With the U.S. Men's Olympic Basketball Team stinking up the joint in Athens, I thought it might be good to look back two Summers ago to the immediate aftermath of the 2002 World Basketball Championships in Indianapolis -- just the place and time when the cracks in the NBA armor began to show, and I made a prediction that turned out to be dead wrong:
But make no mistake, the American athlete will learn, just like they always do. A little competition never hurt anybody. Ask yourself this question: is the NFL a better game today than it was before Doug Williams threw five touchdown passes in the second quarter of Super Bowl XXII, essentially destroying the final roadblock preventing African-Americans from getting an equal shot to play quarterback in the NFL?
After looking back at that tournament two years ago, it becomes ever more clear just how total the failure has been over at USA Basketball, the sports governing body here in the U.S.
Every lesson they could have learned was summarily ignored -- from the folks who picked the team, to the coaches who have failed to motivate the team, to a roster full of superstars who couldn't be bothered to learn the rules and intracacies of the international game.
At this point, the worst possible outcome would be to see the Americans struggle to a Gold Medal. In that event, everything we learned from the devestating loss to Puerto Rico will be forgotten -- just as the lessons from Indianapolis were forgotten.
We should be glad Puerto Rico beat us. It was just the wakeup call American basketball needed.
Nah, the World Championships were the wake up call. The Italy exhibition was the slap in the face. The Puerto Rico loss was a flying elbow off the top rope.
The lesson is simple….treat international competition as a competition, not a marketing opportunity. If USA Basketball (read the NBA commissioner) hasn’t gotten the message yet, well, that’s just sad.