Exactly. Well, kinda. USA hasn't sent a real *team* (that is, as opposed to a collection of second choice All Stars) to the Games since 1992. Even if USA doesn't send the best players in 2008, they will have a better selection procedure led by Jerry Colangelo which will select the best *team*, rather than sending Evites to the most recognizable players. No matter what happened in Athens or at the World Championships, USA is still head and shoulders above the rest of the world. Not to go further off topic, but their fears are pretty well justified. How many Olympians manage to stay healthy during the season that follows the Games? Personally, I think USA can win with a well-coached group of collegians and NBDLers.
Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, LeBron James and Amare Stoudamire may be surprised to find out they are on the 10th tier.
I'm attempting to match Shurik in comic sarcastic hyperbole, but its pretty hard. He's that good. I should also add that Norway and Denmark have supplied an NHL player or two, just not a good one.
As we found out in Athens, the international game is completely different from the NBA game - more defense, more team passing, less glitz.
Baseball's popularity in Canada is equal to hockey's popularity in Denmark, and Cuba, Venezuela, Taiwan, Nicaragua, Panama, to say nothing of the Netherlands Antilles is addition by subtraction. Norway, Lithuania, Kazakhstan and France have supplied NHL talent, representatives of the first three being All Stars, and Slovenia's Anze Kopitar is a shoe-in top 10 pick in the upcoming draft. Austria's Thomas Vanek was a number 5 pick in 2003 and would've played in the NHL last year if not for the lockout. And China is quite strong in women's hockey. The point is, if baseball is interested in using the Olympics as a vehicle for gaining more popularity, it must at least bother to send its top players. If not, to hell with it. Let's. Besides the cost of golf courses, the chances of seeing the best golfers in the Oympics are even worse than those of baseballers.
Nobody prevented the Yanks from sending their 9th, 8th, 7th, 2nd or indeed the first team to the Games. It was your choice so go and live with it.
Actually I did not. I took your point and ran with it a bit. A bit too far? I apologize. The rules of international basketball games are very different. It just doesn't pay for the top American clubs to send their best players risking injuries to play in a funny game that playing in it alone could interrupt a good rhythm. My point is, when it comes to basketball, it's the responsiblity of the rest of the world to change their rules to be more like the NBA, not the other way around. I say this with the purest objectivity, America is the bestest of the bestest, by far.
I don't think baseball a sport. Everything that doesn't move/run your body constantly is not a sport. Good move.
Unless it's proven on the courts, blah blah blah. The fact about basketball, it is so popular around the world it doesn't need the NBA or even America in the Olympics to ensure inclusion. Baseball, on the other hand, is heard of by a nutty professor in Germany and a few million bored Japanese. It was baseball that shunned the Olympics, not the other way around. Good riddance.
Tomato, tomato, potato, potato, team, players. But one thing I can say on these players behalf, they might have been beaten, but they were never surprised.
What is this supposed to mean? You'd recognize the legitimacy of Argentinian gold if they came out naked with baseball bats?
You need not even follow up this argument Shurik, since the initial point is utterly implausible. It was a team made up of NBA All-Stars, including some of the best talent in the entire league. So was the team at the World Championships that finished sixth. Both teams were coached by highly respected NBA men. The outdated opinions on this thread are reminiscent of those of myopic English soccer fans. Just like Brazil was not the best National Soccer Team in the world from 1974-1990, we are not the best National Basketball Team in the world right now. We might still have the best players, but just like Brazil, we can't say we're better than Argentina or Germany (erm, I mean Yugoslavia). Argentina is clearly the best in the world until proven otherwise.
And Serbia & Montenegro who won the last World Championships. And who probably would have could have won the Olympic gold last year except only 3 of the players they have in the NBA competed (if memory serves, their a team is majority NBA players). The United States still has the best basketball players on Earth but anyone with any knowledge of the NBA at all knows the international players are beginning to take over the roles of stars. You could now fill three entire rosters with them and those three teams would compete. Nearly 1/3 of the players taken in the NBA draft this year are internationals. The #1 pick was...AN AUSTRALIAN! It's really getting to the point where pretty soon the NBA will be the top league in the world, but the United States will just be hosting the world (much like the NHL is now). It's gotten to the level of the Premiership already, though the majority of players are still English, look at the top stars and they're mostly from other countries. This is a good thing since it means that basketball is spreading worldwide. And it's a beautiful sport to spread when it's played the international way (as opposed to completely down in the post like the North American style). And and just for the record, I've lost count of how many soccer teams use basketball as part of their practice regimen. The more third tier soccer players who take up basketball in Europe the larger the game is going to grow. As far as baseball being dropped, it's kind of sad but it's not the end of the world. Now there's a baseball World Cup which will be more competitive anyway since it's all professionals. Oh and just for the record, lest we all be forgetting. The United States didn't even make the Olympics in the last tourney. They were eliminated by Mexico in regional qualifying.
You must be kidding. 150-21 scores like last time we sent the Dream Team is not good for anybody, especially the sport itself. It's our choice to do the best for the sport by not sending our even 9th team. Now it's up to the IOC to do something other than sabotaging the sport by insisting on funny rules even their own referees can't keep track of.
And that was in 1992! Do you realize how many strides have been made in the rest of the world in basketball since then? Even with the dream team, the only 150-21 type score was the opening match against Angola. Perhaps you forget that Lithuania held it close for a half back then too.
IOC has nothing to do with rules, it's all up to FIBA, and they have been Americanizing their sport like nobody's business over the last 10 years. Stop looking for excuses. The Soviet hockey team came and played in the Canada Cup on NHL rinks and nobody was complaining. Basketball is basketball. Especially when you consider that American kids have to adapt to NBA rules after playing the college game which is not too different from the international kind. And I have absolutely no idea in the world what you are basing the above opinion on the relative strength of the US team on. You are acting as if the best player in the NBA right now is not Argentinian. As if the US team wasn't spanked in the 2002 World Championship on its own courts in Indiana. As if basketball were not the world's fastest growing sport. As if anyone, anyone at all were against facing the best available US competition. Once again, it is America that shuns Olympic basketball, not the other way around. If they lose, it's their damn problem.
Not really. Comics drawing/reading is not a sport either. I'm glad it's not in Olympics. By the way, synchronized swimming is a sport, a beautiful one too.
A half? See, the game of basketball consists of 4 quarters. Anyway, like I said we've been extremely disciplined and doing our best for the sport by sending a lesser and lesser team until finally one of the random teams out there got a lucky day. We've been doing that since after 92. Now it's up to the IOC to wise up and recognize the undisputable leadership of America in basketball and learn to play according to proper rules.
Actually many US "sports" are basically lazy stuffs. They made people fat and racist and are against the spirit of Olympics. Like Baseball, golf, darts, car racing, ... Not good.
And two quarters equals? And the take a "blank" time (where in the NBA they have dancers and people try to make shots for a million dollars, the owner tries to dunk a basketball, etc., etc.). Oh, so I see you don't think United States college basketball plays by the proper rules either?
Once again, you are spewing uninformed bs. The rules of the game are set by FIBA, which US is a member of. Nobody sets the rules in the US. The last time I checked, there were like 8 different sets of rules in this country, including the silly game played by MTV's teams with names like "Brickstuffers" and "Goatfornicators". If this country can't get the record straight on the rules, what right does it have to badger FIBA, an organization twice as old as the NBA?