Considering that Puerto Ricans are themselves U.S. nationals, who can come and go, immigrate, and work in the U.S. with zero fuss or bother, it’s not exactly what I would call the sweetest of revenge.
Well, yes, BUT, the point should be that it’s not about a nation/nation PR vs. USA issue(*), but about what happens when the entity known as “USA Basketball” believes it can send a slapped-together clusterf**k of whoever bothers showing up. So it could have just as well been New Zealand, had the slots been assigned differently.
The REAL Dream Team, 1992-96, was another story – those guys not only included several all-time-greatests, but you could see they WANTED to make their mark and prove something, even though they did not need to.
(*You bet I won’t be happy at all if PUR is eliminated with a 1-4 record; we’re there to prove WE are GOOD, not to prove Team-USA were hungover Sunday)
Can someone explain to me why our Olympic basketball team can be made up entirely from highly-paid primadonnas [read: NBA players] but that, say, an American ice skater wouldn’t be allowed on our Olympic team if they skated for the Ice Capades?
Are you aure this is true?
Or is it simply that the Ice Capades skaters don’t enter the required qualifying tournaments to get to the Olympics?
I have an answer that is so un-PC, so nasty and so uncalled for that I have decided to keep it to myself. 
I don’t think you’ve thought your New Olympics plan quite through all the way. You’d drop two sports from the roster despite the fact that 99% of the world’s countries are ineligible to play in the “more prestigious” event?
This seems to match my rather uninformed view: cite: “There are two classes of figure skaters; Olympic eligible (the old “amateur” status) and not Olympic eligible (professionals). Olympic eligible skaters are restricted to skating in events that are sanctioned by their federation and/or the International Skating Union.”
“Ineligible”??? What are you talking about? The NBA is FILLED with players from Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. And major league baseball has dozens, maybe hundreds of top players from Japan, Korea, Central and South America.
The idea that non-Americans aren’t “eligible” to participate in the NBA championship or in the World Series is absurd. Ask Frenchman Tony Parker and Argentinian Manu Ginobili who helped the San Antonio Spurs win the NBA title two years ago. Ask former World Series Most Valuable Players like Livan Hernandez of Cuba, Mariano Rivera of Panama, or Jose Rijo of the Dominican Republic. Ask American League batting champ Ichiro Suzuki of Japan.
The best of the best from all over the world are not only eligible to play baseball and basketball here, they’ve been DOING it for some time now.
Yes astorian, individual players have the oppurtunity to play in the most prestigious events, but I’ve never seen a team from China participate in the NBA World Championships. That could be what Endrew is referring to. And a player from Puerto Rico may play for the Orlando Heat or the Utah Jazz, but the Puerto Rican basketball team will never meet the Lakers in June.
You seem to have missed one small point–for better or for worse, the Olympic format is one in which the competitors represent their own countries, as part of a national team. The chance to represent one’s country is something that many Olympians feel is a great honour, and cheering a national team is one of the things that many fans love about the Olympics.
That’s exactly what I mean. Individual players can and do come from all over the world but baseball’s World Series teams can have a maximum of two countries competing.
When “Frenchman Tony Parker and Argentinian Manu Ginobili…helped the San Antonio Spurs win the NBA title two years ago” neither France nor Argentina receieved a trophy. Those NBA teams did.
I’d love to see the look on Bud Selig’s face if the Japanese asked to compete in the playoffs this September.
I’m sure he’d shake in his shoes.
There was a World Cup of Baseball proposed recently, and unfortunately I don’t think it’ll pan out.
By the way, the ‘rejoicing at the basketball team’s failure’ angle still sucks. They are the most individually talented, but have only been playing together for a few weeks (compared to years for some of these teams). Are all of the international players competing after doing a long regular season?
The NBA championship is called just that. It is not called the “World Championship” and never was. The only American sport that claims that title is the “World Series” in baseball.
That is true… it’s the US sports press that started the usage of referring to the winners of the NBA championship/Super Bowl/Stanley Cup as “World Champions”
Marley23 yeah, schadenfreude should only go so far. But to answer the question, several of the countries involved did finish their pro seasons just in June. The critique is over the system of organizing national teams.
There is often the impression in US media that the other teams are ongoing full-time “standing” outfits, but that was how the old Soviet teams worked. Nowadays PUR works along the lines of a “National Guard” model – you play for your regular pro or collegiate team, but at the same time are part of a “selection” that gets called up periodically to international competition. Often there will be regional tournaments, exhibitions, goodwill tours, etc. while there is an NBA or NCAA season going on, where the big stars are elsewhere obligated. That’s when our coach will take the chance to use the rookie future stars that the teams can spare, to give them the chance to get used to it. Then when the Big Tournament comes around, they call up the Big Guys and do a final cut.
