US Gold in Olympics or NBA championship

If a magic genie gave you a choice.. the US men's team could win the gold medal in Olympic Basketball or your favorite NBA team could win the NBA championship, which would you choose?

 

NBA championship every time.

Who cares about Olympics basketball in reality?

 

Well, the Celtics just won the title, so if USA basketball could now win the gold, it would be just peachy.

But ordinarily, I'd choose the NBA championship.

 

If the same magic genie gave you a choice of one night with Scarlett Johannson or one night with Angelina Jolie, which would you choose?

Apparently not Angola.

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/results?discId=7

 

I normally don't give two squats about the NBA, but if the local franchise won a title, it would be pretty cool, if for no other reason than I remember the days of Devin Durrant, Bill Garnett, Terrence "T-Bird" Stansbury and Granville Waiters going 20-62 on an annual basis in front of generously-announced crowds of 4,273 at Market Square Arena.

When the Miller/Smits/Mullin/Perkins/Jackson team of 2000 went to the Finals, I thought more about those awful teams of the mid-1980s and thought "how far has this team come?" I was semi-covering the team for a local suburban daily at the time, but when you stepped back, that part was pretty cool.

USA Basketball win gold? Been there, done that. Several times. That said, I've never had more fun watching basketball than watching the Dream Team in 1992. If I were a generation older, I might have said the same thing about the Bellamy/Robertson/West/Lucas team of 1960.

 

I actually didn't have that much fun watching the Dream Team, because they set the pattern of walking through games at about 60% throttle, barely breaking a sweat, a tradition which would eventually come back and bite the U.S. in the ass by about 2002.

When the decision to start allowing NBA players to play in the Olympics or FIBA tournaments came down, I was excited, I thought, "cool, this will be the Starship Enterprise of athletic competition, to boldly go where no team has gone before, to take the game of basketball higher, faster, farther than it has ever been played before, to do things no other team could ever dream of doing."

Instead, Daly and the Dream Team decided it was good enough to play at half-speed, to play just well enough to win by a comfortable score, but not hurt anybody's feelings, or to ask any of the Dream Teamers to actually play real hard. When somebody actually did (i.e. Barkley), he was immediately crucified by the (mainly American) media as an arrogant "Ugly American."

 

Holy shit, starman. They won by an average of 44 fucking points. They were fucking toying with people.
That's you're fucking idea of doing just enough to win?

 

My interest in the Milwaukee Bucks is at an all-time low, but I'd still rather see them win a title than win an Olympic gold.

 

Neither. Don't care enough about any NBA team. Don't get all excited by US winning the Olympics.

What I'd ask magic genie for is a gold medal for me in an individual track event ... either the 400, high jump or pole vault.

 

I'd want it in this trampoline shit they're showing now.

 

That would be pretty cool, too, but I prefer traditional Olympic sports.

 

I watched the games. Basically, they played Daly's sludge-ball milk-the-clock walk-it-up Pistons offense, ran a fast break about four times a game, and never ever once tried to press in the backcourt (that would have been mean and unsportsmanlike).

Of course, by that time, Bird basically should have been in a wheelchair, and Magic hadn't touched a basketball in six months, so they probably put a condition of, "OK, as long as we don't really have to play hard" on participating on the team.

And of course, there was the inclusion of the college stiff, Laettner, on the roster, as a sop for the romantics pining for the "amateur" days of Hank Iba. Once the gates were kicked open for the pros, the college players should have been told to go play in the freeway.