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| By Jerry Dowling |
One week into this round of Olympics, the United States men's basketball team already lost as many games as it had lost in the previous history of the Olympics combined. A bad development for the USA? Not really. A great development for basketball? What could be better?
Basketball is taking over the world. Other than China's emergence as an athletic superpower, parity in international basketball is the most significant message these games have sent to the World of Sports. The news isn't that the USA hoop squad is dysfunctional so much as that the USA can't win with a dysfunctional hoop squad.
That sixth place finish for the United States at the World Championships a couple of years ago raised eyebrows, but not enough to predict decline lasting into these Olympics. Then again, who could have predicted that so many top American players would decline the Olympics, leaving USA Basketball to scramble together a team and hope the other national teams wouldn't notice the difference?
The United States can't fake it anymore, and that's largely because America's basketball people have so effectively exported this American creation. In the last 30 years or so, it isn't at all uncommon for college teams and pro people to barnstorm the globe, put on clinics and share the game with all who want it.
Some youth in the rest of the world attend school now at basketball academies, emphasizing player development by fitting it in with general education. Coaches in other countries have cycled through two or three generations schooled in the fundamental play learned from American missionaries. International basketball parity really is a bow to the Americans.
We might join the chorus complaining that these Olympics are a chastising of the U.S. players for ignoring those fundamentals, but that's an easy enough fix. The happy story here is that basketball has arrived to where no other sport has ever been, as a truly international game played well on every continent. Just more than a century after Dr. Naismith nailed up the first peach basket, his game is the first team sport to go all the way.
The rest of the world has soccer, a relatively minor spectator sport in the United States. As everyone knows, baseball is the American game, so American that no other nations of predominately Caucasian persuasion play it very well, if at all, though it's caught fire in Asia and Central America.
American football is taking baby steps in Europe. People like the game, but the logistics are a burden and they're already spending their money on soccer tickets. As far as ice hockey goes, it already feels like a stretch that a Florida team just won the Stanley Cup.
In contrast, basketball is so international that one dismisses the popular idea that the U.S. Olympic team's dull fortunes somehow reflect poorly on the NBA player. Blame the American players who sat out the Olympics, but don't blame the NBA player, because he might not be an American.
A good many of the top NBA stars couldn't represent the United States if they wanted to. The U.S. Olympic team couldn't have selected Yao Ming of China, Tony Parker of France, Manu Ginobili of Argentina, Dirk Nowitski of Germany, Pao Gasol of Spain or a good number of other foreign-born players who learned the game at home and brought their best to the top basketball competition in the world.
Obviously, the United States could have put together a national team more naturally acclimated to the international style of basketball, but that could involve bringing in American players working in other parts of the world. The point has been made that former Duke star Trajan Langdon, now playing in the Euroleague, could have been just the sharp shooter America needs to combat these zone defenses that are making the Americans look silly.
Up until now, though, who would have thought the players we're shipping to Europe would be our best hope of winning the Olympics? As most would agree, the NBA players, on the face of it, are better players. And that's absolutely right, if we're talking about the NBA game.
But every American basketball fan already knows the NBA game is only a species of basketball. One of basketball's beauties is the elasticity of the rules. Change the rules, and you significantly change the game.
Just the flavors of American basketball are varied enough to illustrate the difference. You have the high school game with no shot clock, the college game with a slightly extended three-point shot and a shot clock, then the NBA game with its further extended three-point stripe, shorter shot clock and zone defenses that have only recently been legalized.
Add to that mix the international game, with wide lanes that mitigate the force of a big man playing under the basket. Suddenly, NBA players are going against zone defenses, which they rarely see. The United States team, lacking a legitimate chance to prepare for the Olympics, simply doesn't know what to do.
We wouldn't be talking about this, of course, if USA Basketball had just put a couple decent perimeter shooters on the team or if the shooters on the original squad hadn't declined the Olympics. We wouldn't be talking about this if the team practiced together for a couple months instead of 10 days.
But that's kind of the point. NBA players no longer can assume that it doesn't matter if they don't play. USA Basketball, a panel mostly consisting of NBA executives who pick the team, can't just throw a bunch of players out there.
USA Basketball needs to be more careful either about grooming a team for the international game or at least glomming together coaches and players who are better suited for each other than a tired Larry Brown and his fundamentally challenged squad averaging 23.5 years old. Brown, busy coaching the Detroit Pistons to the NBA championship until the end of June, evidently involved himself little in the selection of this team, and it shows.
Because this flailing men's team is composed of professionals, it's widely assumed that the inclusion of professionals is to blame for the poor U.S. performance. But that can't be true. Tim Duncan is a pro, as is the often-vilified Allen Iverson, who ought to be granted a big pile of slack for lacing them up and trying to make sense of this effort while his sainted contemporaries sit it out.
All that's really happened here is that USA Basketball didn't understand the extent of effort needed to succeed internationally in this new world. Now we know this is going to take a lot more ingenuity and a lot less star tripping.
Tryouts, rather than invitations, would draw players with more invested in the team. It might come down to college players, but the U.S. can put together a good national team with pros who aren't necessarily NBA quality so long as they're oriented to international rules, put in a legitimate amount of practice and play a reasonable number of games together.
One way or another, U.S. bucket brains need to see a bigger game. Basketball might have been born in America, but it is, as of today, a full-grown citizen of the world. The same people who might claim that as a victory now must face it as a challenge.
contact bill peterson: letters@citybeat.com
