professionalization of leagues, the way in which the competition is classified, globalization regarding the sport and geopolitics. In relation to methods, the study is qualitative, quantitative and descriptive in scope, in addition to having technical bibliographic and documentary procedures. Through the data, it was possible to observe the number of participations of each country, the medalists in each edition of the competition and the number of medals of the nations that, at least, achieved one gold, silver or bronze. In this way, facts such as the broad USA dominance in the sport, the good number of Brazilian participations and that Asia and Africa still do not have a medalist country can be seen. After the pictures, according to the literature on the subject, the men's basketball editions at the Olympics were mentioned. As a conclusion, a certain pattern was seen in relation to the silver and bronze medalist teams, with in the first years, the appearance of some team from the American continent accompanying the United States and the Soviet Union; Since the edition held in Barcelona in 1992, teams such as Lithuania, Spain, Serbia and France continue to show the solidity of European basketball, in addition to Argentina, they were the ones that stood out the most - this being the only team from Latin America to win the medal of gold; and, in addition to the United States, 6 other teams from the American continent achieved at least one medal - Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay.