Could be any sport though I guess this doesn't work well for the NFL.

NBA:
C- Deke
PF- Dirk
SF-Lebron
SG-Petrovic
PG- Nash


NHL:

C: Datsyuk
LW: Selanne (fuck it, moved him to his off-wing. Could be Kurri tho)
RW: Kane
D: Salming
D: Orr
G: Hasek

I am curious to see people's picks in futbol, though I am not knowledgeable enough to make my own list.

forwards:
Messi/Suarez/C.Ronaldo

midfield:
pogba/Modric/busquets

defense:
Marcelo/Alaba/Boateng (or Hummels)/Aurier (or Walker? right back is kinda ehh right now)
-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

also, i forgot a GK. sticking to active, i'd drop the german defender, replace with one of the belgium Ds so I can put Neuer back there.

i don't know the defenders of the prior eras well enough to do that. first learning the game, you don't appreciate that part of the team.


-----------
you think we playing chess, but i'm playing mad-making. Basaglia

------------------yashin------------------
cafu | moore | beckenbauer | maldini
---maradona | xavi | zidane | cruyff---
-----------puskas | eusebio-------------

C: Steve Yzerman CAN (the only guy on whose wing my LW ever played)
RW: Jere Lehtonen FIN
LW: Sergei Fedorov RUS
D: Brian Leetch USA, Nick Lidstrom SWE
G: Domenik Hasek CZE

I wanted to go in a different direction than Hasek, but I had a very specific theme for my skaters and I used up all the good countries lol. Not that it matters...my guys are only gonna give up like 5 shots per game anyways.

>C: Steve Yzerman CAN (the only guy on whose wing my LW ever
>played)
>RW: Jere Lehtonen FIN
>LW: Sergei Fedorov RUS
>D: Brian Leetch USA, Nick Lidstrom SWE
>G: Domenik Hasek CZE
>
>I wanted to go in a different direction than Hasek, but I had
>a very specific theme for my skaters and I used up all the
>good countries lol. Not that it matters...my guys are only
>gonna give up like 5 shots per game anyways.


Lehtinen over Selanne? Well I will say the defense on that line would be amazing. I was never a big fan of Leetch, great player though and of course there aren't that many first-rate choices as Americans go.

I guess I will post a couple alternate ones. These lean toward being contemporary because European and even American players are a relatively recent thing. I tried to include a couple of pre-NHL guys here for that reason.

C-Lemieux
RW-Jagr
LW-Kurri
D- Lidstrom
D- Chara
G- Quick

C-Modano
RW-Howe
LW-Naslund
D-Timonen
D-Jan Suchy
G-Tretiak

C-Peter Stastny
RW-Alfredsson
LW-Elias
D-Zubov
D-Housley
G-Sawchuk

In a very nitpicky way, Elias and Stastny were born in the same country but not really.

F:
Foppa (SWE)
Brett Hull (USA)
Jagr (CZE)
D:
Stevens (CAN)
Fetisov (RUS)
G:
Arturs Irbe (LAT)

>G:
>Arturs Irbe (LAT)

PG: Bron
SG: Batum
SF: Greek Freak
PF: DAT ZINGIS
C: Jokic

I liked Batum and Jokic more than whomever and Gobert.

PG: Jalen Brunson, Villanova, USA
SG: Svi Mykhailiuk, Kansas, Ukraine
SF: Justin Jackson, Maryland, Canada
PF: Jock Landale, St. Mary's, Australia
C: DeAndre Ayton, Arizona, Bahamas

BENCH:
Manu Lecomte, Baylor, Belgium
Moe Wagner, Michigan, Germany
Omer Yurtseven, NC State, Turkey
Vladimir Brodziansky, TCU, Slovakia
Killian Tillie, Gonzaga, France

(Way more bigs than guards/wings, but whatever.)

This was fun, though I'm not really happy with how my team turned out. I wanted to make sure to bracket off the best players from the three BIG baseball countries (US, DR, and VZ) but the best players from the latter two countries aren't quite as clearcut as Trout is. Though Altuve is probably close. Point is, that means I ended up going straight after those two and just kind of kept rolling the Dominican over until I ran out of possibilities. On one hand, that's reasonable because there's a ton of good players from there and so not really a wrong answer. On the other, "not the wrong answer" isn't the same thing as "the right answer" and there's something that feels kind of unsatisfying as using that pick on Nelson Cruz.

