FIBA Americas Championship (Olympic Basketball Qualifier)

meaningless basketball tournament? uhhh this is the olympic qualifier

 

And does that mean we are something less as a country if we don't qualify for the Olympics?
Is any basketball tournament really that important, chuck, that you and starman and others should be so upset when the US doesn't win?

 

....Commie

 

Nice way to avoid the question.

 

They should have scored 200 three or four times, and won a couple games by 100+ points. Instead, they were happy to run Chuck Daly's sludge-ball offense, average 117, and win games by 30 points.

That's where things started going wrong.

Oh yeah, selecting a completely fraudulent college ringer (Laettner) didn't help either. The second that happened, you knew they weren't really serious about sending the absolute best team possible.

 

Jeebus, starman, you do get carried away with your little "I'm a hardass" act on here. There's plenty of legitimate reasons to bash on USA basketball of the last decade, but this is the first time I've seen anyone go after the 92 team. To refresh your memory, here's a brief summary of that team's performance:

"Team USA cruised through its qualifying round with a 6-0 record. The team then took on Angola in the opening game of the Olympic competition. Barkley had 24 points in a team USA 116-48 romp. The Dream Team next took on a talented Croatia team and beat them soundly by 33 points, led by Jordan's 21. The United States team then defeated Germany behind Larry Bird's 19 points and Karl Malone's 18. In the next game, seven USA players scored in double digits and Barkley set the new single game Team USA scoring record with 30 points in a 127-83 rout of Brazil. Team USA then closed out pool play with a resounding 122-81 drumming of Spain.

In the quarter finals, Mullin scored a team high 21 points as the Dream Team scored a 115-77 victory over Puerto Rico. Team USA rolled on in the semis with a 51 point win over Lithuania. Nine US players scored in double figures. Jordan led the way in the gold medal game against Croatia, scoring 22 points. Patrick Ewing had 15. Barkley had 17. The final game was the closest of the entire Olympics, with the Dream Team winning by 32 points in a 117-85 blowout to take the gold. The high point for Croatia was a brief 25-23 lead. The Dream Team won the Olympic basketball tournament with a victory margin of 43.8 and without Coach Chuck Daly ever using a timeout."

So they breeze through with by an average margin of 43.8 points, every game was de facto over withiin minutes of tip off, and they never need to use a timeout the entire tournament, and that's NOT one-sided enough for you? You've begun to caricature yourself.

 

Actually, their closest win was the gold medal game against Croatia, winning by 32.

Whipping Venezuela and the Virgin Islands doesn't mean anything to me. When we have an undefeated Olympics, I'll be impressed. Even beating Argentina in this tournament shouldn't impress anyone.

 

Canada's best shot will be at the wild card at next year's last chance qualifier and there is talk that Nash may come back to help Canada get in...

Love the fact Jay Triano is working with the US Team. He got shafted by the Canadian team.

 

In my mind the perpetuation of the idea that the rest of the world has caught up to us in basketball is as much the fault of the NBA and USABB as it is the actual improvement of national team programs in other countries.

Since 1996 USABB and the NBA have half-assed the selection of teams for the Worlds and the Olympics and it has shown. The 2000 team was damn lucky to win the Gold in Sydney and we saw what a train wreck was assembled for Athens. The World Championship teams have been an even bigger embarassment.

There's nothing wrong with being the best in the world at something and I don't understand why we should have to apologize or feel bad about kicking the ever-living shit out of somebody on the basketball court.

The rest the world hasn't caught up to us in basketball, we've dumbed down our national teams to the point that we've regressed and made it look like these teams are better than ours. Every U.S. basketball team using NBA players should follow the same philosophy- run the other team right out of the building.

There isn't another country on this planet that can hang with us athletically on a basketball court. Press them into submission and never stop looking to break. Stop picking all-star teams and start building basketball teams.

 

Basically, Starman wanted those games to be a layup line for Team USA.

 

Sorry, Star, but your insistence that the Dream Team should have doled out your brand of justice to everyone is off the mark.

If they'd have done that to teams, you'd have read nothing for the next four years other than stories about the Ugly Americans and their utter and complete lack of sportsmanship.

At some point, you've got to call off the dogs.

 

How is playing to the best of your abilities a complete lack of sportsmanship?