USA Basketball Ascendant Once More
Note: This is only the first part of a book that I plan to write sometime in the near future:
Oh, how fortuitously the basketball winds blow these days! Not only are our beloved Hogs once again climbing the gilded ladder of success to reclaim glories once taken for granted, but our US basketball program appears to be poised to reclaim the United State’s rightful position as the world’s supreme basketball nation. Before I continue, let me give a quick recap of why yesterday’s selection of the pool of 23 players who will form the National Team over the next 2 and 1/2 years is so momentous.
I’d take Shaun Livingston over Ridnour, Iguodala over Bowen, and Allen over Redd. And Josh Smith over everybody - he would average 30-33 blocks a game against hokey-pokey international teams.
Word on the street is Amare is throwing down alley-oops from Nash in 5-on-5 practices.
Shaun Livingston? The boy IS talented, I’ll give him that, but he’s got to show me a little more in game-time production to warrant a US National Team spot. Plus, he doesn’t yet have the three-point range that them white boyz got.
In two years he will be the best PG in the game. He stats per 48 minutes are impressive, the coach is just intimidated by Cassell so he’s got Livingston on the bench. But your right, I know that he hasn’t earned a spot on the US roster.
Could the problem with the US basketball team be a lack of national pride or just plain apathy/complacency with international competition, rather than a simple lack of team cohesion? I mean, during the last Olympics, the Argentinians just seemed like they wanted it more. They played with real passion.
The problem with the last team was Allen Iverson, boy am I glad they got rid of him. Now we are guaranteed gold.
I don’t think it is accurate to say that Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan, et al didn’t play with “real passion” in the Olympics, especially after they were beaten by Puerto Rico and Italy and came dangerously close to becoming the first US basketball team to finish without a medal. Sure, they could have wanted it more from the outset, but once they started losing, and realized that their comp was bring some serious heat, I thought they played with a great deal of intensity/national pride. The problem was that this intensity led to an uptightness and lack of fun, quite visible out there on the court, that you may be interpreting as lack of passion. They simply weren’t comfortable with each other, or with the kinds of sets they wanted to run (b/c of the reasons I stated in my chapter), and they played “tight”. Even had the team had more cohesive parts, I think they still would have strugged because they were thrown together too quickly. This won’t happen again, thank god! Also, you will see FIRE from the Americans from the get-go this time around — because the guys will know each other much better, they’ll be having more fun, which in turn will lead to a better, flowing style of play, and we will be kicking ass left and right. I CAN’T WAIT for that first show-down with the Argentinians because I know they don’t want to relinquish their hard-earned place on top…
Daniel, your faith in this guy amazes me. I will buy Livingston as a top-5 PG in 2 years. But NUMBER 1!?!? Chris Paul is already Top 4 and is mostly likely to be there in 2 years. J-Kidd is mostly likely to fall out due to age, but Steve Nash and C-Billups will still be in their early 30’s and each have been late bloomers. Stockton played well into his early 40’s so what’s to say Nash and Billups can’t still be in the Top 3 in two years?
By the way, didn’t Joel say something about making a “Predictions” category one day? I think it would be sweet if I could mark this comment as “Prediction” in “Sports” (maybe further break it down into basketball) and have it archived somewhere on the site so we can check up on it in two years (an automated e-mail sent out to our gmails to those involved on a certain date in two years would be extra sweet, but unnecessary). We could have all types of “Predictions” — politics, music, movies, robots, how we’ll be as old people, etc. It could be a treasure trove.
I predict your archived-prediction-section won’t happen.