Greece (V-Span) vs. United States (Battier), 6:30 a.m, Friday, Sept. 1

Baghdatis is from Cyprus.

 

Some american fans are arrogant because they will never admit defeat. They fail to recognise actually some other teams are better than team USA. The opponents got lucky.... Team USA didnt send the best team...... the ref hated team USA......international rules suck.... blah blah blah..... as if any team other than USA won the title would not be legitimate.... that's arrogant!

By the way, when will NBA stop calling their title holder as world champions? Isnt it kind of arrogant?

 

man... it's the endless spotlight and ridiculous salaries ... making these players feel that they are too important to play team-ball... thats why its been always 1-on-1 plays.. i say if they keep getting the same fame and salaries theyll never play team-ball to the maxium... and of course they are gonna out-IQed by Euorpeans, admit it, whities are slightly smarter than blacks..

 

Ok sorry i mistunderstood you.

I also think it is a good thing to be Confident. And selfaware. However if that is one of your qualitys you should also expect other people to love it when you fail.

But i do think arrogance is not a good quality. But the problem is that a lot of people do not know the difference between arrogance and self confidence. IMHO self confidence is that you know you are good at something and you think you can beat anybody. Arrogance is that you think everybody else sucks at it compaired to you.

I also think the players of team USA should be confident because like you said they are some of the most talented players in the world. However i do enjoy seeing them loose because i like it when a TEAM beats a group of individual great players.

 

Dude, read before you press submit. Baby shaq is black and he certainly had a big hand in defeating the team USA. You are bringing in race when this game is truly about skills.

 

any league can call their champions whatever they want. they've been doing it forever so it would be weird to stop.

plus, when a champion from one of the european leagues sends one of their teams over for a 7 game series by nba rules and wins, then we'll stop calling ourselves world champs.

 

ugh, why do we keep on getting these and other "insightful" comments?

 

Agreed, maybe i should have used the word Some, i actually do not know how many people are arrogant about hem and how many are not. I think people tend to remember the arrogant ones and forget the people who are not.

I do think it is sort of arrogant that nba champions call themselved world champions(i think we discussed this in another thread). It is defenitly not accurate, they are the NBA champions not world champions.

 

Altough i think the NAB champions do are the best teams in the world at that moment it is just not accurate to call them that. Since they did not play against a non american team.(and why should they play NBA rules??)

 

Many NBA "superstars" are created by NBA referees when they get every calls their way driving to the basket. Their skills are limited when they don't get that kind of calls. NBA Refs are ruining NBA basketballs.

 

lol

anyone else smells "racists"

ahhahaha

ok back to spanoulis

anyone else noticed somthing else about him?

 

i don't know. why should the world championships and olympics be determined by non-NBA rules?

 

I don't care what they do, and what they change, they can have all the players they want, the best coach, or whatever, but if Kobe is not on the team, same result will happen again in 2008.

I can't think of one player in the NBA that could qualify for the FIBA, just imagine if Kobe is in this game, the result would be different.

 

damn, how lucky we locked Spam in before the FIBA games for 5m/3yrs, now i guess someone is more than happy to offer him 5m for 1 year, LOL dawson.

 

Oh yeah, and the people who say that whoever is better than KOBE can see for themself in this game, watch Lebron choke at the free throw line, and being scare, and watch carmelo fire a airball, and watching them losing self confident and be competitive.

 

Great point! Certainly there has to be something going around with NBA refs and commissioner. The superstar calls are hurting the game of basketball and it is taking us away from team work to individual talents.

 

That's a EXCELLENT point that needs to be addressed badly. Look at a guy like Dwade- the dude literally gets every call when he drives to the basketball in the nba. When you take out that major advantage in the world games, then look what happens. A play that summarizes his play was when late in the 4th quarter, and he drove to the basket and missed a slam and he looked at the officials like shocked there was a no call. Pathetic he won a ring based on outside forces helping him out.

 

I really think FIBA needs to install a best out of 3 system. I am not saying this because of the US loss, i am saying it because i really think USA has a better team than Greece. If the game was best out of 3 than i think their would have been a different team going to the finals. Just my 2 cents.

 

Because it is an International tournement, so they use the international rules.

 

please stop feeding the troll...

This may sound crazy but Kobe could have calmed this team down and start directing traffic on O and D. Cause no one took charge, not even King James. I say to make the USA team you must have NBA rings or at least have so many playoff game experience, cause we looked clueless and green out there. It's all fine and dandy when we're drubbing someone by 20 points, but when the pressure is on, the light bulb doesn't seem to light up in each player to recognize the situation they are in each time.

Instead of Elton Brand, I actually wished Rasheed Wallace was there, that guy, bad attitude notwithstanding, is the perfect international big man.

Chris Paul = green, he was a detriment at times

Kirk Hinrich = green

I wished Chauncy Billups was there instead of either of those 2. I know he pulled out because of family commitments, maybe he'll be there for the olympics.