People were saying the same **** after the 2004 olympics. What happened? Lebron, Wade and Carmello will be 2 years better. This time we won't have Iverson or Marbury. blah blah blah.
i know what you mean man, this whole s h i t is bull
I think everyone is missing the fundamental point. Team USA was not built to win the World Champs. It was built to win the Olympics. Every other team has played together for years. By 2008 Team USA would have had 3 years of practices and the coaching staff will have time to put in place some actual defenses and offensive plays. Losing this tournament is probably a good thing for Team USA because now they are forced to get together again next year to play against the other american teams in the 2008 qualifiers.
I think everyone is missing the fundamental point. Team USA was not built to win the World Champs. It was built to win the Olympics. Every other team has played together for years. By 2008 Team USA would have had 3 years of practices and the coaching staff will have time to put in place some actual defenses and offensive plays. Losing this tournament is probably a good thing for Team USA because now they are forced to get together again next year to play against the other american teams in the 2008 qualifiers.
You're probably right that losing this tournament is good for team USA.
Everybody on here is reacting as if the sky has fallen OR they're reacting like the witch is dead. Every second post is fire this guy / get rid of him. LeBron is awful and so is Wade, etc....
This team wasn't built to win the World's... US Basketball has never cared about the world champs... It cares about one thing... Olympic gold. And this team is being built to win the olympics.
At the 2008 Olympics players like Billups, Kobe, Redd, etc will all be available. Dwight Howard will be 2 years better, Oden will probably be on the team. The team will be stronger inside and have better shooters outside. In two years time you will be seeing an incredibly better team and the international teams won't be an better than they are now.
Over the past 10 years, the international teams have been getting better at a phenomenal rate but that rate is starting to slow and I predict that improvement around the world will start to stagnate over the next couple of years. This improvement was based around beating the USA. Now that they've done that... Who have they got to aim at? Teams will stop basing their entire games around stopping the americans and start thinking about beating the other europeans and the argentineans...
I think the US did pretty well for a team that had not spent much time together. After the americas qualifiers next year they will be a far tighter group, a group more than ready to win gold at 2008.
3 out of these 4 players must be in the team if we want to win the gold: Michael Redd, Ray Allen, JJ Redick, Adam Morrison. Doesn't matter if you have Kobe, TMac, Lebron, Wade, Melo, Paul Pierce, or name any 'superstar' swingman here, if you don't have 3 out of those 4 players you have no chance of winning the gold. NO CHANCE.
3 out of these 4 players must be in the team if we want to win the gold: Michael Redd, Ray Allen, JJ Redick, Adam Morrison. Doesn't matter if you have Kobe, TMac, Lebron, Wade, Melo, Paul Pierce, or name any 'superstar' swingman here, if you don't have 3 out of those 4 players you have no chance of winning the gold. NO CHANCE.
False
I dont think Adam Morrison is a better shooter than Kobe. Yes im being serious. JJ would suck because Euro guards would kill him, plus would he be comfortable on the big stage making pressure shots against tough defense(check his NCAA touney stats).
I think everyone is missing the fundamental point. Team USA was not built to win the World Champs. It was built to win the Olympics. Every other team has played together for years. By 2008 Team USA would have had 3 years of practices and the coaching staff will have time to put in place some actual defenses and offensive plays. Losing this tournament is probably a good thing for Team USA because now they are forced to get together again next year to play against the other american teams in the 2008 qualifiers.
exactly. still disappointing though, especially because of the way it happened.
Ben Gordon is slowly becoming one of the most overrated players in the L.
A Gordon/Hinrich backcourt would've been an improvement over Wade/Paul or Wade/Hinrich in this tournament. Offensively Gordon would be a force in FIBA style basketball. And defensively he wouldn't be that much worse than Wade or Paul.
Then again, there's a whole list of PG/SG that would've been more ideal than what USA Basketball came up with. But that's hindsight.
