Basketball Spoiler

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040827/D84NO6V00.html

The U.S. men's basketball team will go home from the Olympics without a gold medal for the first time since it began using NBA players after the Americans were beaten soundly by Argentina 89-81 in the semifinals Friday.

Tim Duncan fouled out with five minutes left and the Americans trailing 76-65, just one of the many frustrating moments for the U.S. team against the scrappy Argentines.

Ha Ha! Go women's team - they have a player from my hometown - Swin Cash from McKeesport, PA.

Edited by Admin to remove spoiler.

It's been hard to muster much enthusiasm for the team.

I was hoping to be emargoed from this news, but then I realized why put off the inevitable. Note to US Olympics Association: GET SOME DAMN SHOOTERS ON THE TEAM NEXT TIME.

What incentive do multi-million dollar B-ball pros have for a measly medal? I thought opening up the Olympics to pros was a mistake when it was proposed and it's just been proven true...

JB

Take the players that wanted to go, the way we did this year?

Why the approbriation and attacks on players who have risked their careers for no money, in a no-win situation, to represent their country, when nobody criticises the players who declined an invitation.

The team that dominated last year? One player returned. One. Why don't we attack those eleven players for failing to show up, instead of criticising the players who did?

FYI, if you think a bunch of college kids could pull this off, you're dreaming. What do you think we sent? This was the second youngest team in USA history.

I don't understand why people attack these players, and assume that "they just don't seem to give a damn," but no mention is made of all those who couldn't be bothered to go.

Is it wrong for me to be glad about this? I hope they get no medal at all. The NBA is a joke anymore, all flash and no fundamentals. These guys can't shoot, can't play D and have no concept of team. They don't deserve to win.

Amazing how they weren't able to function as a high level, fully cohesive team after a whole two weeks playing together.

:eyes:

U.S. Olympics women's teams are the ones that deserve the glory...

Gold in softball, volleyball, soccer and still alive in basketball.

these guys have no clue how to play as a team. I guess given the performance of my country (S&M) its a bit of rocks in glass houses, but the defence was shocking, the attacks all seemed to revolve around giving the ball to Iverson and keeping fingers crossed... Iverson is good but he can't beat a team by himself for fucks sake.

Well done to the Argies though, I hope they win gold. They were very unlucky when we beat them in the world's two years ago.

This could have been a win if they had Shaq and one decent outside shooter.

Duncan's good, but Shaq would be better suited to international play. The size helps a lot.

Yes, I'm going to complain about the officials.

One of them, from Serbia-Montenegro, officiated all three teams the US lost. Hmm.

The other is from Spain. Did you see or read about all the problems we had at the end of the game against Spain last night?

Hmm.

And Tim Duncan picks up a bunch of bullshit fouls, the officiating is so bizarre the players basically don't know what they're allowed to do from one minute to the next.

We all also need to realise that international play is substantially different. And this team was put together poorly, in large part thanks to people like Shaq and Garnett refusing to represent their country.

The problem was that Duncan was IT. Once he went out, we had no interior presence whatsoever.

Tim Duncan is the best player on the planet, but he can't do much sitting on the bench with crap fouls. And taking Duncan out was all that was required to beat the US.

because the European pro basketball league isn't affiliated with FIBA. Therefore the best European referees weren't at the Olympics. It's an unfortunate side effect of letting pro's into the Games that the officials often can't keep up...

http://cbs.sportsline.com/olympics/story/7620454

" It's ludicrous to throw a team together for a couple of weeks and expect it to compete against national teams that been competing together for years. It's incredibly arrogant to believe we're above such concerns.

It's downright absurd to have the NBA make up nine of the 10-man Senior National Committee for USA Basketball and limit the input of the coach when it comes to putting the team together. In fact, the team should be assembled next summer by a committee of ex-USA Basketball head coaches and the next coach, in an open tryout. Then have that team play together for the next three summers going into the 2008 Games. "


EXACTLY

Here's another good point:

"Oh, a dozen years ago, it worked when the NBA was called upon to represent the United States for the first time. They called it the Dream Team; Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen, Chris Mullin, John Stockton, Clyde Drexler and even Christian Laettner would overmatch the fledgling basketball programs from any country, all of whom were in awe of that group."

The international teams have gotten exponentially better (I still don't think the original dream team would have been beaten under any circumstances).

Would the starting five of Shaq,Dunkin,Garnett,Macgrady and Bryant with Webber,Iverson,Pierce,Rasheed and Ben Wallace coming off the bench have done much better? I still think even that team would have been in trouble without a shooter or two.Where are the shooters going to come from? It seems that the only sound shooters in the NBA are from Europe.Where was the point guard play for team USA by the way?

If you add 4 players to this team, you win:

Any starting point guard in the NBA. Heck, pick up Kirk Hinrich from Chicago, he's a decent point guard who knows how to pass first.

Add two shooters: Michael Redd and Brent Barry.

Add one backup center/big man: Brad Miller.

We win the gold easily with this team.

When we complain about shooters, remember this: Richard Jefferson, and #47, was the only one of the TOP 50 three point shooters in the NBA on this team.

In the playoffs last year, only two of the top 20, Tony Parker and Dirk Nowitzki, were Europeans.

In the regular season, the only Euros in the top 20 were:

Peja Stojavic, #6
Hedo Turkoglu, #8
Steve Nash, #12
Leandro Barbosa, #18
Goran Giricek, #19

The problem is, the top 5 players weren't *superstars*:

Anthony Peeler
Brent Barry
Brian Cardinal
Fred Hoiberg
Aaron McKie

You replace any 5 players besides Iverson and Duncan with those 5, and we likely win the medal. Again, we needed a backup center/big man. Brad Miller's a damned good shooter and passer, and is 7 foot tall. He plays the European style already. But he's not a *superstar*.

In total field goal percentage, the only players in the top 50 from the regular season the Olympic team were Carlos Boozer, Tim Duncan, and Richard Jefferson. That's pathetic. We put a bunch of *superstars* on there, instead of trying to win or putting together an actual team. I don't blame the players on the team. At least they showed up, and, with the exception of Carmelo Anthony, had a good attitude about the whole thing. But they weren't the right pieces.

Anthony Peeler
Brent Barry
Brian Cardinal
Fred Hoiberg
Aaron McKie

Team USA was made to sell T shits in Botswana and Katjacitstan. I think next time around wont get much better. All star teams playing against teams that play together through out the four years leading up to the Olympics will always have trouble in the tourney. I agree that this team did try and they played hard,most of them anyway. I also heard that this was the second youngest team the USA had sent, if this is the case are we seeing the core of the 08 squad in 04?

I think we're about to radically rethink the way we build the US Team.

Here are two options:

One: Pick up a bunch of good players from the NBDL, and role players from the NBA. Form an actual national team that plays together regularly, with a national team coach. Get some consistency.

One can pull in two or three NBA players for the Olympics for Star Power, the way the foreign teams do it. Spain had Pau Gasol, Argentina had Manu Ginobili (btw, two other players on Argentina have rights that belong to the Spurs. in 05/06, the Spurs could have THREE players from the Argentine team on the roster, Ginobili, Scola, and Oberto).

Another option, or one that could be mixed with this one:

Nobody's much aware that a LOT of NBA-calibre American players play in European pro leagues. The pro leagues over there pay almost as much as the NBA, and a player who would get a 1.5 million contract here and not play much might get a 3-4 million deal there, and get lots of playing time in the European system. Why not draft them into the National Team, instead, again, just throwing a bunch of *superstars* together at the last minute. That's obviously not going to work anymore.