Yes, it is true. But I would give people from other cultures the benefit of the doubt. In many cases, ignorance is excusable. You can't be expected to know everything about every culture. In some way, that kind of expectation is ethnocentric which in turn is a kind of racism. To be honest, I didn't know that "oriental" was derogatory until 6 or 7 years ago. So I was guilty of the same ignorance. A lot of Americans are ignorant about racism toward Asians. To them, racism is only about blacks. To a certain extent, the Lin war here in the past two years (thank goodness it's over!) was fueled in part by that ignorance.
Don't think that's a factor because African countries suck. They can't even beat Euro teams. Heck, even China beats them regularly.
All the articles and columns deriding the USA team as being 2nd tier is really annoying. Harden and the rest of these guys went out and did what they were supposed to, and did it with class. They don't deserve to be criticized by a bunch of smarmy sports columnists who think they know better.
Sadly, the majority of these columnist were hoping for Team USA to lose to Spain so they could really go in on how American basketball has fallen and the world has caught up with their superior "team play". Then they could work out there journalistic frustrations on the members of the team now and throughout the NBA season. You do notice there has been little to nothing written about the terribly disappointing Spanish national team by NBA writers despite their team being full of NBA players.
I may be in the minority here, but I've never thought that the world ever got close or that USA ever got worse or better over the past decades. The only differences have been how good of a "team" we've sent overseas. If you go back and look at the team USAs that lost, they all share a common trait, which is lack of 3 point shooting. The names may sound nice, like Melo, LeBron, Wade, but Wade never shot the 3 and LeBron didn't develop into a deadly 3pt shooter until much later. In addition, there were ego issues with all those teams and general sense of entitlement. These have nothing to do with basketball ability as a nation. They simply reflect badly on those teams. Whatever else you may say about this team, they want to be there and they clearly like each other. I'm certainly biased because of Harden, given that he's the captain, but I actually like the fact that this team had no superstars so no one cared about getting extra attention. In addition, this team showed how a player who may not be a star in the NBA like Faried can fit so well on a team of stars. It further shows that USA team failures are not product of lack of talent. Anyway, glad to watch some basketball during the summer, and hopefully Harden is already getting into Curry's ear about getting together in Houston in 3 years.
Front and centre for that criticism was going to be none other than Captain James, but they only write about what gets them hits. ****, they were writing articles about how failure would have been James' fault, lol This US team was a better international unit than the olympic team because they could play at a game long tempo that was completely unsustainable for opposing teams, it wasn't a coincidence that teams would eventually die against them.
No problem. The problem apparently was "defending" heypartner's use of the term without paying attention to his context (whatever it was) and then defending my use of the term. As I said, it isn't something that should be discussed here. As for those who see me as somehow "racist" or "ignorant" about today's common usage of "Oriental" or "Orient," they should consider the dozens and dozens of posts I've made over the years here condemning racism and other forms of discrimination. Discrimination like the treatment of women as second class citizens, or that I clearly remember as a kid riding to Downtown Houston with my grandmother of Saturday mornings on the bus to go to Foley's, with Black Houstonians crammed into the back of the damn thing, while we sat in the front, surrounded by empty seats (my grandmother didn't drive). Going to our local city park in Southeast Houston to go swimming, where the bathrooms were clearly labeled, one set for Whites, and one for Blacks, with Black kids not even able to use the pool. Hearing derogatory remarks made about Jews by some of my contemporaries. I grew up in a working class neighborhood filled with families who bought their small houses on the GI Bill after WWII, with a father who was a college professor that had no patience for bigots and said so, repeatedly, and a mother who felt the same way. In fact, my father, a department chair for over 30 years, was one of the first to hire Black faculty at a major Houston university, back when it simply wasn't done. We were not the typical family in our neighborhood. I could tell other stories, like nearly getting fired for complaining to my supervisor that I had gotten twice the raise that the women employees had received, despite having been there for years, while I had been there for a few months. The guy thought I had lost my mind. "It's none of your god damned business. Go back to work and keep your mouth shut." I would have quit on the spot, but I was working two jobs to save money for a several month trip to Europe, and only had a few more weeks to hit my target amount in my bank account. So yes, I resent being called "racist" by anyone, and this is truly the last comment I'm going to make on the subject, at least in what is decidedly the wrong forum for it. My apologies to Clutch and the mods for cluttering up Dish with this. My bad, and I'm done here.
That's because their BBCs are weighing them down. Training weights yo. Only thing preventing Greg Oden from reaching his potential 45 inch vertical.
Most people knew and know team USA is the best and there was maybe a chance Spain / Brazil or even an underdog COULD beat them, but they showed again they're the best. The problem me and most people have is the arrogance, the disrespecting of players, the surprised look on players' faces when they get called for travelling or a foul (in the NBA they don't call travelling), the celebrating waaayy too much etc. The last thing I hate is how they always shoot themselves in the foot by playing 1-on-1 way too much, trying to show off dunks and flashy crossovers rather than just pass the ball around, pick and roll and play the (team) game. Most of the time when a team is still in the game, it's because they are playing sound, fundamental basketball and the US is trying to do it by playing selfish. When USA plays team ball, they are so much fun to watch and there's almost no competition. So they should just stay humble, regardless of all the blowouts and show the competition some respect. This year it was not too bad, 2/4 years ago it was really bad with Chris Paul, Melo, Durant with the arrogancem lack of respect towards opponents and all the other aspects I mentioned.
When I read this I was all like: Spoiler Really bro? If there is any area that non-US teams are equal or better than the US, it is being gigantic megacrybabies. Pioneered on the soccer pitch and forged on the continent, there ain't no referee whiner like a Euro-style whiner. Spoiler I mean they can even do it without even getting out of bed in the morning: Spoiler
Oriental has been considered offensive for 15+ years. Anyone with internet access knows this and is just pretending they don't to CYA. I think USA basketball had a slip and rebounded. No excuse for losing the Olympics 10 years ago but Starbury, Lamar Odom, Boozer, Marion, AI aren't exactly great team players. With KD, Melo, Bron and Harden coming into the NBA the status of USA basketball really jumped.
