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Also, the officiating has been really bad. Like, really bad. In the game against Spain, the refs called 27 against us vs. 18 for Spain. I cant find any box scores for this game, because the Olympic websites on both CNNSI and ESPN are uncharacteristically bad.
The blame lies in the team that went and the coach, beyond that, you can't blame someone who didn't go for this failure. On paper, it's a great team but maybe NBA showboating and stylish play just isn't going to beat a Basketball team with halfway decent fundamentals.
No jump shooters?
Brilliant!
Hate to sound like a sore loser...
...but people really have it in for the USA men's BB team. OK, they're arrogant, but they're still the best. You give them years to work together and it's going to be 200-42 after halftime. And Argentina's celebrating? "We're so proud that we beat a third-string team with no outside shooters that played for 4 weeks"? Great. And the officiating was AWFUL. Both sides of every game had reason to complain, but the US was unfairly judged here. Phantom travels, fouls...man. And what's with booing the athletes because you're not a fan of our politics? That's poor. Oh yeah, and if you spend the majority of your training time in the US, you should be on the US Olympic team. None of this living in the US and running for Kenya. That's rubbish IMO.
Just have to vent sometimes ;/
They beat your olympic team. You will not dull their triumph by complaining about YOU guys sucking. If they were going to be in the Olympics they should've played for more than 4 weeks. Who's to blame? Argentina? No. It's a sad day, and I feel for you (it's like the Canadian hockey team not getting a medal to Canadians) but there's no one to blame but the team.
p.s. haha losers.
By the way, new topic:
Closing Ceremonies,
What the hell was that? It was like watching ballet and opera all at once.
I'm not blaming Argentina. I'm just saying that a) people who think international BB has bridged the gap all the way are really ignorant if they look at the Olypics as evidence and b) if you live in and train in a country, you should compete for that country. There's an obvious reason why they are in that particular country.
We're the only country who didn't send anywhere near the best team we could have, AND we only played for a month. Bronze is pretty fricking good. But all everyone else is going to take away from this is "US BB isn't that good and no one plays as a team and everyone is selfish, typical American morals blah blah blah"...and that's why I was commenting on this whole thing.
Bronze is not good for the team you sent over though.
Prior to the games you team had only lost something like 3 times. Your current generation of superstars got whipped. Maybe there was too much pressure put on the team, but oh well, haha, suckers.
I don't think you actually watched any of the games then. We didn't bring any of the top 10 3pt shooters, we didn't bring the most dominant player in our country (which everyone else did with Ginobili, Ming, etc), we didn't bring more than 2 players that have played with each other in the past YEAR (Boozer and L James), we only brought one first-team all-NBA defensive player (Duncan). College teams should have beaten us, would have beaten us. The team wasn't even the same team we played with through the qualifiers. We played by rules that we don't follow in the NBA, and we played with horrible officiating (on both sides, yes, but it was definitely skewed against the USA).
So having said that, yes, bronze is pretty good. I wouldn't expect any soccer power to be able to send a mish-mash of players that don't fill all of the necessary requirements for a TEAM and come anywhere near close to 3rd.
psst, sour grapes don't taste good.
Actually, it is. We didnt bring over a real team, with role-players, we just brought a bunch of guys who score a lot of points in the NBA.Quote:
Originally Posted by Andrew
Think about it. One of the players we sent over was Tim Duncan, one of the best centers in the world. But we had NO long-distance shooters! So all the teams had to do was bunch up on Duncan underneath, and it was all over. And surprise, thats what they did! Im amazed the fucking US Selection Committee didnt think of something so obvious (well, they probably did - Jason Kidd turned them down). Pair that up with the shoddy officiating, and you got trouble. Big trouble. Guess what player fouled out near the end of the semifinal match?
All we brought there was a bunch of big names, a bunch of players to sell jerseys, we didnt bring a team, and teams beat us. If you think that sounds silly, look at the NBA FInals - the star-studded LA Lakers (who had, individually, the best players in the finals) vs. the not-marquee-but-tightly-playing-as-a-team Detroit Pistons. If the Selection Committee sent a solid team, Larry Brown could've taken them all the way, shit he did it with the Pistons.
Ultimately, the team did the best they could, they just couldnt match the teams other countries put together. Im not angry or anything, it sucks, I just hope the Selection Committee and the other players take it more seriously come Beijing.