read this, the USA is really a sick country right now...a mix of third reich and stalinism...
Quote:
The Nation -- As the 2006 world championships begin this week in Japan, USA Basketball is the Joe Lieberman of the sports world: defeated and desperate, using every means to claw back toward relevance. They don't have much to build on: In the 2002 world championship, the former goliaths of the hoops universe stumbled to a sixth-place finish. At the 2004 Olympiad in Greece, they won the bronze medal but suffered more losses than the team had in its entire Olympic history.
It's understandable that Jerry Colangelo, managing director of USA Basketball men's team, and coach Mike Krzyzewski are now pulling out every trick to turn things around. This year's team is rich in talent with the potential to win gold, but they're greener than a Minnesota banana. Featuring young superstars like LeBron James, Dwight Howard and Dwyane Wade, the starting lineup may end up being on average younger than 23.
With such a raw squad, Colangelo and Coach K are understandably striving to develop team cohesion and unity. But their methods are both disturbing and worthy of criticism. As Colangelo explained to Chicago Tribune columnist Sam Smith, "Coach K and I were having dinner last summer and talking about ways to connect this team with America. We talked about engaging ourselves (with the military): 'Can this become their team? America's team?' It seemed like a natural." The two brought in people like Arizona Republican Senator John McCain and celebrated soldier Col. Robert Brown to speak about how, Smith wrote, "the military, like a basketball team, requires a unified, unselfish approach."
It is not surprising that Coach K loved the military angle. He's a graduate of West Point who led the Army squad for five years. And there is nothing new about coaches using the language of war to inspire a winning team. But how does "engaging with the military" translate in these troubled times? It means that Colangelo and Krzyzewski have brought out soldiers maimed and crippled by the war in
Iraq to inspire their "troops" in high-tops. This has included Capt. Scott Smiley, who is now blind after a Mosul suicide car bombing sent shrapnel into his brain, and another, Sgt. Christian Steele, who had part of his hand blown off. As Smith wrote, "It was a more than subtle message that playing with 'USA' on your jersey means a lot more than trying to win a medal. And it seems to have produced the desired effect of breaking down individual team loyalties and more quickly uniting this American team."
The team, reportedly, was moved to tears. But there is something unnerving about these motivational tactics.
Etan Thomas, the power forward/center for the Washington Wizards, saw the military presentation on NBA TV and knew in his gut that it was wrong. He said to me, "I don't have a problem with the troops talking to the players on their own. But for them being brought in to build a better basketball team just feels wrong. If I was there, my reaction would have been completely different. The fact that...Scott Smiley has lost his sight would not have made me feel patriotic pride. It would have made me feel ashamed, angered and saddened that this soldier was blinded at the service of a war we shouldn't have been in in the first place."
To use a deeply unpopular war from which, according to a recent Zogby poll, 72 percent of troops want to escape, and using the injured for public relations purposes, feels more like exploitation than motivation, especially when spearheaded by Jerry Colangelo. Colangelo once owned part of the NBA's Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks. Currently, he's chairman and CEO of WNBA's Phoenix Mercury, and he also has aspirations that extend beyond a gold medal in Beijing in 2008. Colangelo has been pouring his money into efforts to strengthen ties between Republican politics and the religious right. He was a deputy chair of the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign in Arizona, and Colangelo's deep pockets contributed to what is called the Presidential Prayer Team, a private evangelical group that claims to have signed up more than 1 million people to drop to their knees and pray daily for Bush. During the election summer of 2004, as Max Blumenthal has reported, Colangelo bought ads on 1,200 radio stations urging listeners to pray for the President.
Colangelo has never been shy about using sports to project his politics. On April 5, 2003, he designated the Phoenix Suns' contest against Minnesota Arizona Right-to-Life Day.
The former Diamondbacks CEO also helped launched a group along with other baseball executives and ex-players called Battin' 1,000, a national campaign that uses baseball memorabilia to raise funds for Campus for Life, the largest antichoice student network in the country. Battin' 1,000 stands against all abortions, even in the case of incest or rape. Its motto: "Pro-life--without exception, without compromise, without apology."
