this group is better suited for team play than the team that got destroyed in indy, but i’d be suprised if they even get the silver this year.
they have no true point guard. without a point guard, a floor coach, how are you supposed to have a team? so why don’t they get one? hmmmm… maybe because the shoe companies, errr… nba doesn’t promote good playmaking and decision making skills any more. lets see, we have bibby, jason kidd, steve nash, tony parker. oops, half those guys are from OTHER COUNTRIES. there aren’t that many point guards out there.
and you need a shooter. not really a bomber, because the three point line is significantly shorter than in the nba. so who do we get? iverson, who can’t hit the broad side of a barn more than half the time. i love iverson, and he needs to be on the team, but as a first option shooter, he’s not cut out for international play. they should have gone for rip hamilton. he would have cut up other teams. his game is perfect. ray allen would have worked, but he backed out. micheal redd would have been nice, but then again, he doesn’t have his own shoe or anything, so he’s out.
today it’s all about the “multi-dimensional” players. so we have a lot of 6’-10" guys who are pretty decent at everything. which is fine when you have a bunch of 6’-10" guys playing against each other. but when you throw in a little point guard who can blow past them, and a couple 7 foot plus enforcers down low that can bully them, those 6’-10" guys who can do everything start looking like they’re lost.
it would be interesting if we sent the nba champions to the olympics.
The Sports guy’s take on the team. He’s right too. As odd as it sounds, this team would perform a lot better by dumping half of the big name talent and bringing in guys like Fred Hoiberg, Michael Redd, and Rip Hamilton. For a team to win in this setting, having 12 guys that expect 40 minutes of PT and the ball in crunch time is a poor substitute for a team of strong outside shooters, hard nosed defenders, and a few role players that ar comfortable with dirty work and effort.
Heck, I even sent him a note laying out the reasons I thought Jason Williams was the perfect point guard for this team, although Hubie Brown needs to be an assistant.
I know this isn’t the best team we could put out there, and it won’t be until USA basketball decides that wins and losses are more important than the last name on a jersey.
Just a nitpick, but Stojakovic’s military requirement is for Greece, not the country he plays for in international competition (Serbia and Montenegro). Apparently he’s a citizen of both countries. I don’t know if Greece would let him defer his service, but they don’t have the obvious incentive to do so that Serbia would.
you know who i’d love to see in a usa olympics uniform?
ron artest.
yeah, that ron artest. as much as the media likes to hype up his, ummm, emotional problems, he’s been relatively clean for the last season and a half. and that just goes to show how much this guy will do for a team. he basically reworked his whole mindset to help the pacers, and they in turn gave the eventual world champion pistons a series. sure, they played pretty horribly after the first round of the playoffs, but when your point guard goes down things fall apart.
anyway, ron artest has the strength to muscle around anyone. he can clamp down on any player 6-9 and shorter. he’ll play harder than anyone out there. and he has a nice offensive game to boot. it may not be pretty, and when he has off nights, they’re waaaaay off, but he does what needs to be done.
but, he could throw a camera into center court or cripple some off-guard from zimbabwe. not likely, but it is a distinct possibility. you never know what you’ll get from ronny. sure, he’s a loose cannon, but it’s that kookiness that makes him the player he is. he plays like a freshman trying to break into the rotation on the high school varsity squad. without that slight imbalance he’s probably just be a run-of-the-mill spoiled nba player. but it’s like he’s proving himself every time on the court. that’s what usa basketball needs.
but usa olympics wouldn’t touch him with a ten foot pole. i’m suprised they’ve used iverson. i’m sure larry brown put in a word, and it sounds like AI really lobbied them for the spot.
