the dream the team redeemed

And therein lies more of the crap I keep referring to. Holding onto this garbage that the U.S. players somehow are at fault for being housed together for 20 days and not getting it.

It had nothing to do with how they treated the competition. It had everything to do with how they were put together last minute and expected to perfrom.

There's no way to put together an off broadway show in 20 days, but we asked that of that team thinking their NBA experience on their respective teams was good enough to win the gold.

to tell me a team which lead all olympic teams in assists didn't play for each other to me sounds like someone who simply won't be moved from their talking point. It lacks complete common sense IMO. What it came down to was that they didn't have enough time together to gel....period.

 

Zag, I'm guessing the agents for these players would disagree. You don't think their ability to do ads in China and Japan and Argentina just increased dramatically in the past three weeks?

Sure, they are putting themselves at risk, but they are also getting some Euros in return.

 

I'd love to see in actual dollars when all is said and done how much this actually means in endorsements. Based on the past -- not much.

But time will tell.

And Kobe Bryant and LeBron James were international superstars before this -- so I am talking about the Chris Paul's Chris Boschs -- those kinds of players --- real dollars, what does this mean.

It is an interesting question.

 

Seriously, Chee -- when's the last time Stephon Marbury played for anybody but himself?
Has he ever?

 

There's more to the game than money, Zag. If you watched US v. Spain, you'd have seen that.

 

The "not enough time" argument is a cop-out.

The national hockey teams of all the countries involved in the Olympics have far less time than that to "gel"--less than a week.

You would never hear a hockey player, coach or manager use the excuse, "We didn't have enough time to prepare".

 

I agree -- this team played to win because there was a point that needed to be proved to the Brian Griffin's (Oh Brian, where you at) of this world. That point was proven beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt and thus there is no reason for our guys to risk their careers ever again.

 

But, Twoback, who seems to have me on ignore, these guys are earning a living.

Granted, you should play for your country, but there are other reasons.

 

In four years, which of the 2008 team will be playing in London?

Paul, Howard, Bosh (maybe), James, Williams?

It's not like too many guys will be asked again.

 

What you call a cop out I call legitmate. This '08 team if given 20 days together would NOT have won gold.

Dismiss it to your heart's content. The U.S. Basketball committee themselves saw it as a problem and corrected it. And obviously it was far from a "cop out" to them.

 

No, it's an easy way to rationalize shitty play after the fact.

And how do you know that they wouldn't have won gold ths year if they only had 20 days? I mean, that's not even proveable.

Hockey's a helluva lot more complicated sport than basketball and as I said, you'd never hear anybody involved in hockey whine about "not enough time" You do what you do in the time allotted.

It's not the length of time they're together.

It's how quickly ---and Hockey Canada is a master at this--you can bond these disparate individuals into a cohesive unit, a team where everybody is playing for the logo on the front of their jersey. You could have sixty days to put a team together and still fail if the overall philosophy is "me first".

 

How does "me first" = team with most assists? Please explain.