if yugo loses tonight, i will accept defeat and eat crow. if yugo wins however, theres a list of people i wanna hear from. yugos winning 40-36 so far, which is by no means over.divac is playing very well so far something like 16 points. anyway, good luck usa...your gonna need it.
This just in: Yugoslavia beats Team USA 81-78, overcoming a 10-point deficit. As a result, Team USA won't even medal. All I have to say is wow.
I'm not going to even get into this. All I have to say is that I'm proud of the players out there who played hard all through the night and almost pulled it out. As for the "superstars" who let their country down athletics wise, well screw you. The cool thing is though is that we have fans laughing at us for being 58-2. That speaks highly of the United States.
One word sums it all up: EMBARRASSMENT Losing for the first time in 59 games should have been enough, but 2 in a row, and as a result, not even medaling? No words can sufficiently describe how I feel right now. You happy Kobe? You happy Tracy? You happy Kevin? You happy Tim? You happy Gary? Get off your high horse and represent your country. This should be treated as an honor, not a hassle you don't want to take up. BTW, Yugoslavia played terrific tonight. My hats off to them.
Wow. You look at the stats, and the US got pounded on the boards. And it looks like our big guys were all in foul trouble. Unbelievable. I don't usually agree with much that Chad Ford guy says for ESPN, but I do think our team needs more time to practice together, superstars or no.
omfg this sucks. I blame this on the stars who chose not to participate and the stupid coaches. The players never really looked in synch out there. Notice I said players, not team. booooooooo. booooooooo.
That team was WAY to young to send out there. And George Karl looked like an idiot, he never took the games seriously. The guy looked like he didn't want to be out there. *Sigh*. That may not have been our best team (no where near), but it still sucks. Well at least NBC is screwed.
Rome blames soccer for the downfall of American basketball. But IMO, even with our very best players, the rest of the world would eventually catch up, because this is too great a game to play, and everybody's caught on now.
Even though the US Team was just pathetic overall I gotta give props to Andre Miller. That guy was playing his assssss off and so was Shawn Marion when he was healthy. I think we missed Marion a lot tonight but we still had the talent to win this game easily. Jermaine O'Neal was a joke, he looked like a lost freshman playing his first college game and George Karl well do you believe in Karma? Looks like the Bucks aren't the only team that will quit on you. Congrats to the Yugos, they played great!
Well, now we know what happens when selfish, immature NBA players, who are too "good" to use their precious time during the summer to play for their country, sit at home and watch. It is truly pathetic to see the lack of character that NBA players display these days. A great judge of character is how people react to incredible success -- in this case success as an NBA player (Kobe, Payton, McGrady, Iverson etc). I've seen how they react, in a self-centered, haughty, and childish manner, which quite frankly I would characterize as PATHETIC. If our team had ONE HALF of the heart, determination, and national pride of the Yugoslavian team, we would have won by 30 points. Instead we have the Jermaine O'Neals of the world stomping on opposing players, throwing shoulders at Vlade, and cussing and whining all over the court. Well, I hope Jermaine is happy with his 5th place finish (assuming we can beat Puerto Rico which at this point is far from being certain).
I have to give props to Reggie Miller. At the end of the game he made it a point to go around shaking the Yugo players' hands. I thought that was absolute class. They showed his sister Cheryl in the stands clapping for him as he did so saying something like "Go Reggie". They're both class acts. A pathetic moment in the game was during the final seconds when Michael Finley was trying to get the crowd riled up by raising his hands, but you couldn't hear squat. You guys sit there talking about the players being lame, that crowd was pathetic. Half the time I didn't know whether I was in Yugoslavia or in the US. Their fans were better. Check out all those empty seats in the stands... sad, pathetic, and an embarrassment. I'm not going to knock this US team even though they were 2nd or 3rd rate in terms of talent. I'm going to congratulate them because they showed more heart than many of the fans that will criticize them. Congrats to Yugoslavia and Argentina.
That was pathetic when J. O'neal walked over the Argentinian player last nite. If i was George Karl I would've just held him out of tonite's game altogether.
I agree RM, I just noticed one thing they all have in common as well as their age...not one of them have ever been on a team that has won an NBA championship. Which tells me that the high pressure situations of this magnitude have never really been overcome by any of these guys.
I saw that too. I have more respect for the guy now. He doesn't even need to play, he's been on the team before.
That's a great point. I believe that Reggie Miller and Antonio Davis is the only guy to have gotten to the Finals. Other then that, the other guys haven't played a significant role on teams who made deep playoffs runs other then Paul Pierce, and you say how he used that experience, he was lights out. Congrats to Yugoslavia, they have a fine team. I'm still ticked at the superstars who bailed on this team. When I saw Antonio Davis, Ben Wallace and Raef LaFrentz as our centers I knew we were screwed.
