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raven
Posts: 22454
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Joined: 9/2/2002
Member: #316
Canada
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Team USA takes its lumps, but ...
... blowout loss to Puerto Rico fell far short of 'embarrassment'
Updated: Tuesday August 17, 2004 12:36AM
Stick a fork in them. Or maybe a trident. Here come today's probable headlines:
The Dream Is Over!
Nightmare!
Wake Up Call!
Everyone just calm down for a second. So Team USA lost. My main man Chris Sheridan from The Associated Press described it best when he wrote that the USA losing to Puerto Rico was "an upset as historic as it was inevitable."
Because really, did anyone not see this coming? Every columnist with a pulse has chimed in on this over the past three weeks, especially after Team USA lost an exhibition to Italy. Surely no one believed this team would win every game by 40 points. With the rest of the world improving exponentially, Team USA eventually was going to lose an Olympic basketball game.
And yet last night Stuart Scott tagged the loss a "national embarrassment." Right. We Americans aren't going to be able to show our faces overseas for months now! Thanks a lot, Team USA! Whatever shall we do?
I generally appreciate hyperbole, but it wasn't an embarrassment. An embarrassment would be Team USA losing by 20 points to a WNBA team. Calling a loss to Puerto Rico embarrassing is denigrating the Puerto Ricans, who nearly beat Team USA last summer in Madison Square Garden. (The only reason Team USA won that game was Ray Allen, who rained down 30 footers to keep the USA ahead.)
While it wasn't embarrassing, it was disappointing. Because our team, the team we wanted to win, lost. It's not the end of the world. They just lost, and it was to a very good team that was red hot, shooting 56 percent from the field and nailing 50 percent of their 3-pointers. Meanwhile, the only U.S. player to shoot above 50 percent was Lamar Odom, who fouled out after 15 minutes.
While we realize that Team USA could use an outside shooter or six, we can't blame the team's deficiencies on the guys who chose to play. They showed up, at least. Kevin Garnett, Shaquille O'Neal, Allen, Tracy McGrady ... all these guys watched the game from home yesterday on NBC.
But then there's Larry Brown. Those who follow the NBA have no doubt heard Brown constantly talk about playing basketball "the right way," which basically means he wants guys to pass the ball and then pass it some more, and then once more for good measure. During Game 3 of the NBA Finals, I was sitting close enough to hear Brown chew out Darko Milicic for taking a single shot out of the flow of the offense during the closing seconds of a blowout Pistons win.
That tact works in the NBA because when Brown yells at you late in a game in November, he'll still be around in May to keep you on the bench. With the Dream Team, it's one month and done. You can't accuse these guys of tuning Brown out because they never bothered to tune in.
This Olympic team needs a coach who can be fluid, who will stress defense almost exclusively and let the points come in transition, someone like Rick Carlisle or Jerry Sloan. If you don't produce, you don't play. Brown is obviously a great NBA and college coach, but for this team, he's a weird fit.
(This team also needs Ron Artest, who would give a hard foul and can shut down anyone from a point guard to a power forward. We need more guys who are working on country-and-western songs with people named Doris in their spare time. )
Before you dump dirt on Team USA's grave, hold the shovel. We lost. We play again Tuesday. If we lose every game in the tournament, I'll be embarrassed. But if we get it together and come back and win the gold -- and I never count out a club with Tim Duncan -- I'll be proud of this team.
But embarrassed? Nope. Well, unless that whole WNBA thing happens.
[Edited by - raven on 08/17/2004 03:55:08]
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8/16/2004 8:01 PM
