I'm rooting for this team. I hope like hell they win. It's the freaking USA, after all!!! But I can begin to understand rooting for them to lose...to learn the lesson about how a TEAM should be built for these sorts of competitions. To reiterate that basketball is a game governed by certain principles...that it takes certain contributions from a group of different people in order to win. To learn that you can't just trot out great athletes and expect to win wire to wire. The game of basketball is MORE than that. I don't think there's anything racist about that at all. I don't care what color the players are...I just want them to win. And I think we've learned the lesson above, whether we go on to gold or not. I long for the days of guys who could actually nail shots from the outside. Particularly from mid-range. I miss those days.
ding ding ding ding ding! I totally, totally agree. I think it's actually cool to see a shift in power, no matter what sport you're talking about. It's an indication of growth in basketball. I actually thought about emailing Whitlock this point of view, but I didn't know if it was too weird to be taken seriously.
the team should and does consist of Americans. AMERICANS. color/race has zero to do with how you should make up the team. you think white players should be selected just b/c they are white? you put the best team on the floor, regardless of color being white doesn't make you more of an american than being black, how f'ing ignorant
Wait...there's more: WhitlockWatch Dissecting the wisdom of sportswriter Jason Whitlock (...or lack thereof) Whitlockwatch.com
Baqui: I appreciate (and engage in) a good old fashioned ad hominem messenger shooting gallery as much as the next guy, but what Whitlock is certainly right about is that there are a lot of Americans, jeering the US team in the Olympics, as shown by the poll that Clutch brought up over in the US-Spain game thread, which I think is the same one Whitlock is talking about. Now, we can argue back and forth as to whether or not race - or more accurately, certain stereotypes linked to race -- plays a part as to this anomaly, but doesn't change the fact that the anomaly is there. That Whitlock has unaccurately criticized Dick Vermeil in the past has little to do with it.
Problem is that Jason Whitlock has about as much credibility in the sports journalism community as my nuts. I'll let you form your own opinions on the matter regarding race and support for hte U.S. men's basketball team. But, anything that this tool has to say should be taken with a HUGE grain of salt.
I agree that his columns usually suck, but even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. Example: It is generally a horrible idea for Stephon Marbury to run down the court and hoist up 3's, I hope it never happens again in international competition. But it was damn sure the right idea today.
Just as an added comment on Whitlock. A few months ago, during the Sports Reporters show ESPN runs on Sundays, Whitlock advocated the legalization of steroids for all professional athletes.
Logical Flaw: Attacking an argument by attacking the personality of the author. I understand being skeptic of an author if he has shown deceit, or using quotes out of context, or using statistics unfairly, but none of that takes place in Whitlock's article here. Destroying his argument rather than his credibility would be a better tactic, and would be more informative for us as well.
Jason Whitlock (and other journalists as well) has long advocated that the media's dislike of Barry Bonds is that he is a black man about to overtake a whiteman's numbers (Babe Ruth). Of course, the fact that Barry Bonds has said he wants to overtake babe Ruth's HR record so that the top 2 hitters are black only pushes the envelope. I never realized that I hated Barry Bonds because he was black, I always thought it was because of his condescending attitude and steroid abuse (mayeb true maybe not. Fact is his good friend and trainer has been questioned by the feds for distribution of steroids as well as other associates of Bonds'. Observe also how Bonds says he never KNOWINGLY took steroids, if that isn't giveing yourself an escape hatch, I don't know what is). According to Whitlock, every black person that is disliked by somebody is because of his color and not their personality.
If anybody read the article, the operative part of it, at least to me, isn't about race. That race and stereotyping affects the way people view the NBA is a groundbreaking realization on the scale of figuring out that the Pope is catholic. It's actually after that and about something else. You can read for yourselves.
I personally think this articvle was a bit out of focus. I'm not sure what he is complaining about sometimes. He first went on a rant about how racist people are towards the basketball team, then he goes into a spiel about how the rest of the world has caught up to black athletes. After that he talks about how other athletes are also money hungry folks. They could all be true, or not, but it shoulda been broken up into 3 different articles, not the slop job article that we wound up reading.
Well, to each his own, I thought all three points were valid and were well made. I was actually shocked as hell to hear it coming from him.
I'm rooting against team USA, I guess as a basketball player myself, I feel that I can relate the most to the foreigners in terms of playing ability and style.
Never, heard of the author. Read the article, but only about half the posts. A very good article. a sports article that made me think. I have to admit that I am started out rooting against the NBA team, but I love to root for the underdog, unless it is my two teams , the Houston Rockets or the St. Louis Cardinals, in that case beat the hell out of the underdogs, who I'll cheer for only to the extent it makes the game close enough to be interesting. I find myself belatedly rooting for this team as it is apparent that they are in for a real fight. I've heard some of the US athletes, I believe it was Mia Hamm, perhaps stating that they get a bit sick of the sort of Hitlerian thing of the media seemingly caring only for the nationalistic thing of the US beating the world for the most medals and ignoring individual athletes or foreign athletes. Bush of course has got into criticism by the Iraqi soccer team as well as the International Olympic Committee for trying to use the olympics to boost heis campaign.
