Posted by EnySpree:
They have greats at every position now except at point guard. The WNBA will get their flashy point guards soon enough......all you gotta do is catch some of these ladies in summer tournament play. Their are some future Isiah Thomas, Tim Hardaways, and cousys out there coming up. Some real magicians.
That's the real issue with the WNBA which is what's keeping the league back, IMO. They've got a lot of great players on the wings and they're in the midst of an influx of top post talent, but the point guard position sucks. The only truly great point guards the league has ever had in their primes were Ticha Penichero and Sue Bird. Teresa Weatherspoon, Dawn Staley and Teresa Edwards are probably 3 of the 5 greatest points of all time in the women's game but all were over 30 when they got to the WNBA and were around way before the league's talent got exponentially better. Lidnsay Whalen seems to be making her way up the list but she'd have to do it consistently to be on their level. Hammon is more of an Iverson type, not really someone who gets everyone involved. The girl from the Liberty, Moore, looks like a 1 year wonder.
I don't care about the fundamentals because the women simply aren't better than the men in that regard when you actually run the numbers. You still have at least 1 woman per roster who can't hit a lay up and can't dribble with her off hand. But I don't think you have to compare the WNBA to men's basketball at any level to be able to enjoy it. It's an entertaining brand of basketball. The players are also cool as hell and accessible off the court.
Regarding Team USA on the women's side, unlike the men, they have extensive experience playing against international competition and play with and against the majority of the players they faced in Olympic competition all year round. By the time they get to that point, everyone knows everyone. Top WNBA players make anywhere from 100k to 1mil playing overseas in the winter. The WNBA is a hobby.
They haven't lost since '92 when the coaching staff played politics above talent. They were great this go round but the rest of the world played terribly. Also no one was ready for Sylvia Fowles to break out like she did. Parker and Leslie were good, but Fowles was great, and a mix of dominance and efficiency on both ends. No one in the world can match up with her strength. Australia was caught up in their own hype and battling injuries, Spain and Russia underachieved and Brazil is in transition. It's not that the rest of the world hasn't caught up to us in women's ball because Australia won the gold in the world championships in '06 after Russia beat us and '96 was the first time the US was truly dominant. The Soviets were always better in international competition and Brazil had the best player in the world for a long time.
As far as the men are concerned, Coach K set a standard and the rest of the guys followed. The '04 team never respected Brown like this team respected K and part of it has to do with Brown treating them like idiots who needed to be taught how to play instead of coaching the talent he had. Coach K taught them without trying to belittle them and treated them like men. Also, when you have players who need to dominate the ball to be effective, you will always lose playing against FIBA-bred teams. There was minimal ball dominance by the likes of Kobe, Bron, Wade and Melo who showed that they are intelligent ball players beyond their typical do-it-all responsibilities in the NBA. The collective IQ of the guys who got serious burn on the '04 team was minimal. The guys who did have that basketball intellect had issues trusting those that didn't and after the first loss, everyone started playing Hero Ball. You didn't really see that with this team.
What you can't blame Brown for was the collective attitude and lack of professionalism from that '04 group. These guys in '08 were dedicated to representing USA Basketball in a positive light all throughout and were respectable toward the Olympic experience as a whole instead of that arrogant sense of entitlement previous USA teams had, including '00. The '08 team allowed themselves to be part of Team USA's entire community of athletes.
[Edited by - nysportsfan11 on 08-25-2008 5:40 PM]
