Posted by mintyfreshness33:

nice win, marbury looked amazing with AI, that was a sick ass back court. Hopefully marb and crawford can be like that. Also wasnt briggs the one that said we needed to start lebron as pg to win.

Yup; I already gloated in that thread about being right when I said we didn't need to make a change in the lineup

Olympics: Basketball NewsAdding heat
by Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
August 26, 2004
ATHENS, Greece – After the United States had all but dusted Spain 102-94, after
Larry Brown had called time out with 23 seconds remaining (he claims,
unconvincingly, by mistake), Spanish coach Mario Pesquera got in Brown's face
screaming about ugly Americans.
So Brown, not understanding a word of Spanish, went right back at Pesquera.
"You want some of me?" he screamed.
Isn't this perfect? Brown, the coach who has spent half these Olympics
complaining about how his players don't respect the game or its opponents,
causing the chaos that fuels the image of this team as big, bad Americans?
The crux of the incident was a time out Brown called with 23 seconds left and an
11-point lead. Spain took it as a classic rub-it-in-your-face move.
ADVERTISEMENT

Brown said he tried to call time out when the lead was just eight and then tried
to wave it off when the lead stretched, but the scorer's table made him take it.

"I'm still trying to teach and win the game," said Brown, who apologized for the
screw up.
Brown's explanation makes no sense at all. With 33 seconds remaining Allen
Iverson made two free throws to extend the lead to 11. Brown had not called a
time out at that point; if he had, play would have stopped. It didn't.
After Spain missed a three with 27 seconds left Stephon Marbury was fouled and
the time out was called at 23.
The time out was absolutely, positively called with the U.S. leading by 11.
Pesquera knew it.
"I had, I stress had, a lot of respect for Larry Brown," a heated Pesquera told
a postgame press conference. "Dean Smith never would have done anything like
that."
Brown, of course, played under Smith at North Carolina and reveres the legendary
coach, making that a pointed and personal shot.
"This was like a disagreement with my son," Brown said. "Sometimes he doesn't
let you explain. I tried to explain but he didn't want to hear it.
"Again, I never try to embarrass anyone."
The confrontation made for equal parts drama and comedy. It stands to reason
Team USA will play better as the villain than the hapless fading power they
seemed to be after dropping two games in pool play.
As much as Pesquera had a reason to be angry, he is a bit of a crackpot himself.

He used the postgame press conference to rail about the officiating, even though
U.S. was whistled for 10 more total fouls.
He whined that his previously undefeated team was now out of medal contention,
like he never heard of a single-elimination tournament.
He saved the best for last. "I think we were the stronger team," he said.
Hey, coach, your team just got drummed. Spare us.
In a spirited game, Brown's players hung together and played tremendously to
push the U.S. into Friday's semifinals.
They played their best game of the Olympics, shooting 55 percent from beyond the
three and riding 31 points from Stephon Marbury to the win.
"It is going to be hard to beat them if they play like that," said Spain's Pau
Gasol, who hurt Team USA with 29 points.
There is no margin of error for this U.S. team here. It has to maximize itself
to win the gold. On Thursday, they did exactly that.
They played with heart. They moved the ball (16 assists), shot well and defended
the perimeter.
"We played with a lot of emotion," said Marbury, who hit six of nine threes and
finally punished an opponent for playing zone defense. "We're growing as a team
each and every day. We've been playing against zone so much we're starting to
like playing against zone.
"We don't have any relief," Marbury continued. "The relief will come in two
games if we win the gold. We're not relaxed at all. Everyone understands that
this game is in the past."
Everyone but a still-angry Spanish coach.


Wow, what a sore loser.. heh. I dunno if Brown is lying or not, but that Spanish coach has to get over it already. It's one game elimination.. doesn't matter if you were undefeated before, cuz you aren't now =P. And as I recall USA got called for a lot more fouls, so in response to his allegation that USA were heavily favored by the refs, what is he smoking? =)

Is today's game going to be re-shown? I want to tape it

N.B.A. Millionaires Decide to Play a Little Street Ball
By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
Published: August 27, 2004

ISIAH THOMAS woke up early in New York yesterday morning to watch the United States men's basketball team play unbeaten Spain in the opening round of Olympic medal play. Thomas, the Knicks' president, felt a sense of urgency, almost as if he were playing. In some ways he was.

Thomas talked to Stephon Marbury, the Knicks' point guard, on Wednesday to pick up his sprits. Marbury was shooting horribly in the tournament - 2 for 16 on 3-pointers, 6 for 30 over all. When Marbury said his playing was awful, Thomas agreed.

