04/20/24
September 15, 2002
The Greatest Embarassment: Why the NBA's best should be ashamed of what happened at the World Championships
To say that the 2002 World Basketball Championships were a flop would be an understatement that Mark Twain himself would have been proud to have put into his own prose. With the top American players skipping the event, and the Expos-like attendance at American games, it is no surprise that the United States lost more than the goild medal. Where was Vince Carter and Kobe Bryant? Did they not feel the need so close to the one-year anniversary of 9/11 to give America a taste of why it is the one and only superpower in the world? No, because they are worried that they might get hurt and cost themselves precious dollars. However, this is not the main reason that we lost in Indy. The real reason we lost in Indy? Blame it on the fact that we still think that we can pick twelve top NBA players and practice for only two weeks and still think we can beat the world's best. The lack of teamwork on the American squad probably gave Dean Smith, Bobby Knight, and John Wooden indigestion. The Yugoslavia game should have been won, but the lack of cohesion let the boys from the Balkans get the better of us. So, in the one week since Yugoslavia beat Argentina for the gold, I hope those players who passed up the invite are happy that we lost the world championship in OUR game on OUR home soil. I hope that every Yugoslavian player rubs it in to every American player. We deserve every bit of trash talk from them.
posted by jasonbondshow to commentary at 12:47 PM - 0 comments