History repeats itself: Team USA falls into the basket

At the 2004 Athens Olympics, the US men’s basketball team received relentless praise from the Greek public. Team USA – with NBA stars like Iverson, Wade, James, Duncan, Stoudamire – suffered three losses in the tournament (Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina) and became the laughing stock of the basketball world. Americans behaved haughtily, bored and ridiculed.

In 2005, in response to this failure, USA Basketball was created, an organization whose sole purpose is to make major world tournaments understand that American basketball (women and men) should not be made fun of and that the country where the The birthplace of the sport (Springfield, Massachusetts, 1891) was also the best country basketball in the world.

USA Basketball, run by religious Italian-American sports entrepreneur Jerry Colangelo, was an instant hit. With the so-called ‘Redeem team’, Beijing 2008 played a great game: led by Kobe Bryant, the team won all the duels with an average of 27 points difference. London 2012 renewed this domination, as did Rio 2016.

Second level tournament

With American dominance on the Olympic stage, things were going well for both men and women, but there was still a small downside in the thinking of Americans. They viewed the Fiba World Basketball Association tournaments in all the intervening years as second-rate events. In 2006, they stumbled (still with James, Anthony, Paul, Wade) on Greece and especially on their own characters. The United States had to settle for bronze, Spain became the world champion, the basketball world laughed.

Colangelo, the businessman, provided a rich base for high performance sport; money was not a problem, training camps were plentiful, transportation was first class, the best staff were hired and the selected players were allowed to knit the success story.

Things got really bad with Team USA last week. Much to the astonishment of the basketball world, the Americans took seventh place at the World Cup in China after humiliating losses to France and Serbia and a miraculous break to Turkey.

What is the explanation for the bad game?

Twelve legitimate NBA players, together earning more than $ 100 million in annual salaries, have played basketball mediocre and at times seemingly selfless. Even top coach Gregg Popovich (San Antonio Spurs) couldn’t change that. When the calf drowned, Popovich was realistic: “We did not play well enough, France and Serbia were better in our confrontations”.

This mea culpa sounded (and was) quite pronounced, but was there an explanation?

Without anyone from the grand army that represented Team USA in China (four coaches on the bench, six scouts in the tournament, doctors, physiotherapists, secretaries, travel managers, cooks, equipment manufacturers) daring to say: the American players were not by no means the crème de la crème of the NBA, because almost all the big stars had scented with haughtiness this World Cup long in advance. James, Curry, Thomson, Davis, Paul, George, Leonard, Westbrook and others were too good for that.

In short: the concept of “world championship” did not correspond to their way of thinking. For Americans, the NBA was the highest stage, immediately followed by Mount Olympus, but the Fiba tournament did not attract all of these (tired) stars. Traveling too much, too long away from home, too little credit to earn, and who has played for credit these days?

Same story as Athens 2004

They canceled en masse and have so far not responded openly, with the more or less critical American press strongly criticizing Team USA’s performance: haughty, easygoing – same story as Athens 2004.

The team that Popovich was allowed to lead had a legitimate superstar in Kemba Walker and a future star in Donovan Mitchell. While Popovich rightly pointed out that under no circumstances should you mention players who weren’t there, it’s always good to consider this list. MM. Beal, Drummond, Gordon, Harden, Lillard, McCollum, Love and Lowry (all the top performers) have already thanked the first training camp for this honor: they preferred to fill their summer 2019 differently. And they were already the second screening.

While it’s not said that these guys would have played winning basketball, they seem like a much better team than they were now. And again, just like then, the rest of the basketball world was laughing on the sidelines: America came in seventh. Spain (with four NBA players on board) became world champions.

Read also :

The flip side of the gold mine called NBA

On the start of the NBA playoffs, the dark shadow of a sport that involves far too many millions. Spoiled clubs let fans down who paid $ 110 for a game with bad play from haughty players.

Mart Smeets on three basketball statues – and a retreat like John Wayne’s

The elimination of the San Antonio Spurs marked the end of a colorful era by three top players, basketball statues.