I am pretty pleased that I didn't cheat and use Puerto Rico, though they play as their own country in international play so maybe I should have? Lindor would (off-hand) be the best player from there right now, but maybe the better pick would be catcher instead of Grandal (so, Molina maybe?) and then use the Cuba pick somewhere else? Jose Fernandez would have been excellent for that, but that won't work. Maybe Chapman in relief (even though he's on the shelf right now) and Yu Darvish for starting pitcher? I'm always pleased with myself for remembering that Teheran is from Columbia, but he's basically the Max Kepler of Americas on this list - just there because he occupies an unusual baseball country.

No Koreans either. I don't really feel like thinking through that one.

Mike Trout (USA) - CF
Joe Votto (CAN) - 1B
Jose Altuve (VEZ) - 2B
Max Kepler (DEU) - RF
Xander Bogaerts (ABW) - 3B (cheating a bit, but he played it in 2014)
Andrelton Simmons (CUW) - SS
Yasmani Grandal (CUB) - C
Nelson Cruz (DOM) - LF
Julio Teheran (COL) - SP
Koji Uehara (JPN) - RP

I was happy to see Teheran there and Colombia represented at all. Altuve is a very nice little player, definitely bigger names from Venezuela but I like that you went with him.

C - Russell Martin (Canada)
1B - Miguel Cabrera (Venezuela)
2B - Robinson Cano* (Dominican Republic)
3B - Omar Linares (Cuba)
SS - Edgar Renteria (Colombia)
LF - Barry Bonds* (US)
CF - Andruw Jones (Curacao)
RF - Ichiro Suzuki* (Japan)
SP - Fenando Valenzuela* (Mexico)
RP - Mariano Rivera (Panama)

-I don't know how guys like Bert Blyleven or Danny Graves would count in this exercise, as people born out of the country but moved at a young age to the US, but I just said they were from the US.

-I kind of went with a wildcard for Omar Linares at 3B but always would get excited to watch him and imagine he could have been great. Not like GOAT great, but maybe like Robin Ventura great.

-If you look at Puerto Rico as part of the US, the drop-off at catcher gets really steep.

-Panama is a binary. Probably Japan too.

-Some interesting CF options out there with Andrew Jones and Devon White.

-I strongly considered Dennis Martinez as the starter, but my first baseball memories were of Valenzuela so I got to ride with him. Valenzuela, Cuba, and the DR are big choices. Martinez would allow for a different closer like Joakim Soria or Roberto Osuna if you wanted to go for Rod Carew over Mariano Rivera to bolster the IF.

-Renteria at SS feels like the weak link. But I think it's hard to be strong everywhere. Were I doing this conservatively, my IF would be something like Beltre/Aparicio/Carew/Perez. Makes a significant drop-off at relief pitching. Were this a game or single series, the reliever would be huge and it would be easier to justify Rivera. But over the course of a whole season, probably got to bite the bullet and go for like Byung Hyung Kim out of the bullpen. But a Vinny Castilla or a Edgar Renteria allows for some other choices.

Renteria was admittedly a better player but I was always a Cabrera guy. Their feud was fierce.

I guess I will do one just for the fuck of it:

C Chooch (Panama)
1B Morneau (Canada)
2B Roberto Alomar (Puerto Rico, fuck it I am counting it)
3B Schmidt (USA)
SS Cabrera (Colombia)
LF Minoso (Cuba)
CF Ichiro (Japan)
RF Vlad (DR)
P Fernando (Mexico)

That was back when MLB treated the island as a different country, so I think it's reasonable to take him.