How did shoe companies get into that tirade? As you said yourself, Bibby and Jason Kidd are both excellent point guards who either chose not to play or weren’t asked.
did john stockton’s name ever sell any shoes? mark price? isiah thomas? mike bibby? steve nash? andre miller? tony parker?
nope.
iverson?
hell yes!
why?
because he scores 30 points a game. he’s flashy. he’s tatooed, cornrowed, unpredictable. other than the tatoos and cornrows, these are not things you want in a pure point guard.
and the nba and olympics want a piece of that action. it means ratings, merchandise, money.
now, jason kidd has a little marketing juice, but he’s more than a pure point guard. he’s got size and rebounding abilities, which makes him a little more visible than the rest of the list.
there are a lot of great combo guards out there, guys who pass, run the point, but look to the basket more than the floor. i’d lump chauncey billups, marbury, steve francis, gil arenas, sam cassell…
and then we have guards that may come in the prototypical pointguard package, but make no bones about jacking up whatever shot they please. guys like iverson, baron davis, jason terry, jamal crawford…
I think the marketers behind the Converse Weapon might have something to say about that. Also, Nash and Parker were on a few national Nike commercials this year.
As to the OP, I think The Sports Guy is right on the money.
But in the list of bad judgments committed in the sporting world throughout history, that night in Munich is not the worst thing that’s ever happened.
What is accomplished by holding a grudge for 32 years over this? None that I see.
You can probably find a soccer from every nation on earth (except maybe the USA) who can point to a time that his team got screwed by the refs.
I’m still blaming Hank Iba and the dopes in the AAU who put together a substandard team because they were arrogant enough to think they could walk through the whole Olympic tournament without any opposition. And Iba had his team play in a style that was reminscent of the 1950s.
The game officials in Munich screwed up in 1972. Badly. Horribly. Incomprehsibly.
But unless someone can prove that they were bought off by the Soviets instead of being just incredibly stupid and biased, then I’m just going to have to think that it’s time to let bygones be bygones.
One of the factors in the downfall of the 1972 U.S. Olympic basketball team was that the team wasn’t nearly as strong in the paint as it could have been. Bill Walton didn’t feel like participating. Swen Nater, a future NBA first-round draft choice, got pissy over playing time and quit. So basically the team had to make do with rail-thin Tom Burleson and a bunch of forwards.
ummm, where did eric snow go again? he’s not in philly. iverson will play the point this year. he did at the end of the year last year. watch some games.
did i mention magic? no. why? because magic was one of those once-in-a-lifetime guys. a pure point guard in a small forward’s body. you can’t compare him with any other point guard, he controlled the game unlike anyone else. that’s like comparing michael jordan to, ummm, anyone. these are special players, period. you can’t use them as an example of a position. that’s like saying, “well, oscar robertson averaged a triple double in 1961, so that proves point guards can rebound well.” nope, he was a freakish exception, like mike and magic.
and sure, steve nash might pop up on a commercial somewhere, and a couple people might have his jersey, but compare that to iverson. to tracy mcgrady. to kobe bryant. strike that, kobe’s shoe bombed because it looked like a footware version of the pontiac aztek.
yeah, nike has no influence in the basketball. bullshit. wake up and smell the child labor.
Seriously, am I the only guy who remembers The Weapon? (Magic’s version)
Before MJ, it was unheard of for a player to have his “own” shoe (okay, Clyde Drexler may have been the only player wearing 'Roos). Bird, Magic, Isiah, Bernard King, Mark Aguirre and select group of other superstars helped sell a lot of Weapons. I should know, I had three pair.
Anywho, I think down by law’s point is not that the NBA is trying to sell shoes, but that they do have a financial interest in putting their most marketable players on the Olympic team, as opposed to a team like The Sports Guy proposed.
But, dbl, Artest on the Olymic team? That’s an international incident just waiting to happen!
yeah, artest could singlehandedly begin world war III, so maybe that wasn’t one of my better ideas.
i had some green weapons (once again, indiana boy, larry bird) and some black ones. those things looked cool, but they were damn heavy on your feet. those are the first basketball shoes i remember getting. i always wanted air jordans, but alas, my parents were too thrifty. how much did a pair of the first jordans run? does anyone remember?
I have to say, every time I open this thread and see this post, I get pissed off all over again. Maybe it’s the “ROTFLMFAO” at somebody else failing to do something you couldn’t do in the first place, or maybe it’s the silly and uninformed collection of stereotypes about players, but it’s a terrible OP.
Yeah, the WNBA players are well-known and frequently criticized for their tattoos and shoe contracts. And it’s the OP used the word NBA. Because it’s not very likely the NBA has any players on the women’s team.
