Is it time to retire Dream Team?
LONDON (AP) - Kobe Bryant was at Wimbledon on Friday, taking in the epic semifinal match between Roger Federer and Juan Martin del Potro and signing autographs between games. His day off was unscheduled, but there was really no need for the U.S. basketball team to practice when that's about all they did the night before against Nigeria.
Lucky for him, he got to see a match that meant something, two men giving it their all for country and a chance to play for Olympic gold. Not so lucky were the fans watching Bryant and his teammates play the latest mismatch of an Olympic basketball tournament gone bad.
All they got for their prized tickets was a 156-point scoring orgy that was about as competitive as a badminton match between China and South Korea.
Unlike the Chinese and South Koreans, Nigeria wasn't playing to lose. The problem was, they had absolutely no way to win.
Not against Kobe and LeBron and the rest of the NBA All-Stars, who toyed with them in the first half. Not against the so-called U.S. reserves, who poured it on even more in the second.
Men or women, it doesn't matter. The U.S. is so dominant in Olympic basketball that any game either team plays is over almost at the opening tip. Both teams will win gold medals, and both teams will win them without working up a sweat in the second half.
Twenty years after the original Dream Team was supposed to lift the basketball fortunes of countries around the world, about the only thing that has changed is that opposing players now wait until they get off the court to ask for autographs. This team may or may not be competitive with the one fronted by Michael Jordan, but it's clear that if the caliber of international play has risen in the last two decades, it hasn't risen by much.
At its best, this Olympic tournament is little more than a glorified exhibition. At its worst, it's simply a joke.
Could it be time to finally end the charade and make the Dream Teams go away forever?
NBA commissioner David Stern thinks so, floating the idea earlier this year of following the lead of soccer and making Olympic basketball an under-23 competition in 2016 in Rio. His owners don't like the time their stars need to dedicate to the international team, don't like the fact they could get injured in the offseason, and, most of all, don't like the idea they aren't making money off them in the Olympics.
It won't exactly bring parity back to the competition because even young U.S. players will almost always be better than any other country's young players. And it will take away some shoe sales - which sometimes seem to matter more than the Olympics itself.
But if the 156-73 rout of Nigeria proved anything other than Carmelo Anthony can shoot 3's (making 10 of 12 of them), it's that the Dream Team model is broken and there's no way it can really be fixed. The U.S. has figured out how to play international rules and get the stars of the NBA to commit to a common goal, a combination that pretty much makes them invincible.
In just three games here, LeBron James & Co. have outscored the competition by an average of 52 points, more than the original Dream Team did in their openers. Up next is Lithuania, a win so automatic that a $500 bet with British oddsmakers on the U.S. team would win a bettor just a dollar.
For those keeping score at home, those are 500-1 odds, which makes that game nothing more than an exhibition, too.
It has to be embarrassing to anyone who has to play them. It should be embarrassing for the Americans, too.
Coach Mike Krzyzewski did everything he could, taking Kobe and LeBron out before halftime. Kevin Durant played only 17 minutes, and Anthony was pulled after scoring 37 points - yes, 37 points - in just 14 minutes. Still, the lead continued to grow, prompting one journalist to ask Krzyzewski if the U.S. was pouring it on.
They weren't, but the Harlem Globetrotters never had to work to run up the score on the Washington Generals, either.
"We didn't take any fast breaks in the fourth quarter, and we played all zone," said Krzyzewski, bristling at the question. "You have to take a shot every 24 seconds, and the shots we took happened to be hit. I take offense to his question, because there's no way in the world that our program in the United States is ever out to humiliate anyone."
Indeed, the fault doesn't lie with anyone wearing a uniform or coaching courtside Thursday night. The Nigerians tried as hard as any team can that loses by 83 points, and the U.S. superstars weren't about to start tanking shots on the off chance that they, too, would get booted from the Olympics for not trying.
The games will get closer, if only because even the greatest players in the world can't shoot 71 percent every time out. But with Spain barely able to beat Britain and Argentina aging by the minute, the two teams that figured to stay, perhaps, within 20 points of the Americans don't pose any real threat.
The U.S will win the gold, but there won't be much to celebrate. The competition is way too lopsided, the results way too predictable.
Enjoy it as an exhibition, if you must. But the Olympics should mean more than that.
Lucky for him, he got to see a match that meant something, two men giving it their all for country and a chance to play for Olympic gold. Not so lucky were the fans watching Bryant and his teammates play the latest mismatch of an Olympic basketball tournament gone bad.
All they got for their prized tickets was a 156-point scoring orgy that was about as competitive as a badminton match between China and South Korea.
Unlike the Chinese and South Koreans, Nigeria wasn't playing to lose. The problem was, they had absolutely no way to win.