"I told him he was a guy in the N.B.A. who averaged 20 points and 9 assists every night and to remember who he is," Thomas said. "These guys are playing him standing back, letting him shoot. It's an embarrassment and disrespectful to him and where we come from.

"He's better than all those guards. It's like he was in a recreation center and people are backing off him, essentially saying, 'You got no game.' I told him, 'You can't let anybody make you feel that way; in fact, you need to embarrass them for making you feel that way.' "

Marbury took Thomas's words to heart and responded with his best game of the Olympic competition and the best scoring game for an American man in Olympic history: 31 points. He made 10 of 15 shots, including 6 of 9 from 3-point range, and also had 4 assists and 2 steals. And the United States, which had lost two of its five games in the preliminary round, won, 102-94, to reach the semifinals against Argentina.

I was waiting for something like this to happen, waiting for the United States players to remove their million-dollar masks and play basketball the way they played it before they got rich: hard-edged and desperate.

Sure enough, with its back against the wall - a loss and it would have been eliminated - and after having been criticized for an array of limitations, the fourth team of American professionals to play in the Olympics reverted to street ball with refinement: no holds barred, no fouls called.

After the game, Marbury cited Thomas's words: "He said, 'Remember who you are: you ain't no buster, you ain't no dude that's out there running around passing and screening.' "

The points Marbury scored were sorely needed. But the United States set a tone for toughness on the opening play when Spain's Pau Gasol, a 7-footer who plays in the N.B.A. for the Memphis Grizzlies, went up for a dunk and Tim Duncan blocked it. The United States turned up the heat defensively and forced Spain into 10 turnovers, each at a critical juncture.

Thomas noticed the change, a sense of urgency. "Our whole demeanor as a team and a country was on edge today," Thomas said. "It was like, 'O.K., if this is what y'all want, we'll bring it.' "

The United States team might as well swagger. The fans are going to whistle and boo anyway, so the Americans might as well give them a reason.

We extol the virtues of the textbook European player who is fundamentally sound and can hit the outside shot. But the United States beat Spain at that game, too. The Americans shot 55 percent - 55 percent - from 3-point range. Spain shot 30 percent.

But the United States reverted to the text of the park: you go at me, I go at you. Hard fouls, intimidation. The Americans took the Spaniards on a tour of the inner-city United States. Marbury took them to Coney Island, where he grew up, Allen Iverson to Hampton, Va., Lamar Odom to Jamaica, Queens, and Dwyane Wade to Chicago.

The Americans pushed and shoved and dived. They blocked shots and slashed to the basket with a nasty edge that ultimately put Spain on its heels. And they had the Spanish coach whining and fans whistling their protests.

Spain didn't commit turnovers; the United States' physical play forced them. At one point Wade stepped into a passing lane and poked the ball downcourt. He outfought Juan Carlos Navarro for the ball and scored.

Later Spain had a clean two-on-one break; instead of taking the ball hard to the basket, the Spanish player tried the textbook fast-break finish of pass-pass. Marbury intercepted the pass, went down the court and hit a 3-pointer.

Spain's coach, Mario Pesquera, complained at the postgame news conference that Larry Brown's team was allowed to play too physically. Funny, nobody complained when the United States was upset by Puerto Rico and beaten by Lithuania in the preliminary round.

Thomas spoke with Brown and Marbury after those losses. "They took them hard and they took them personally," Thomas said. "We just talked about learning and getting better. Larry's gotten better, the players have gotten better. They've found a happy medium."

Looks like it. I'm not saying the United States will win the gold medal, but the gold is finally in view. It will be difficult to beat them to this loose ball.

Posted by simrud:

Typical anti-American European bias. He can go screw himself. They are just jealous of USA, ever since we saved them twice from the Germans. All of em euros and especially the French will never get over it.

You don´t save us from anybody, you just left spain forty years in the hands of a fascist dictatorship that was financed in the worst civil war of our history by the american corporations (Ford, General Electric... basically)like you did with Saddam in the 80´s or now wiht the Saudi monarchy. I can´t believe that you don´t know your own history.... By the way Brown was lying about the time out, I´m european and I don´t hate at all the U.S.A. but I know the international rules. You should understand our coach he was retired a lot of years due to health problems and in this moment,the most important game of his life,he felt betrayed about the officiating (the USa team make a lot of violations that in Europe wouldn´t be allowed).

Congratulations for your victory.