Tue 17 Aug 2004
The Olympics are in full swing, and I have been trying to watch as much as I can stomach. Unfortunatly, it seems that NBC and their affiliates seem to want to make the experience as difficult as possible. Although they insist on only showing Americans and American teams, the various announcers seems to delight in talking them down and pointing out every mistake, even when they were doing well.
That said, it was so sad over the weekend to see the USA basketball team get whipped at the hands of Puerto Rico. Not that it was a surprise after seeing them struggle during tune-up games with Italy and Germany. I know that some have said that it’s unfair to criticize the players on the team because they were the ones who actually bothered to show up for the games, as opposed to the rest of the the NBA ’superstars’ who were too busy ‘resting’ during the off-season. And certainly a true All-Star team would have an easier time.
I’ve also heard others predict doom and wish for the return of college players in the Olympics because, in theory, they would be more motivated to win.
But it seems that those are mostly misguided. The current state of the NBA game is so poor and this is just an indication of this failure. Returning to college play will not be successful either, because the college game is being trashed as well. Any time the first round of the NBA draft is dominated by high school players, then college recruiting is moot. If someone stays in school more than two years, then we hear how they are hurting their draft chances. So we end up with a bunch of people who can dunk the ball, but rarely know how to shoot or play defense. In fact, playing defense is really not good because if you keep someone else from getting a dunk in the clear, then they might do the same to you. So no one knows how to shoot or play as a team, because no one plays as a team anymore.
So this is not a failure of these players… they are playing exactly as they normally do. So sad.