Not against Kobe and LeBron and the rest of the NBA All-Stars, who toyed with them in the first half. Not against the so-called U.S. reserves, who poured it on even more in the second.
Men or women, it doesn't matter. The U.S. is so dominant in Olympic basketball that any game either team plays is over almost at the opening tip. Both teams will win gold medals, and both teams will win them without working up a sweat in the second half.
Twenty years after the original Dream Team was supposed to lift the basketball fortunes of countries around the world, about the only thing that has changed is that opposing players now wait until they get off the court to ask for autographs. This team may or may not be competitive with the one fronted by Michael Jordan, but it's clear that if the caliber of international play has risen in the last two decades, it hasn't risen by much.
At its best, this Olympic tournament is little more than a glorified exhibition. At its worst, it's simply a joke.
Could it be time to finally end the charade and make the Dream Teams go away forever?
NBA commissioner David Stern thinks so, floating the idea earlier this year of following the lead of soccer and making Olympic basketball an under-23 competition in 2016 in Rio. His owners don't like the time their stars need to dedicate to the international team, don't like the fact they could get injured in the offseason, and, most of all, don't like the idea they aren't making money off them in the Olympics.
It won't exactly bring parity back to the competition because even young U.S. players will almost always be better than any other country's young players. And it will take away some shoe sales - which sometimes seem to matter more than the Olympics itself.
But if the 156-73 rout of Nigeria proved anything other than Carmelo Anthony can shoot 3's (making 10 of 12 of them), it's that the Dream Team model is broken and there's no way it can really be fixed. The U.S. has figured out how to play international rules and get the stars of the NBA to commit to a common goal, a combination that pretty much makes them invincible.
In just three games here, LeBron James & Co. have outscored the competition by an average of 52 points, more than the original Dream Team did in their openers. Up next is Lithuania, a win so automatic that a $500 bet with British oddsmakers on the U.S. team would win a bettor just a dollar.
For those keeping score at home, those are 500-1 odds, which makes that game nothing more than an exhibition, too.
It has to be embarrassing to anyone who has to play them. It should be embarrassing for the Americans, too.
Coach Mike Krzyzewski did everything he could, taking Kobe and LeBron out before halftime. Kevin Durant played only 17 minutes, and Anthony was pulled after scoring 37 points - yes, 37 points - in just 14 minutes. Still, the lead continued to grow, prompting one journalist to ask Krzyzewski if the U.S. was pouring it on.
They weren't, but the Harlem Globetrotters never had to work to run up the score on the Washington Generals, either.
"We didn't take any fast breaks in the fourth quarter, and we played all zone," said Krzyzewski, bristling at the question. "You have to take a shot every 24 seconds, and the shots we took happened to be hit. I take offense to his question, because there's no way in the world that our program in the United States is ever out to humiliate anyone."
Indeed, the fault doesn't lie with anyone wearing a uniform or coaching courtside Thursday night. The Nigerians tried as hard as any team can that loses by 83 points, and the U.S. superstars weren't about to start tanking shots on the off chance that they, too, would get booted from the Olympics for not trying.
The games will get closer, if only because even the greatest players in the world can't shoot 71 percent every time out. But with Spain barely able to beat Britain and Argentina aging by the minute, the two teams that figured to stay, perhaps, within 20 points of the Americans don't pose any real threat.
The U.S will win the gold, but there won't be much to celebrate. The competition is way too lopsided, the results way too predictable.
Enjoy it as an exhibition, if you must. But the Olympics should mean more than that.
Dream Team? A 99-94 win over Lithuania is a Dream Team?
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Why shouldn't we put the best in the Olympics? Every other country does. Â
I hope the "Dream Teams" are really on their way out. I've never agreed with this idea in the first place. The stars of the NBA? They are already making the big times with contracts and endorsements; how about giving the unknowns a chance so they can forge their own Olympic paths and earn their own way? Racking up scores like the Nigeria game is a complete embarrassment, like they're flaunting it in other teams' faces. Sick of all the showboating!
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They were just kicking out some badminton players for throwing games because it's not in the spirit of the Olympic Games...setting up Dream Teams of name brand players that have already proven themselves doesn't seem like Olympic spirit to me, either. People might not directly call this cheating, but it always felt like that and made me, as an American, embarrassed for our country to do this sort of thing and send a team like this out.
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Been wanting to rant about this for ages...
OMG! What a sick Liberal mind this author has. The Liberal guilt drips off his words. Let's see, should we get rid of long distance running because Ethiopians and Kenyans will dominate? This nonsense is why Liberals must not be allowed to hold political office. Yeah, let's be guilty and wreck things that work so we are fair to losers. Perfect Liberalism
Thought the Olympics were about each countries best athletes.Â
I think it's time to get the best college players and let them compete for gold.