Colangelo has a fellow political traveler in Mike Krzyzewski. Coach K is a longtime Republican donor who made waves when he hosted a 2002 fundraiser for North Carolina senatorial candidate
Elizabeth Dole at the university-owned Washington Duke Inn. His group, to the consternation of many non-Republican faculty and students, was called "Blue Devils for Dole."
In addition to their politics, Colangelo and Coach K have something else in common: There is no published evidence that either ever served in combat. They might have gained a different perspective on the meaning of sports and war had they actually suffered the pain, boredom, fear and death of a live battle.
One injured veteran Colangelo and Krzyzewski didn't bring in was Army Specialist Danielle "D-Smooth" Green, who lost her hand in a grenade attack on a Baghdad police station. She would have been particularly appropriate as a motivator for USA Basketball because in college she was also the starting point guard for Notre Dame. But Green told reporters from her hospital bed in 2004, "They [the Iraqis] just don't want us there.... I personally don't think we should have gone into Iraq. Not the way things have turned out. A lot more people are going to get hurt, and for what?"
That question still hasn't been answered. Maybe Colangelo hopes that with all the exciting basketball to watch, we just won't get around to asking it.
wow, this guy has posted this twice now...here was my response to the other thread in which he said the players making salutes was propoganda and disrespectful to the japanese and the world:
First of all, the salute had nothing to do with being disrespectful to anybody. It was started in Vegas when some military orginazation collaborated with USA basketball to get troops to the games. It was a sign of respect for those millitary members.
Your talking about taking politics out of the game, and yet you're the one interpreting these salutes as political guestures in support of the war in Iraq. Have you ever considered your own bias in this matter? Your obviously not an American as evidenced by your archaic spelling of the word behavior, so you automatically assumed this was some arrogant american stunt designed to assert our superiority over other nations. Do you not seperate the human being who is a member of the millitary from the United States' foreign policies? Whether or not the players supported the war (which i doubt they did), almost all of us in America don't mind supporting the troops who risk their lives.
And if you want to talk politics, consider this. The two atomic bombs that were dropped in Japan saved many more lives than they destroyed. Do you know how many more people would have died if we had invaded Japan? The Japanese didn't beleive in surrender, and it would have meant total annihalation to win through a land invasion. Insulting the japanese? You do know they honor the millitary even more fervently than most in america? You do know they have shrines which celebrate WW2 war criminals? You do know they don't learn about the horrors of WW2 in school (specifically the rape of Nanking and other Japanese attrocities) like we learn about the dropping of the Atom bomb and the human suffering it caused?
As for your article's narrow-minded assault on the quality of USA basketball, I admit that the US didn't play as well as a team as Greece, and thats why we lost. But to say that the nation who has won more Gold medals than any other has nothing to build on exposes the anti-american theme and further purpose that this article has of unmasking some right-wing millitary plot to associate the military and basketball for political goals. Thats bull**** and deep down you know it. Deep down you know your just angry about the war in Iraq and your using this message board as a way of attacking not only America's foreign policy but also the integrity of our national basketball program. How are you any less guilty of spinning basketball and politics together than your article alleges that Collangelo and Coach K are?
I think you feel hurt that the US hasnt acknowledged the skill of International basketball as a whole, so you're attacking our players and calling them arogant. Well guess what, we've caught on that we can no longer just send an all-star team and expect to dominate. Thats why we actually put together a program this time like other nations have had since the beginning.
Team U.S.A had 3 weeks to prepare for this tournament, and I think we did well considering that fact. Did you not see Carmelo and Coach K repeatedly complimenting the great play of Greece in that game?
Please, if you have a problem with the Iraq war go into the off-topic section and post away. But this farfetched biased reach at connecting politics to basketball was transparent and misguided.
read this, the USA is really a sick country right now...a mix of third reich and stalinism...
and now that i think of it...if the US was such an authoritarian country how would I be able to express myself so freely in this forum? Why wasn't your message censored? You sensationalist bastard.
USA basketball was just another propaganda tool