Your list with Ruiz was a more elegant way of forcing in a personal favorite than I thought was possible. I'd have gone with Oliva (who didn't play much LF but meh to that distinction) instead of Minoso, and I'd stump for him as the better player but it's obviously more of a personal thing.

it occurs to me i don't have a player from venezuela there, which is crazy. i had king felix at the pitcher slot and then decided to free up a position to fill with a venezuelan but i never got around to it. ah well. i guess i could DH morneau or walker and use miggy at first.

it gets kind of tough as there are only maybe 13/14 countries, some of which have not produced that many players, for 10-12 positions, depending how thoroughly you fill out the team. i am hoping the next generation of colombian players helps round that out and that in another generation after that there will be a lot of brazilians. so much sporting culture and athletic potential in brazil that remains largely untapped outside of soccer and martial arts. colombia is another weird one, it's not really a whole country producing players as much as it is a region. during baseball season you would be hard-pressed to find a non-playoff game on TV in most of the country, but in the caribbean you can see three to five regular-season games a day. they have some facilities in the big cities in the interior but i am not sure why. never once have i seen anything happening at the baseball or softball complexes in medellin, cali, bogota, etc. it's very much a regional thing, even their league is clustered in one stretch of the northern coast.

I saw that you had made a team and then made one before I looked at yours so as not to be influenced:

C - Jorge Alfaro (Colombia) AAA Stud for the Phillies
1B - Joey Votto* (Canada)
2B - Jose Altuve (Venezuela)
3B - Adrian Beltre (Dominican Republic)
SS - Andrelton Simmons (Curacao)
LF - Yeonis Cespedes (Cuba)
CF - Mike Trout (USA)
RF - Max Kepler* (Germany)
SP - Yu Darvish (Japan)
RP - Seung-hwan Oh (South Korea)

Also considered Christian Bethancourt at catcher, Shin Soo Choo for RF, Roberto Osuna in relief, and a bunch of starters including Jaime Garcia and Marco Estrada.

Plenty of overlap in there. I think Votto, Altuve, Simmons, and Kepler are overwhelmingly representatives for their country relative to positional scarcity. Weighing players/positions from DR, Colombia, Cuba, Japan, and Korea is where it becomes an exercise in preference. And Mike Trout is like the free space in Bingo. I started with Kershaw in at SP just to be different but filling out the OF started getting more difficult. Similarly, I thought Puerto Rico would be a cop out.

>C - Jorge Alfaro (Colombia) AAA Stud for the Phillies

I actually considered this one too, but opted against it because:

a)his success was too speculative
b)I kind of got tired of hearing about Alfaro when Jason Parks was still writing at BPro

But the positional flexibility you got out of it makes him worth it.

>1B - Joey Votto* (Canada)
>2B - Jose Altuve (Venezuela)
>3B - Adrian Beltre (Dominican Republic)
>SS - Andrelton Simmons (Curacao)
>LF - Yeonis Cespedes (Cuba)
>CF - Mike Trout (USA)
>RF - Max Kepler* (Germany)

Better use of the Dominican option (somebody needs to take this phrasing back from Catholic twitter) with Beltre, especially defensively because it lets you use Cespedes in the outfield.

>SP - Yu Darvish (Japan)
>RP - Seung-hwan Oh (South Korea)

And this is a better combination here. As you saw above, I tried to get Darvish in there too.

>Also considered Christian Bethancourt at catcher, Shin Soo
>Choo for RF, Roberto Osuna in relief, and a bunch of starters
>including Jaime Garcia and Marco Estrada.

Soooooooo, I like Osuna here out of the Mexican options, but there aren't any Korean starters that would let us make something closer to a full roster. Bethancourt would help as a C/RP flex option. I'd like to revisit this idea in a few years, maybe with Gift Ngoepe or one of the Twins' "prospects" from Moldova (they've got two brothers who were trained by a javelin coach). Getting an Australian in there would be cool. Twins used to own that market: Hughes, Balfour, Oeltjen, Moylan, Brad Thomas. Liam Hendriks is kind of good now. Maybe he gets a spot?

>Similarly, I thought Puerto Rico would be a
>cop out.

Hat tips to both of us for not taking the easy way out.

