this is becoming a habit isn't it? anybody who watched the final minute of the World Championships of Basketball knows what I am talking about. USA down by 1 with about 50 seconds left in the game. Andre Miller guarding Yugo PG and runs into Vlade Divac screen. Note here that the PG is about 3 ft away from Miller. Ref calls a foul on Miller...no idea why, announcers have no idea why. If anything it should have been a foul on Divac for leaning into the pick. 4 seconds later the PG lays the ball up and one of the ref attempts to call continuation, but gets over ruled. TO, and instead of 60% Divac on the line Yugo somehow is allowed to put their best free throw shooter on the line who wasn't involved in the play. What is it about international referees and USA?? If we were Italy we'd be sueing the hell out of FIBA right now. Thats was terrible and that call probably cost USA the game. I was half expecting to see Dallas or our good buddy Pendergast out there
Please. Stop playing the victim card-you sound like a Kings fans. The Yugos are experiened and talented, and our "team" sucked hard and deseved to lose. Period.
Face it. Basketball is a game for foreigners. Americans who play it are pathetic. Americans should stick with the official game of suburbanites and imigrants: good ol' Mom-and-Apple-Pie soccer.
Re: Re: once again, referees cheat Americans did you watch that play????? I didn't say anything about deserving to lose or win and I could care less about the Kings. I reffed IM BBall (given not that big but it does get intense) in college and was absolutly appalled by that...incedent. It changed the complexion of the game and thats something a ref should never do. I just thought we had that kind of bad luck only in soccer (we got lucky against Mexico though) But apparently it stretches to basketball to. Yea Yugo was probably the better team but at let them win it fair
i tried to bring soccer into it with Hugh Dallas and Peter Pendergast. 2 very infamous calls that went against us. And now that I think about it, both involving Gregg Berhalter...
Re: Re: Re: once again, referees cheat Americans I saw it. I'm just too pissed at out "team's" impotent performance to cut them any slack. And I'd prefer not to provide the international hoops world with any fodder for potential "Yankee-snob" accusations.
This is the lighter side of the USMNT board, but it is still a soccer board. Moved to Other Sports. JMac
I didn't see it, but someone should think that it's not exactly a glorious performance to be in a 1pt situation in the last minute with a NBA collection team. Bad calls happen and it's especially annoying in the last minute, but to claim that it was intentionally agains the USA is just a little bit adventurous.
We asked for it....we got it......we can't just assume that any NBA player can go out and bitch slap every other country......We deserved to lose this tournament and I hope the likes of Kobe and Iverson are sitting around counting their money thinking that they are above this anyway.... This is like Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos passing up the WC to rest for the upcoming season. The only reason this isn't a more popular international tournament is because for the last 10 years we have CRUSHED everyone... Good for Argentina and Yugo for putting us back in our place.
No this is not like the World Cup. This is a terrible analogy. NBA players don't care about winning this tournament. They care maybe about the Olympics. Just look who tried out and was selected for this team and it speaks volumes about the importance of this tournament to NBA players. Let also remember that unlike soccer, basketball is played differently in the USA. FIBA rules are different from the American game and it's reflected in how the game is played. I bet to all the NBA players, (foreign and American) winning the NBA Championship is a lot more meaningful than winning this tournament. I certainly got that feeling from the interviews with the Yugoslav players following last night's game. Congratulations to Yugoslavia for a well played game.
And that is the problem...the NBA players DONT care about this or any tournament.....not the olympics, none of them, the league games are the only thing that is important because its about money. Not that money isn't important but, national pride should be involved along the line too, these guys just didn't want to be bothered and they got embarrased for it.......and no one tried out for this team...they were 'selected' and by selected I mean that they had to call these spoiled jerks and see who would 'lower' themselves to play.....I'm actually glad we lost.
Yeah, seriously. Did you see all the hand balls that went uncalled? It was 1986 all over again, this time with five Maradonas.
Come on, you guys lost, get over it... If i had to count the times the Belgian national team lost due to bad refereeing... It's just part of the game, deal with it
"Come on, guys?" One person complained about one call to start the thread, and the rest of us have been saying the US deserved to lose. Please read before you post.
Well, i stand corrected, please excuse me for my obviously unworthy contribution to this otherwhile brilliant thread with only valuable opinions about the US team, i hope i haven't ruined it for anybody...
There's been only one basketball game ever where bad refereeing decisions cost the US a win, and that was 30 years ago...
the refs were bad and costed USA a few points here and there but the USA deserved to lose. By the way, the person most vocal about the refs was not an American but rather Vlade Divac who blamed the ref's for Yugoslavia's loss in the group phase.
the whole tournament was mismanaged... first of all it was in Indianapolis... I wouldn't want to spend two weeks there either... do you think that Shaq/Kobe/Duncan/Garnett/Kidd would? Second, it was marketed poorly. there were tons of empty seats, the games were on cable only, and on different stations, and at different times every night. Place the tourny in a legit city on the eastern or western seaboard. market the hell out of it. remember all of the marketing/publicity with dream teams 1-4... what the hell happened?
Those were the Olympics and it followed USA-John Thompson's embarrassing loss to the USSR in the 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics. 1992 in Barcelona marked the year his Airness and Dream Team I played to restore order to the world. The World Championships have only once really garnered any real media interest. it was the first time the Pros played. Thereafter, interest in this event waned quite markedly.
IIRC, that call was a make-up call for a blown call on the Yugo possession immediately before it. IT was good officiating.
The international game needs to go to three officials. Players today are too big and too fast, and so much goes on under the basket that the officials are guessing half the time. Then again, NBA has three refs yet the officiating is still abysmal.