What a crybaby. Just like his players. The way these Euro teams jack up 3's, the game is never over until the final buzzer. I mean, this wasn't exactly a blowout. You lost. Get over it and go home.
I think the US will win the title, but against Lithuania, it will be VERY tough for them... If I was American, I would definitely root for the American team, no matter what, but I think that it is understandable that the rest of the world roots for the underdogs... .
If the US sent criminals to play for them (some would argue they do with the bball players) I'd root for them. Would you view not rooting for your country as unpatriotic? I wouldn't, but I would view rooting for another country as so. Even if you don't like the players there, you still cheer for them and support them, they represent the US. I would say not rooting for the US is more like jealousy, since these players have such talent and money and they were losing so people liked rubbing it in (ESPECIALLY THE PRESS. See: Chad Ford, Bill Simmons, ESPN!). Now that they're winning, it's back to "Well, they should be winning." Maybe this is why so many player's decline an invite. Let other people go, get criticized, who cares? I can spend my time at home not being slandered and put down by every newspaper idiot columnist in America and across the world. Nobody should criticize the people who went. The ones who didn't (Allen, McGrady, Kidd, etc) should be criticized. And sorry about the Starbury comments, I was just extremely excited. I'm from Brooklyn and have cheered for Marbury since his days at Lincoln. It's an exciting team since he's from BK and Odom is from Queens and Sue Bird is from Nassau. All these great players represening Long Island and New York and the USA!
The haters can't handle the truth By Jason Whitlock Special to Page 2 I must've missed the memo -- the memo that went out to the red-blooded American sports public and explains exactly when it became okay to throw patriotism out the window and openly root against a U.S. Olympic team. Yeah, I didn't get that memo. I'm wondering what was in it. Did it mention Allen Iverson by name? Did it have stipulations about the number of tattoos acceptable on an Olympian? Was there a cornrows clause? Or was the memo just straight and to the point? What's the real reason why so many people are rooting against Iverson and co.? Americans do not have to support a group of black American millionaires in any endeavor. Despite the hypocritical, rabid patriotism displayed immediately after 9/11, it's perfectly suitable for Americans to despise Team USA Basketball, Allen Iverson and all the other tattooed NBA players representing our country. Yes, these athletes are no more spoiled, whiny and rich than the golfers who fearlessly represent us in the Ryder Cup, but at least Tiger Woods has the good sense not to wear cornrows. The memo must've read something like that. That's the only explanation for the near-universal hatred of our Olympic basketball team. Oh, you can hide behind a bunch of other excuses. You don't like the NBA style of play (which I don't). You're rooting for the underdogs. Shaq and Kidd and K.G. declined an invitation. The selection committee picked the wrong team. There are a million excuses, some of which might legitimize a teeny bit of hostility toward USA Basketball. But there's no reasonable justification for the out-and-out hatred of Larry Brown's squad. There's no reasonable justification for the sheer delight that many red-blooded, patriotic Americans are taking from USA Basketball's struggles. In a Page 2 poll on Monday, 54.1 percent of the approximately 20,000 respondents said they wanted to see the USA team lose, and another 19.9 percent said they "kind of" would like to see it lose. I've sat on my radio show the past two weeks and listened to alleged patriot after patriot b**** about and shred Team USA Basketball and openly admit they want the team to lose. One guy, who identified himself as a former member of the American military, said he hates Team USA because the team doesn't "represent the America he fell in love with." I asked him to describe the America he fell in love with, and he said, "it was a country you could walk the streets without worrying about being mugged." So there once was a time when a man or woman could walk the streets without worrying about a wild gang of NBA players whacking them over the head with a bottle and taking their wallet or purse? That must've been a glorious time, because you can hardly go anywhere these days without looking over your shoulder wondering whether Tim Duncan or Stephon Marbury is stalking you. I know it's dangerous to make too much of the sentiments expressed by talk-radio callers. But they speak for somebody. Monday evening I wore my Team USA Basketball jersey to the Rams-Chiefs game. As I walked to the stadium, people laughed at me and my jersey and several people made disparging comments about our basketball team. If this team doesn't win the gold medal (they beat Spain