Redeem Team

On 8-8-08 (in China, 8 is considered a lucky number) the Beijing Olympics will begin.  In between the 400,000 sports I've never heard of before, some basketball games will be played.  Enter the Redeem Team.

In 1992, there was the Dream Team.  For the first time, professional basketball players were allowed to play in the Olympics.  That team won its games by an average of about 40 points en route to a gold medal.

How the mighty have fallen.  In Athens (2004) a group of spoiled, arrogant multi-millionaires represented the United States.  Carmelo Anthony guaranteed a gold medal.  When they lost to Puerto Rico, LeBronze James said it wasn't the end of the world.  Then they lost to Lithuania, and they barely made it into the medal round as the last seed in the tournament.

The team that really had the right to be pissed off at this turn of events was Spain.  Along with Argentina and the USA, they were one of the gold-medal favorites, and they were the top seed in the medal round.  The top seed's reward is to play the lowest seed in the opening round.  Sounds fair, since that should be the weakest team in the tournament.  Except in this case, the last seed was the underachieving, but extremely dangerous Team USA.

Worse yet for Spain, the Americans had finally found a sense of urgency, and for once they woke up and played the kind of basketball they are capable of.  Spain was one and done, out of the tournament in the opening round with no chance to win a medal.  Then Team USA reverted back to form, and lost to Argentina in the semi-finals.  They managed to win a bronze medal, and they were very lucky to get that.

Typically Team USA is a collection of all-stars who spend two or three weeks playing together before the Olympics.  Their talent and athleticism has always been so much better than the rest of the world that they could get away with just about anything.  As Inspector Clouseau would say, "Not any more!"

The American team never bothered to learn that the international game is different, never listened to their coaches, knew how to play against zones, or that the international game is more physical, and so on.  It isn't much of a stretch to say theworst guy on the American team is better than the best player on anyone else's team.  And still they lost (three times.)  Prior to 2004, the American basketball team had lost two (2) games in Olympic competition, and in 2004 alone, they lost three.

Now they have a pool of roughly two dozen players who made a three-year commitment in 2005 to play together in the off season, and earn the right to represent their country.  They didn't get off to a good start.  In 2006 they lost the world championship to Greece.  Greece!  Unlike most other countries, there aren't any NBA players on the Greek team.  I didn't even know Greece had a national basketball team.  But they beat the Americans, so this year Team USA had to play in a qualifying tournament just to make it to the Olympics (and they deserved to, just because they lost to Greece.)

But Team USA is in China now, and much as I know better, I am picking them to go undefeated throughout the Games, and win the gold medal.  Why?  Because this time they're prepared, and if they lose again, there will be no excuses.