USA vs Spain basketball
Today at 430pm on ESPN2, USA matches up with Spain rematch of the 2008 gold medal game in the last warmup game before the olympic games begin this weekend.. USA was battle tested sunday by Argentina. I look for the US to win another close game and be ready for the gold medal march in the next few weeks... GO USA!
I hope they sandbag this one and don't show Spain enough to help them once the games count.
... but I want to win everything all the time everywhere.
Spain is clearly the number one threat for the gold medal. Their front line of Gasol - Gasol - Ibaka/Rudy Fernandez matches up will with the US's weakness in height, rebounding and interior play. The big question will be if Jose Calderon and the other perimeter players can stand up to the US's ball pressure, which has been unreal in the couple of exhibitions I've seen. It's too bad that Ricky Rubio tore up he knee or this exhibition and the the potential gold medal matchup could be rediculously entertaining.
I laugh at the thought of the Gasol brothers trying to match up with Ewing and Robinson.Then you have Bird, Magic, and Jordan. Those three alone would see the US win by 30.
The Dream Team was the greatest team ever assembled in any sport. The thing is that it was not as good as it ought to have been.
Curious if you realize that Bird and Magic played a combined 1 season after that Olympics?
Don't discount the talent on Croatia and Lithuania.
28-26 about halfway through the second.
Three bullshit foul calls on Chandler so far.
I love that international basketball has gone the way of high priced AAU teams...I mean really Serge Ibaka is now spanish? Dude is freaking charcoal.
I wouldn't care if he'd grown up there and it was his lifelong home. But he grew up in Congo and just recently became naturalized in Spain. That's annoying.
No. Both of his parents are Congolese (one from the Republic of Congo, and one from the DR Congo). I don't think he had any connection to Spain before he moved there when he was like 16-17. Per wikipedia, he became a Spanish citizen in July 2011, just in time for the 2011 Eurobasket tournament.
Don't ever watch soccer then. There are guys from all over who play for countries they never stepped foot in until their 20s.
Also, see Chris Kaman in the 2008 Olympics.
Yeah, I know soccer is particularly rife with this phenomenon. Brazilians especially seem to become naturalized citizens of other countries regularly. I don't necessarily blame them for wanting to participate in the World Cup/Olympics, but I think it's kind of lousy for the players who actually grew up in those countries and then lose their roster spots to a ringer.
I think FIFA and FIBA should require a player to be a citizen of a country for a certain number of years before he can play for it.
I hear you and I add passion to the argument. Guys who didn't step foot on one country's soil until their 20s can't have the same passion for a country that a natural born citizen can.*
*There can be exceptions. I know Luol Deng has stated multiple times that he has a large amount of respect for being able to wear the England/Great Britain uniform. His family was exiled for politically reasons.
See above - Ibaka was only granted Spanish citizenship because they wanted him on their Olympic team. He is the Congolese version of Jon Holden, the American who went to play for the Russian team.
It will be interesting to see how this team fares and the next one. This may be the last of the "dream teams" because USA Basketball seems to be following the FIFA approach to the Olympics which de-emphasizes the Olympics (using mostly under age 23 players with a few old timers) and emphasizing the world championships (i.e. the equivalent of the World Cup), which I guess will be the FIBA world championships. The USA still has to most talent in the world but the rest of the world has really gotten better in terms of coaching, strategy and has produced individual players of great skill. Team USA is still on the level of a NBA all-star team but there are a lot of international squads who would be in the upper half of the NBA.
The concern about size is only part of the issue - it is how that size is used. There are a lot of squads who have 6-10 to 7-2 stiffs who stand there in the middle of a 2-3 zone and are about as mobile as a hat rack. It is the mobile guys who can hit 3's and the quick penetrating guards and a running style (ball in-bounded from the side lines) which worry me. This team also lacks (until proven otherwise by Lebron) that sort of hyper-competitiveness which exemplified the original dream team. It is debatable who is the best player ever, but Jordan, Magic, and Bird have got to be among the most winning obsessed trio who ever suited up on the same BB team.
Seriously? Have you followed Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant at all?
Edit - Both are generally know for being insane competitors.