Contrast that with assembling a team in 2 weeks from whoever shows up. What’s impressive is how the astounding depth of numbers and quality in the USABasketball talent pool, allows that to result in a world-class national team.
Well, it’s not called the NBA World Championship. It’s called the NBA Championship.
I’m sure he’d love it as long as they were willing to play all the games over here and didn’t want too much of a percentage of the revenue. That would be killer ratings in Japan and would generate better money than a lot of the smaller market teams that will be playing this year (Oakland, Minnesota, I’m looking at you). Although, I bet the team owner that lost his spot in the playoffs would be pretty pissed off.
Of course, it was the Japanese that threw a wrench in a Baseball World Cup in 2005, so it doesn’t look like they’re too eager for international competition.
There is one thing to consider though. What if the sports above used the same rule that Olympic Soccer uses. All players 23 and below, except for 3 exceptions. Certainly, there are youth and junior world championships, but I would think the Olympics would be viewed as the big thing for that age. It would be their first big exposure (in most cases) to high pressure, worldwide attention that the all age major tourneys offer. Heck, I’d go so far as to make those sports 23 and under with at most 2 exceptions per team. This would also likely force USA basketball to move more towards a team with a higher collegiate representation.
Lebron james gets his own Poweraid flavor. :rolleyes:
And a line straight from that blonde marketing lady on The Simpsons…
bolding mine
He also has a comic book coming out. 
bolding mine.
Wait there’s more…
again, bolding mine
**
What the fuck is up with all this shit?
The United States didn’t win a trophy when the Spurs won the NBA title, either. And when David Robinson held up the championship trophy, he wasn’t doing so as an American, he was doing so as a Spur. The Spurs were the best basketball team in the world, that year, bar none. The team included players from many countries, but it didn’t represent any country.
And none of that matters. Robinson, Parker and Ginobili got the thrill of knowing they were members of the best basketball team in the world. And that’s something the gold medal winning team this year CAN’T say. Even if the Serbs win the gold medal, they know as well as anybody that the Serbian national team is NOT the best basketball team in the world by a long shot. The Detroit Pistons are.
And THAT’S one of the reasons Olympic basketball is so pointless! If Ian Thorpe winns the 100 meter freestyle, he can state proudly and correctly, “I’m the best swimmer in the world.” If the Japanese volleyball team wins gold, they can say proudly, “We’re the best volleyball team in the world.”
But the baseball and basketball champions at the Olympics can only say “We’re pretty good.” Or "we’re the best of the second-raters who bothered to show up.
As for major league baseball, MAYBE it was a bit arrogant to call their championship series “the World Series” (though I’m more inclined to think that non-Americans are just a tad too sensitive about such things) a hundred years ago. But today? Today, “World Series” is perfectly appropariate, because the best players from all over the world ARE playing in the American major leagues! The best Mexican, Korean, Japanese, Dominican and __ players (fill in your favorite ethnic group) are playing in the major leagues in the U.S. and Canada.
Are there outstanding baseball players in Japan? Sure, and several of them have become stars in the U.S. But the overall level of competition over in Japan is nowhere near as good as it is in the U.S. Second-tier and washed -up American players regularly go to Japan and become stars, which should tell you about the relative strength of the competition.
So, quit bellyaching. The team that wins baseball’s World Series WILL be the best team in the world. And any Japanese ballplayer who wants to be part of the best team in baseball is welcome to try out for the Cardinals or the Yankees.
But the only nation that sends its second-rate team is the United States. Why should the rest of the world’s basketballers miss out on Olympic competition just because of American hubris?
Ask any one of the players on those other teams, and i’m sure they’d be happy to play against the best the US has to offer, whether that is a hand-selected “dream team” of the nation’s best players, or whether it’s a single, championship NBA team like the Pistons.
Don’t call Olympic basketball pointless just because the Americans are too lazy or self-centered or whatever to send their best team.
It isn’t just the Americans who are too lazy or self-centered to show up. Vlade Divac and Peta Stojakovic of Serbia blew off the Olympics, too. They know how pointless the whole exercise is, too. And like most NBA players, they’d rather have a few weeks vacation than take part in unimportant exhibition play.
And there’s a flip side to your argument. If American refusal to take the Olympics all that seriously is “hubris,” what do you think of the foreign players who’ve been so dominant in international play but have had utterly mediocre careers in the NBA? Why have noine of the Italians or Puerto Ricans who manhandled the U.S. team in the past few weeks done anything noteworthy in the NBA (if, indeed, they ever made it to the NBA at all)?
Are they too “lazy” or filled with “hubris” to give their all in the NBA?