Hakeem
Pau
Peja
Manu
Parker

Sabonis
Schrempf
Schmidt
Sarunas
Stockton

Gobert
Ibaka
Giannis
Batum
Rubio

Kopitar
Gaborik
Bure
Chelios
Karlsson
Kiprusoff


Malkin
Mikita (born in Czechoslovakia)
Bossy
Gary Suter
Numinnen
Lundqvist

McDavid
Laine
Malecek
Mark Howe
Gut
Irbe

Non-hockey countries:
Craig Adams (Burnei)
Owen Nolan (Ireland)
Georges Laraque (Haiti)
Robyn Regehr (Brazil)
Langway (Taiwan)
Kolzig (South Africa)


Ed Beers (Holland)
Willie Plett (Paraguay)
Townshend (Jamaica)
Chartraw (Venezuela)
Rumun Ndur (Nigeria)
Mike Greenlay (Brazil)

PG- Pangos, (Canada)
SG- Monchito Cruz (Puerto Rico)
SF-Belov (Russia)
PF-Hank Gathers (USA)
C- Krešimir Ćosić (Croatia)

NOPE. towns DR.

Ovechkin - Backstrom - Williams
Niskanen - (dammit, too many Americans)
Grubauer

C Campanella (USA)
1B Big Papi (DR)
2B Bobby Avila (Mexico)
3B Omar Linares (Cuba)
SS Omar Vizquel (Venezuela)
LF Larry Walker (Canada)
CF Andruw Jones (Curacao)
RF Clemente (Puerto Rico)
P Teheran (Colombia)


C Pudge (Puerto Rico)
1B Miggy (Venezuela)
2B Chase Utley (USA)
3B Vinny Castilla (Mexico)
SS Renteria (Colombia)
LF Manny (DR)
CF Ichiro (Japan)
RF Puig (Cuba)
P Mariano Rivera (Panama)

This whole thing gives me wonderment about a related issue. Why hasn't the Dominican Republic produced better catchers? I'm sure there's some degree of racism at work, but that can't be entirely it because Puerto Rico and Venezuela both have a pretty good track record. Am I missing somebody important when I think of good Dominican catchers? Because all I've got is Carlos Santana (who doesn't catch anymore) and Tony Pena.

they have produced a good number but none have been that good. kind of odd.

MLB:

1B: Miggy Cabrera (Venezuela)
2B: Bobby Avila (Mexico)
SS: Bert Campaneris (Cuba)
3B: Mike Schmidt (USA)
C: Pudge Rodriguez (PR)
OF: Ichiro (Japan)
OF: Larry Walker (Canada)
CF: Andruw Jones (Curacao)
P: Pedro Martinez (DR)
Closer: Mariana Rivera (Panama)

Insanely tough, almost sac-religious to leave off Roberto Clemente. Such a tough list to make considering the quality of players from the DR, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and to a lesser degree, Cuba.

PG - Tony Parker
SG - Manu Ginobli
SF - Kawhi Leonard or possibly George Gervin
PF - Boris Diaw
PF/C - Tim Duncan (St. Croix definitely counts if PR does)

Or you could go:

PG - Tony Parker
G - Manu Ginobli
F - Boris Diaw
PF - Tim Duncan
C - David Robinson

PG - begrudgingly Nash over Parker...but gotta take him for his shooting
G - Ginobli
SF - Bron
PF - Tim Duncan
C - Dream


Or for more shooting....

PG - Nash
G - MJ
F - Detlef Schrempf
PF - Timmay
C - Dream

That seems the most interesting to me because the most countries are involved and the teams are big, too.

tjt kind of nailed it tho, as far as active guys.

C Kopitar (Slovenia)
LW Fedotenko (Ukraine)
RW Jochen Hecht (Germany)
D Roman Josi (Switzerland)
D Skrastins (Latvia)
G Freddie Andersen (Denmark)

C Grabovski (Belarus)
LW Nik Antropov (Kazakhstan)
RW Nino Niederreiter (Switzerland)
D Uwe Krupp (Germany)
D Godynyuk (Ukraine)
G Cristobal Huet (France)

C Frans Nielsen (Denmark)
LW Marco Sturm (Germany)
RW Zubrus (Lithuania)
D Philippe Bozon (France)
D Ruslan Salei (Belarus)
G Arturs Irbe (Latvia)

C Leon Draisaitl (Germany)
LW Antoine Roussel (France)
RW Vanek (Austria)
D Ozilins (Latvia)
D Kasparaitis (Lithuania)
G Andrei Mezin (Belarus)