Not surprising. Any team that plays a good team game can beat the USA. Pack it in on defense and spread it out on offense. No big surprise. DD
that pg lit us up, good passes too...let me be the first to say LETS SIGN HIM!!! not really though, cause I hate the morons who start stupid threads like that i.e. code9x.
Yeah, that's a great idea, just because you are supposedly the best in the world, that gives you the right to change the rules? So now Canada is going to ask Olympic hockey be played under NHL rules and in NHL rinks? Oh, let's make this even better, the country who wins the gold medal gets to set the rules for that sport. Or maybe this kind of arrogant attitude is part of the reason why the rest of the world have been closing the gap quickly.
Francis, I think the international rules make the game very similar to the college game, which is closer to the roots of American basketball, and the direction the NBA is headed back to with its recent rule changes. I am personally mixed about the result - I like the Mavs and Kings ball movement and shooting over Francis and Mobley's slash-and-burn - but I think the result is that you need a complete TEAM to win. Role players (incl shooters) are as important as stars. Think back, even when there was illegal D in the NBA, do we win with role players of a lesser caliber than Elie, the Jet, or Horry? Now what if we had a Gary Payton, and Barkley instead of the Jet and Horry? Do Dream, Drexler, GP and Sir Charles = dynasty? I tend to think... not. Only one orange ball drops the productivity of each of those guys. It's such a delicate balance. That's why the idea of sending an NBA team is perfect. It'll just never be agreed on and never happen, imo.
May favorite all time rules bend, When USA built a catamaran for the world cup. And got away with it. Funny stuff.
Don't put all the blame on those players, they are just bunch of rookies and sophomores with only 2 stars (TD and AI). Those who chose sit at home should be ashamed.
This is hilarious. FIBA is the international basketball association, and agrees the international rules. The NBA, as a business, changes its rules to attempt to make its product appealing, to the ticket-buying, TV-watching public. That is their decision. It is completely different to the situation in football. FIFA agrees the rules, and in every country I can think of, all professional and amateur leagues adher to those rules. If FIFA wishes to implement changes, every country's football association gets a vote to agree or disagree to these changes. Why should international basketball change the internationally agreed rules at the whim of a North American business? Seriously, think about it for a minute.
I beg to differ. Since Gino got married, he has been shooting 15% from the 3s and about 35% from the FT line. Are you sure that you want this kind of sharp shooter on the US team?
Sounds like he's got the "Tiger Woods syndrome" - Where your athletic prowess is inversely proportional to the hotness of your new wife.
Shaq will most likely be in foul trouble the whole game because the referees will correctly give him 3-4 offensive fouls each game in international competition. The referees in international games call the game by book and they don't give a d**m about your superstars. A travel is still a travel. King James can get away from it in the league, but not overseas.
WTF is that coming from? The NBA referees DON'T call the game by the rules. SO you are saying that it's the right thing to let the King have an extra step or two without calling it a travel?
i understand we have FIBA, but that doesn't answer why FIBA rules have international changes to it that we don't have. like being able to touch the ball after it hits the rim. or having to hit the rim by the time the shot clock expires (not just get it out of your hand). things of this nature. why are they FIBA rules? unless i'm missing something, those have never been american rules and surely the rest of the world got basketball from us, which means at some point they decided to change the rules and FIBA agreed or when FIBA was formed they just made these new rules and put them into place. i realize we're a part of FIBA (we are, aren't we? and probably have to agree to be if we wanna compete in the olympics and such) and thus have to follow those rules, but it makes no sense why. again, it would be like america saying goalies can't use their hands anymore and FIFA adopting that rule for World Cup play while no european league did it (pretend that voting system isn't there). wouldn't that seem a little strange to make europe and the rest of the world play by different rules for the World Cup, even if the international body governing the sport supported it. i know i'd think it was weird.
