"If the Dream Team didn't go to the Olympics, maybe Cuban wouldn't have half his players," Brown said of Cuban. "Maybe these kids would be playing soccer or something else. That makes me sick."
I didn't say he didn't have a right to his own opinion, did I? Maybe it's the way the SportsCenter dude put an extra sneering element in the soccer line when he read the quotes on air.
For chrissakes - he was dissing Cuban, not soccer. It was Cuban's attitude that made him sick. Shouldn't this be in Business and Media with all the other over-reactionaries
Soudns to me like he was using "soccer" as a way to diss Cuban. Kinda like stereotyping - "Euros who play that game soccer".... Like I said, the quote as read on SportsCenter made this sound worse than it probably is....
I don't see how this is any different from "_______ (insert famous American athlete) could be playing soccer instead of baseball/football/basketball." Brown is just talking about how Cuban is reaping the benefits of basketball's growing international culture, and it's understandable (if not justified) for Brown to feel some resentment considering his involvement with USA Basketball as player and coach. And you should really try to watch SportsCenter with the SoccerBasherDetector 2.0 turned off. My blood pressure is a lot more stable since I turned mine off.
Larry Brown was clearly dissing Mark Cuban, not soccer. Brown is upset because Cuban doesn't want to release his Maverick players for the Olympics. Brown said it is selfish of Cuban and that Cuban himself benefited from the 1992 Dream Team being an inspiration for these foreign athletes around the world. If not for the dream team, says Brown, many of them might've wound up playing soccer in their home country. That is hardly a slight against soccer, it is just a reality.
Despite the tone of this thread, this ia pretty good topic for debate, so naturally, the ESPN Page 2 Writers Bloc have a nice little discussion on it: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=bloc/040209
I'd agree, but you usually don't see many 6'10 soccer players. I'd guess half of the international stars in the NBA would have been playing bball regardless. The NBA has been doing more work in getting the game into other nations, aside from the Olympics.