The Sports Guy fixes Team USA

[ChuckElias]

A while back somebody (I think it was HawksCoach) mentioned an online columnist by the name of Bill Simmons, aka "The Sports Guy". He happens to be a favorite of mine, and he offers some insight into why this year's "Dream Team" fell so flat as well as how the team should've been assembled. It's worth a look if you're interested at all in international basketball. Just thought I'd pass it along as we seem to be bogged down in non-basketball issues again. Can't wait for December

http://espn.go.com/page2/s/simmons/020913.html

Chuck

[Oz Referee]

Say this article on another basketball forum - long, but a good read. I would just post a link, but I don't know where the original piece came from.

from Alexander Wolff - writer for SI

INDIANAPOLIS -- As Ernest Hemingway once said of going broke, it happens gradually, and then suddenly. The same could be said for the erosion of America's global basketball supremacy, the lasting news from the world championships just concluded.

As we sort out the multiple bizarrenesses of these Worlds -- e.g., Argentina fared better, and the United States worse, than the soccer teams of those respective countries did in the World Cup last June -- it's worth taking historical stock. Herewith, a timeline of how the world has gouged away at the icon that was American basketball, chunk by chunk, over the past 30 years:

1972: The Soviet Union pins the first Olympic loss ever on the United States, 51-50, to win the gold medal at the Munich Olympics. Yes, the defeat comes about thanks to a couple of dubious calls and timekeeping that would have left Stephen Hawking scratching his head. But the Soviets dictated play throughout the game and led by five at the half.

1987: A Yugoslavia team including Vlade Divac, Dino Radja, Toni Kukoc and Sasha Djordjevic twice spanks a U.S. team with Gary Payton, Larry Johnson and Stacey Augmon to win the Junior World Championship in Bormio, Italy. In one of those meetings, Kukoc feathers in 11 of 12 3-point attempts, leaving the American coach, Larry Brown, slackjawed.

1987: Brazil defeats a U.S. team including Danny Manning, David Robinson and Pervis Ellison to win the gold medal at the Pan American Games right here in Indy. Despite trailing by 14 at the break, Brazil rallies behind 35 second-half points from Oscar Schmidt, who winds up with 46. When asked about that game years later, the point guard for the cariocanas, Marcel Souza, alluding to the razing of Market Square Arena in July 2001, will tell people that the loss so devastated the Americans that they tore down the gym.

1987: A few months later, at the first McDonald's Open, in Milwaukee, the host Bucks struggle to beat Tracer Milan 123-111. A French journalist, sucking on a postgame Gauloise, says, "People back in Europe will see this score in the newspaper tomorrow and say, 'C'est fou.'"

1988: The U.S. goes into the Seoul Olympics betting that its team of pressure defenders, culled from U.S. colleges and coached by Georgetown's John Thompson, can rattle poised European professionals. But the Americans lose 82-76 to the U.S.S.R. in the medal round, when the Soviets, with five Baltic nationals in their top six, shred the U.S. defense with precision passing and 3-point shooting.

1990: Yugoslavia doubles up on a U.S. team featuring Kenny Anderson, Alonzo Mourning and Christian Laettner, winning golds at both the Worlds in Buenos Aires and the Goodwill Games in Seattle. Over the next few years, the champions' homeland will be riven by ethnic conflict, and ultimately carved up into five separate states. Yet the rump of the former Yugoslavia (including Serbia and Montenegro) will still go on to beat the Americans in both of the ensuing world championships in which it is able to compete, in 1998 and 2002.

1990: At the fourth McDonald's Open, in Barcelona, the New York Knicks need overtime to defeat Scavolini Pesaro 119-115. The Knicks will win the title, beating POP 84 of Split in the final, but not before Kukoc snuffs out a Patrick Ewing jumper in a highlight clip that gets heavy European rotation.

1994: In the third quarter of a pool-play game at the Worlds in Toronto, U.S. coach Don Nelson is forced to call a timeout to stop Russia's momentum. This is the first time since the introduction of NBA players, at the Barcelona Olympics two years earlier, that the American pros have used a timeout for any reason other than injury or rest. The U.S. will wind up beating the same Russians in the gold-medal game by 46. But the media, U.S. and international alike, will no longer reflexively refer to any NBA-stocked American squad as a "Dream Team."

1995: At the Junior World Championship in Athens, a U.S. team led by Vince Carter and Stephon Marbury finishes seventh. Even Venezuela and Korea shoot better from the field. In the four such events since 1987, only once have the Americans brought home a gold.

2000: At the Tournament of the Americas in Puerto Rico, Argentina's Andres Nocioni uncorks a baseline jam over both Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. Carter's posterizing of Frédéric Weis of France in the Sydney Olympics will attract much more attention -- but given what will happen when the Yanks and Gauchos meet two years later, Nocioni's will take on more historical significance.

2000: Lithuania's Olympic team, representing a country of only three million people and featuring no NBA players, comes within an off-the-rim, at-the-buzzer 3-pointer of beating Carter, Garnett, Ray Allen, Jason Kidd, et al. in Sydney. With Donnie Nelson an assistant on the Lithuanian bench, the Nelsons, father and son, have now been eyewitnesses at two waymarks along the road. This latest development is a bit too much for Donnie's red, white and blue heart: He vows that he'll no longer coach any team other than the U.S.

2002: Although they still comprise a relatively small percentage of NBA rosters, non-American players claim five of the 10 spots on the first and second NBA All-Rookie teams, with Pau Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies taking honors as Rookie of the Year. Part of the reason for their outsized impact: Most non-American players stay with their club teams at least through age 21. And, thanks to the club system, they're more fully developed players than the fundamentals-impaired, one-season-and-done U.S. collegians who sit on NBA benches when they ought to be playing, and learning, the game.

Last week: Five teams finish ahead of the U.S. at the Worlds, but only one of those five international All-Rookie selections, Gasol, has a hand in the Americans' poor showing. This only further underscores how much depth the international game can now boast of. Just one U.S.-born player, a naturalized New Zealander named Ed Book, participates in the semifinals -- and virtually no American journalist has heard of Book, who played at Canisius.

That's how we got here. And to think that, during the 1992 Tournament of the Americas, an Argentine named Marcello Milanesio would post up Magic Johnson and motion to teammates on the bench to snap his photo with the Hall of Famer.

Whom shall we credit -- or blame -- for never being able to witness a scene like that again? I nominate Borislav Stankovic, the secretary general of FIBA, who a dozen years ago pushed to abolish distinctions between pros and amateurs. He had the foresight to realize that nothing else would more quickly raise the level of play throughout the world. Even after the U.S. Dream Team coasted at the 1992 Olympics, Stankovic had the fortitude to stand up to those who said that NBA Americans would make a mockery of FIBA competition for a generation.

Stankovic will step down at the end of the year. The secretary general, a Serb, got to witness Yugoslavia's overtime victory in Sunday's title game after 11 days in which he saw his vision for international hoops vindicated. Taken together, that's quite a sweet retirement package.