not only did i preface my statement with this comment: this isn't an america rules the world, everyone should do what we do complaint but that's such a stupid statement it's laughable. yes, thinking the rules shouldn't be different is why we're losing. nice job of following the argument the argument is not that the game has to be called the way we're used to, the argument is that the rules (the actual rules in the book) should not be different, which they are. you can take the ball off the rim after the ball has hit it in international ball, that's not an interpretation of the rule, that's just how it is (and it is easily the worst of the rule changes, i seriously can't believe it's a rule that was adopted). call traveling more strictly, don't let shaq charge if you wanna interpret the rule that way, but there are actually different rules, and that's the argument. very true, and until we pick a team like that (or simply get our 12 best over here) we're gonna have trouble. marion, iverson, marbury, boozer, james already doesn't fit well together. put them together for a month and tell them to play well together and you're asking for trouble.
Not to overstate the obvious, but the world is simply catching up. The NBA as a global entity is relatively new. The curve of European and, for that matter, world interest in 'our' game has been much sharper in the 12 years since the Dream Team than for all the years preceeding it. Yet many of us still think of the U.S. as an island where athleticism solely exists. Some of us can't wrap our heads around the fact that this is essentially the first generation that the world has embraced and wholeheartedly attempted to not only 'play' our game, but excel at it. If the competition has stiffened in, let's say, the last decade, is there much doubt it will continue twenty years from now? I used to enjoy knowing that our best could whip anybody else's best. I'm beginning to realize that in basketball this was partly due to most of the world's athletic populace not focusing on basketball to the extent we do. I think that is changing in some quarters. Twenty five years ago a player like Nowitzki would probably not have developed because of various factors - lack of coaching, lack of competition, etc... He could very well have ended up a 7'1" German guy with a regular job and we might never have known the talent he possessed. The moral of this story is that because the game has gone global we are now seeing more talent being tapped and that's translating into better players on higher levels in other countries.
Amen. First, USA basketball stupidly fills out the US team with more and more athletic, erratic shooting swingmen such as Marion, Odom, James, Jefferson etc. Aren't two of these guys enough (especially since the two pg's, Iverson and Marbury, can't shoot either)? There's such thing as too much athleticism when you're sacrificing shooting ability/range, especially in international competition. Then, Larry Brown asks for a zonebuster like Richard Hamilton, Reggie Miller, or Michael Redd. So, USA basketball chooses Rip, who declines, and then all of a sudden, Reggie and Redd are ignored and they ask Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony. Ridiculously dumb move. The team already has too much athleticism and not enough shooting, and they go and add more athleticism and zero shooting. There are shooters left out there (Redd, Reggie, Barry, Terry, etc.) Anyone of us could have put together a better team.
I think everything is relational to how hot the women are in a country. The hotter the women the better your men's athletic program will be. The only other limiting factor is how cool your name is. Which is often a problem for several countries. Because their names aren't cool.
So the NBA is "actual basketball"? Do you actually mean that all non-NBA basketballs are non-actual? I think you have it backward. It's the NBA that were tweaking the rules to make it "FANtastic." Since when did we have the idea that whoever invented the game decide the rules for the world? Maybe we should get Dr. Naismith out from his grave as our rule consultant, eh? Have you considered maybe its the NBA rule tweaks that favor more athletic 1-on-1 players, and hence international players are playing with stacked cards in the NBA?
Is the world catching up? No doubt. But our best can still whip anybody else's best. It's just that our best are sitting at home right now. Think about it, last summer in the qualifying tournament, our team dominated Argentina in the final, winning by 33 points. And Argentina, along with Lithuania, is the gold medal favorite in the Olympics. Although the team we sent had most of our best, it was still without Garnett, Shaq, Kobe, and Pierce. That's a team minus 3 of our top 5 players, and 1 arguably top 10 player. It's just a matter of us securing commitments from our top players, instead of second-tier all-stars. You can bet that our average margin of victory wouldn't have been 30+ in 1992 and 1996 if we had sent second-tier all-stars then.
