The US team is a horrible embarrassment. Stu Jackson is an idiot, and he should never work again. I watched a good piece of this game at lunch and caught the end back at the office. The German team should have won. They were able to execute a game plan. They could shoot from the outside. They could curl and pick and get open. They could cut and move without the ball. They made multiple short, crisp passes to find scorers. They could anticipate our lazy, stupid passes and intercept them. The NBA is degenerate. The current product is an ugly mess. There is a greater entertainment value in beautiful team play. The league has rewarded circus antics and posturing in a mistaken bid for fan support and now must suffer the lackadaisical ignorance that has corrupted the game. The answer, of course, will be to move away from the sluggish, showboating, ref-milking of the past. The league needs to move to the future, and reward the crisp, team-oriented play of the Houston Rockets as international star Yao Ming teams with American superstar Tracy McGrady to show a new integrated model of basic basketball fundementals, executed with astonishing flourish, with a long run of many championships.
How about school and not the playground? How about working more on dribbing and shooting and not just dunking? I think you can answer it yourself if you know a thing about basketball development.
Who never played in college? Amare and James, after them all those guys went to college, college is overrated anyway, give me Kobe Bryant without an experience at Duke over Shane Battier with 4 years there anyday. If the true best team would of went they wouldn't be too far behind that 92 dream team even on fundamentals, with plenty of no college players on the team. Well, if you're name isn't Jason Kidd or Steve Nash you shouldn't brag about your fast break running skills, everyone else is lagging behind those two.
Or in some country in the earlier year they play for the army and are more discipline and are train fundamentally.
What age did Dirk Nowitzki sign his first pro contract? Tony Parker? Peja? etc, etc, etc. Maybe the problem isn't that players are coming out too early, it's that they aren't coming out early enough.
Yup, yup, college teaches them how to play well in college, the NBA teaches them how to play well in the NBA, the difference is like playing on the moon and on Earth.
Or maybe, just maybe, kids in other countries are just increasingly able to learn the game at the same pace as American kids do...could it be as simple as that? As the game gets more popular around the world, more and more kids play, and why would they always stay worse than the American kids, that just doesn't seem very logical... All that being said, as I said before, I still think the USA will easily win the Gold medal in Athens.
Well, if you can't get the "best" players and you may be need to put together the best "team." The lack of outside shooting on this team is appalling.
ESPN used to use foreign camera crews for Formula1. At the monaco grand prix the cars went right buy the beach, the cameraman zoomed in on the beach for no good reason, and you know what he was zooming in on, A naked lady. ESPN took a lot of crap. I , however, loved it. I wonder if they were using foreign camera crews here too.
Probably a lot more! Because it would have been a sensation to win against the Dream Team...one of the biggest successes in the history of German basketball...oh well...maybe in a few years, they will manage to win one against the USA, if they are lucky .
How about we just send the NBA Champions over there. The Detroit Pistons could probably spank any team in the world. Of course it won't work, but it's an idea.
How about experiences? If you don't have that many experiences of many aspects of the game you will likely to failed.
I'm pretty sure they might have used a German camera team, and since basketball is not big in Germany (the game wasn't even shown live on TV), camera men might be a lot more inexperienced than their American counterparts. That might explain some mistakes...
It's all in the head. There's a 180 degree difference when you KNOW you're the MAN vs playing a role on a team of stars. It's the same at any level. My IM league in college. I was the best player/shooter, so my team needed me to score. So I shot the ball, would play out of my mind more often than not, unconsciously raising my game and we won a lot. Switch to basketball camp - I wasn't ever the best player on my team. I sucked donkey balls. Would miss wide open shots, etc. A guy from my IM league remembered me and was like, "What's wrong? You tore my team up when we played at school." That's why the US team's best shooter will continue to be Iverson - he's got the seniority, co-captainship, and ego to be alpha male. Marbury et al. will continue to pass too much, shoot streaky and suck donkey balls.
Most of those Euro's, especially Serbia the next country we play, live for basketball, some of the better young prospects (14 and up) actually LIVE in basketball camps and are playing against men most of their lives. They play for coaches who live for basketball, play in front of fans that live for basketball, and they love basketball, few players in the NBA show the same amount of passion that I've seen from those people.
Perhaps, though you should not forget that a kid playing for a foreign team is going to get more instruction from his coaches than a kid playing in college simply because they, a) don't have to worry about academic eligibility; b) there aren't rules against how many hours you can practice, and when you can first practice. If there's a kid in Germany, who grows up quick as lightening, with great "court awareness", a natural point guard type of guy - do you think he plays basketball - or does he see himself as the next Ballack?