Thursday to advance to the semifinals), I half expect Americans to spit on Iverson, Tim Duncan, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony at the airport. We haven't fielded a team this unpopular at home since Johnson and Nixon sent Team USA into Vietnam. This is ridiculous, and it hints at a much larger issue. Someone call Johnnie Cochran and have him send over "The Card" -- the race one. This team is being discussed unfairly in the media and being treated unfairly by American sports fans. There's a lot of convenient denial going on. No one wants to deal with the truth because they're having too much fun blasting a bunch of black millionaires for being lazy, unpatriotic and stupid. With the exception of adding the word "millionaires," this is a very familiar tune. It's just more denial. The truth -- and what needs to be discussed -- is that African-American basketball players no longer have a lock on the game. The rest of the world has caught up, at warp speed. The game has been exported and re-defined in superior fashion. Europeans like Dirk Nowitzki are playing a new brand of basketball -- very successfully. Go ask the folks up in Canada what the Soviets did to the game of hockey. Don Cherry can tell you all about the Red Army team whipping Canadian and NHL fanny on bigger rinks with faster, more creative skaters. It was 1972, and Team Canada -- the best Canadian-born NHL players formed into a Dream Team -- took on the Soviet Union team, which had pretty much dominated international play since 1954. It was called the Summit Series -- eight games between the world's two hockey powers. The Soviets won the first game 7-3 and led the series 3-1-1 before the Canadians rallied to win the last three games -- all by one goal -- to win the series. Paul Henderson scored a goal with 34 seconds to play in Game 8, or the series would've ended in a tie. One of the reasons Team Canada eventually prevailed is that the bigger, stronger Canadians began to resort to cheap shots and thuggery on the ice. Several Canadian players later admitted they were embarrassed by what they had to do to sneak past the quicker Soviets. A Canadian newspaperman had to eat his entire newspaper because he'd promised to do it if Phil Esposito, Stan Mikita, Ken Dryden and Co. lost a single game in the series. Canadians invented hockey in the late 1800s, and once dominated it the way African-Americans dominate basketball. Eastern Europeans reinvented the game and made up nearly 70 years of hockey experience on the Canadians in just two decades. Sound anything like what we're witnessing on the basketball court? Eastern Europeans introduced finesse, speed and creative passing to hockey. No longer could you just dump the puck into the zone and maul the guy in the corner. You had to play the game. The Canadians weren't stupid and lazy. They were just slow to adjust to a new, superior brand of hockey. "Back then, we thought our way was the only way to play hockey; and we found out it wasn't," American Ken Morrow, one of the heroes on the 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic team, told me Wednesday. "The NBA is kind of going through that right now. Hockey went through it in the 1970s and '80s. The NBA should look at what we went through and learn from it." Morrow, the current director of pro scouting for the New York Islanders, played 10 years in the NHL. He vividly remembers the 1972 Summit Series. "You talk to people in Canada, and they'll tell you the Summit Series was like a national emergency," Morrow said. "It really shook the heart and soul of the Canadians." The similarities between hockey and basketball and the impact that international play is having on the games is indisputable. The high rounds of the NHL draft now favor European players. The NHL in the 1970s celebrated the Philadelphia Flyers' Broad Street Bullies approach, which included beating people up. The game was played at a slow, boring, defensive pace. Does that sound anything like today's NBA? "The skill portion of the game [hockey] is viewed as being superior by the Europeans," Morrow said. "But when it comes to character and heart and competing, it's still the Canadians and the American players. Just look at the top scorers in the NHL the last few years -- seven or eight out of 10 are European." Doesn't that sound like Dirk Nowitzki vs. Ben Wallace? The international style of basketball play is superior to the American game, particularly the NBA game. The wide lane, shorter three-pointer and prevalence of zone defenses limit the effectiveness of the NBA's two-man game. You can't have three guys stand on one side of the court and talk to Spike Lee while your two best players go two-on-two on the other side. It's boring, and it doesn't work in international play. It's also foolish and arrogant to believe that we can throw a team together that can take on the world in two or three weeks. We can't do it. Even if we had Shaq and Kidd and K.G., our team would need time to prepare. We obviously