 @robberdoos That is the way it used to be 20 yrs ago. No professional athletes. You had to know this was going to happen eventually. Pretty unfair to knock the basketball players for "competing"(such as it was) and also condemn the Chinese badminton players for what they did.
@boeman @robberdoos No, 20 years ago America was the country that had no pro players. Certainly every Communist country brought their best pros...
So what's the excuse with the 2004 team, which got a bronze medal? Almost every single one of them were professionals too. If these teams are as bad as everyone is saying, then the US still would have got gold that year regardless if they were out partying. I don't buy the statement that it's impossible for the US team to lose with professionals. Anyway, whatever.
@Hambingo In 2004 we sent our "C" team. The roster was pathetic. While it had lebron, wade, melo... Those guys were inexperienced rookies. It didn't have the 2 best players in Shaq and Kobe. Larry Brown cannot manage stars, so using him to run the show was a huge mistake and likely the #1 reason we didn't win. Our A team cannot be beaten no matter who is coaching, but since dream teams 1 and 2, it stopped being our A team. Even this year we are missing the leagues best point guard and center due to injury.
It is fun to watch them play Spain, Argentina and other teams loaded with NBA talent, but can we stop playing these pitiful teams from backwater countries who have to borrow players from the US, who couldn't make our team? I can't wait to see us play Spain and Argentina. I can promise that the Gasol bros and Calderon won't go down like that! Also, Ginobli and the Argentines gave them a run for their money a few weeks ago. I still don't see how anyone could ever beat us when we put an all star team together like this. I would however like to see them not just try to chase records against such a weak team. It looked bad!
And the Chinese women have won the gold in table tennis for every year since it was introduced into the Olympics. They should quit too. *sigh*Â
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The Olympics is about the best athletes in the world competing against one another. Certain nations may be almost absurdly dominate in any given sport, it doesn't mean they should stop showing up.
 @AesopsTables
 The Olympic Games are supposed to be a showcase of the finest amateur athletes in the world. The finest professional athletes already have a stage to shine on.Â
 @Mikeftm Again, that was 20 years ago. The Olympic Games are no longer about amateur athletes.Â
@Mikeftm @AesopsTables I thought that was the whole concept, that professional athletes could not enter the olympics as the olympics were for amatuer athletes? At least thats what I thought it used to be
 @northwestsurfer   That changed when Russia starting kicking our a$$es in the games
 @Mikeftm  @AesopsTables That would only be relevant if America was the only basketball team allowed to have professionals.
@boeman That was exactly my point.
 @AesopsTables They are not the only team with professional players. The Nigerian team had current and former NBA players. Obviously not the same caliber as the USA team. Other teams have athletes that play professionally in Europe, again, not the same caliber...
@AesopsTables
Your example doesnt work for me because, we as the greatest country in the world, should be holding ourselves to a higher standard than than China as well as the rest of the world.Â
 @jeff Agreed. We didn't need to be stealing the ball when we had a 50 point lead. They also should have stuck the only "college" kid in for 3 quarters. To let Carmelo break a record against this team should have an asterisk behind it!
You may think this unpatriotic, but I have never liked the dream team philosophy. I think when we send our professional basketball players to the olympics that it demeans the spirit of competition and sportsmanship. Clearly the games are so lopsided that the US team isnt even being challenged. I find no patriotic pride when we win by an average score of 30-40 points? This is NOT competitive. How can one be excited about this kind of win? It is like taking candy from a baby and I find myself rooting agains the US basketball team for these reasons.
 @jeff If I remember correctly, the Olympic Committee took softball out because the US team always won the gold. Maybe it's time to remove basketball and put in some sport on the par with men's sincronized diving, or badminton, or maybe I'll just go out and watch the weeds grow in my yard...
 @boeman @jeff They took out fastpitch because almost nobody but the US, Canada and Japan play it. The same can't be said about basketball. Next to soccer it is the most international sport. Girls actually make more money playing in places like Russia, Turkey and France than they make in the WNBA. Spain and Argentina have really good teams, will they beat the US? Probably not, but a team with Pao and Marc Gasol, Felipe Calderon and they should have had Ricky Rubio (who is out injured). The Argentines have Ginobili, Luis Scola and Carlos Delfino. The French have six NBA players including Tony Parker, Nicholas Batum and Ronny Turiaf. The British have Luol Deng. The Russians have Andrei Kirilenko. While none of these teams have a real chance of beating the US, the international game is getting better by the year. The more these stars play, the more kids in other countries will pick the game up, join the NBA and then go back and play for their home countries in the Olympics. The only change I want to see is to get rid of the pitiful teams like Nigeria, that are just there to get autographs from the pros after they are whooped!Â
 @jeff It was fine to do one time in '92 just to show the world that if we wanted to we could do this every year. After that...yawn!