It's nice to know the U.S. can still be someone in international basketball. For a few years there, I was thinking we'd all gotten soccer and basketball confused, and we were going to all have to sit down and talk, at a UN Council or something.In its second round of pool play, the United States crushed the Virgin Islands, 123-59. Now before we get too excited about the resurgence of the Dream Team at this FIBA World Championship (FIBA stands for Federation Internationale de Basketball Amateur, of course), remember that aside from Argentina, the next best team in this tournament is Puerto Rico.
That means that teams like Spain, Serbia, Greece, and Germany -- teams that have given us trouble in the past -- are sitting at home playing XBox 360.
Meanwhile, we're still licking our wounds from third place finishes in 2004 in Athens and 2006 at the FIBA World Championships in Japan. For the country that invented basketball, and supposedly houses the premier professional organization, third place is lame.
We may well win this tournament without breaking a sweat, but USA Basketball has a long way to go to return to the days of yore. The days when it was enough to show up are long gone.
7 comments:
No worries, Kobe's on the team now. He'll bring Jordan's killer instinct back to USA basketball, and we'll have Dream Team all over again!
Just added ya to the list of favs. Here is mine if your interested.
http://www.topsportingnews.com/blogs/
I like the way the U.S. team is put together. The last one with Iverson, James, Anthony, my boy Duncan, etc. just weren't suited for the international game. This team is.
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Um, Luke, we may win, but this is NOT the Dream Team all over again.
And Argentina isn't really even themselves, with so many guys not playing. It's good to see the team playing great, but it's nothing to get excited about yet.
If we can just play as a team and play good defense. So many times, it seems like we are "toying" with teams....then we aren't ready for a real challenge (like Argentina and others.)
This is no Dream Team.....even though I like the group that's being put together.
There will never be another Dream Team, but this is certainly the closest thing we've had since that incredible collection of HOF'ers. For the first time in quite awhile, US Basketball decided that they'd rise up and show the world that they haven't completely forgotten how to play the game they created. I think that we'll finally get a challenge later on, but let's just enjoy this present collection of stars in a way that we haven't been able to for over 15 years!
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