need role players.This stuff has all been covered. Would Michael Phelps have been this excited about the Olympics if he was making millions as a professional swimmer? What bothers me most are the charges that Iverson and Co. aren't trying and don't care. First and foremost, they do care and they are trying. They're competitors. They know what's at stake. They don't want to be ripped at home. But do they care about the Olympics the way Michael Phelps does? No. And we shouldn't expect them to. American basketball players don't spend their childhoods dreaming about playing in the Olympics. It isn't a lifelong goal. Their goal is the NBA. Swimmers and track athletes and gymnasts, on the other hand, spend their whole lives fantasizing about competing in the Olympics. It's the pinnacle for them. If there was a professional swimming league that would make Phelps filthy rich, I guarantee he'd dream of making that league more than he dreamt of making the Olympic team. Phelps might even turn down a spot on the Olympic team, if it interfered with his professional swimming off-season. Once every four years, Phelps and Carly Patterson and Justin Gatlin get an opportunity to strike it rich. They go all out. Don't romanticize it. They're chasing money (endorsement opportunities) just like the NBA players. Phelps, Patterson and Gatlin might be more cooperative and gracious with the media during the Olympics because they only have to deal with us once every four years. We don't know how they'd react if they were forced to talk to us every day almost year round. The criticism of USA Basketball is borderline racist, is definitely unsophisticated and exposes a lot of super patriots as hypocrites. Allen Iverson is wearing our jersey -- our red, white and blue -- and playing the game the way we taught him to play it. We owe Iverson support when he's representing us abroad. Save the hatred for when he's back home skipping Sixers practices and boring us to death playing a two-man game with Glenn Robinson. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=whitlock/040826
Spain's coach is an idiot. You are looking for a fight if you put a finger in someone's face like that. I am surprised Larry Brown didn't swing at him.
i'm trying to think of someone i would rather see go 5-0 in pool play then get sent home without a medal in the quarterfinals than pau gasol. and i can't think of anybody. marion sending his dunk attempt down to the ground and then duncan throwing that weak layup outta there toward the end was awesome. falling down on the floor like a 3 year old throwing a temper tantrum was just awesome. i couldn't even believe i saw it for a second. considering he practically fouled odom out on touch fouls and the fact he led the entire olympics in free throws, you'd think he'd shut up for a while and not take the whining to new levels. then some other spaniard flopped around on the ground at the end of the game, too. ridiculous. maybe if international timeouts weren't so messed up we coulda called the timeout when we wanted to and not when it was already decided. too bad for you coach spain. stop whining like a b**** like gasol and take the loss like a man. it's not like he doesn't understand how it works i would think. STEPHON!!! finally he starts shooting like i knew he could. he's been so open the whole olympics he had to hit something eventually. maybe not at this rate but he was due. i knew he was in full "starbury" mode when he hit the lefthanded layup floater near the end. that's high arcing layup is the kind of thing he does well against us. plus he was big down the stretch which he seems to be all the time in the NBA. someone please never allow those refs to ref again. the first 3 quarters we were racking up the fouls like crazy, then in the 4th quarter they just decided to screw both teams and call nothing. touch fouls get called early, prison ball is allowed late. duncan throws the ball off marion's foot, US ball. spain goes over the back twice in a row, out on the US. duncan gets called for a foul on the screener while a 3 is hit even though there are so many illegal picks in every game you can't count them. CON-FRIGGIN-SISTENCY please!!! i got up at 6 as well even though i didn't have class until 9:30. and this is coming off a summer where i routinely slept until 2 pm. to make it worse, Time Warner hasn't connected our cable yet so i had to go to the workout room for our apartment complex and watch in on the tv in there. it was weird being the first one in there and having to turn on the lights and everything. and finally, I'm sick of all the bashing of this team, too. i simply can't believe that so many people actually want them to lose. it literally is unpatriotic to me to do that. don't like the players we sent, hope the selection committee gets fired, say international ball is awesome, whatever you want to do. but don't root against the guys from your own friggin country. if it says USA on the jersey, you should root for them. but that's just my opinion.
Larry Brown and Popovich explain the timeout being called earlier and they couldn't retract.<blockquote><font size=1>Quote:</font><hr>Larry BROWN, Head Coach (USA): On the timeout he called 23 seconds from time: Larry Brown: "When I asked for a timeout we were 8 points ahead, then I saw the score and said I didn't want it but the officials gave it to me anyway. I tried to apologize and explain to the Spanish coach, but he didn't want to listen. He kept saying something about the NBA to me. All I can do is apologize and move on."<hr></blockquote> Popovich's reaction.<blockquote><font size=1>Quote:</font><hr>Gregg POPOVICH (USA) – Coach On the time-out: "<b>The rules for the time out are different in Europe. We called the time-out because we made a few mistakes due to the Spain pressure but when the head coach noticed that it was a dead time, he asked the table to cancelled it</b>. But this couldn’t happen. I understand the Spanish coach, but we didn’t have the intention to offence him."<hr></blockquote> Now the Spanish coach. <blockquote><font size=1>Quote:</font><hr>Mario PESQUERA, Head Coach (ESP) On Larry BROWN's timeout: "I had a lot of respect for coach BROWN, but when you do something wrong, you can't always say 'I'm sorry'. If he asked for a timeout wrongly, he could send the team back again and not spend 20 seconds to give them instructions. I continue to respect him are a coach, but for me, a coach that is up there with (Dean) SMITH would never have done something like that."<hr></blockquote>Sounds like he's upset about more than just the timeout. Cool off, man. Brown did not talk to the players "to give them instructions." Oh, and here's why he seems to be more upset about something else. <blockquote><font size=1>Quote:</font><hr>Mario PESQUERA, Head Coach (ESP) On the public cheering his team: "They did not cheer for the weakest, but for the strongest team, and that was us. It's time we told the truth."<hr></blockquote>Damn. Quite a chip you have on your shoulder there, 'eh. Like Sir Jackie Chiles said, maybe they were rooting for the underdog? sheesh. Oh, and here is a quote from the Coach saying that Team USA is much better than what they showed earlier...so can we stop the bashing now people. <blockquote><font size=1>Quote:</font><hr>Mario PESQUERA, Head Coach (ESP) On the game: "It was an excellent game. Both teams played very well. <b>However, I must stress that we played under NBA and not FIBA rules, with all the traveling not being called.</b> Three-pointers were a key to the outcome. The US team came out good, moved from an 18% to a 55% accuracy. I am very happy with my team, but not with the result. <b>We need to be honest about this – the US team was playing at 40% capacity for two games."</b><hr></blockquote> Hehe. That's not really praise at all. That's two big whines. In the other quote, he says "They did not cheer for the weakest, but for the strongest team, and that was us. It's time we told the truth." Here he blames it on the refs and says US was not playing to full capacity in the group play....meaning, "we shouldn't have faced them in the Quarterfinals, and the refs apparently stole the game from them, even though, the fans were wildly on their side. No wonder Gasol is such a whiner.
It's like the first time you see your girlfriend's mother. And you start saying to yourself: now I know where it's come from. Pau rolling on the floor is certainly one of the funniest thing I've ever seen. Team USA now has a nice rotation going and various players firng up, I think they'll take the gold.
there is no bandwagon if your from the US, you should be rooting for the US.. I agree with the ESPN article
sure am glad that starbury came out of nowhere great stuff seeing Gasol and company lose. hopefully this will be the team usa we will get used to seeing in the games to come
Don't really give a crap about this US team. The only guy I do respect on the team are Duncan and Iverson. The other guys doesn't deserve a medal and I hope they will never win one.
I have to add that I usually don't like Jason Whitlock, but that column he wrote was an absolute home run.
Has anyone been watching Greece vs Argentina? From the stats it looked like a great game. Argentina up by 10 early then Greece up by ten in quarters 2 and 3, 4th starting tied and then Argentina pulling out a nail-biter at the end 69-64. Semi-Final Round Matchups Italy vs. Lithuania US vs Argentina
I was wrong, USA pulled out the game but that being said I dont' see them winning it all. It's just not plausible to believe that this team can have this type of shooting performance from beyond the arc. When last I heard this morning they were something like 12 for 22 from 3 point land and then you have to factor in other teams that can shoot the 3 way better than Spain. I'll go with Lith for gold.
