Ghost of Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Originally posted by Kilmer17 I dont doubt that's why some people are rooting against them. It's wrong though to lump all in that category. But wouldnt those same people also root against the track team? And most football teams? This is why I think even Whitlock doesnt go so far as to say that it's all. You have your reasons, and flawed as I believe them to be(that's part of why i'm arguing with you, no longer about the racial element) but I've heard some strange things and some strange comments from people that only point to one thing. Hell, there's a guy on Lith's team who was in jail(not accused, JAIL) for a GANG RAPE! But it must be the young blacks that are criminals. That Tim Duncan, what a thug! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kilmer17 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Duncan is one of the guys I like and root for. Why? Because I love the way he plays the game. He's always in the right place and is always a team first guy. I dont hate guys like Iverson because of their offcourt personas. I hate them for the way they play the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sir Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Yeah, our players were just born better athletes and more talented basketball players. They didn't have to work for it at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kilmer17 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 "Yeah, our players were just born better athletes and more talented basketball players. They didn't have to work for it at all." Who made this claim? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The X-Factor Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Interesting acrticle on ESPN.com By Jason Whitlock Special to Page 2 I must've missed the memo -- the memo that went out to the red-blooded American sports public and explains exactly when it became OK to throw patriotism out the window and openly root against a U.S. Olympic team. Yeah, I didn't get that memo. I'm wondering what was in it. Did it mention Allen Iverson by name? Did it have stipulations about the number of tattoos acceptable on an Olympian? Was there a cornrows clause? Or was the memo just straight and to the point? Americans do not have to support a group of black American millionaires in any endeavor. Despite the hypocritical, rabid patriotism displayed immediately after 9/11, it's perfectly suitable for Americans to despise Team USA Basketball, Allen Iverson and all the other tattooed NBA players representing our country. Yes, these athletes are no more spoiled, whiny and rich than the golfers who fearlessly represent us in the Ryder Cup, but at least Tiger Woods has the good sense not to wear cornrows. The memo must've read something like that. That's the only explanation for the near-universal hatred of our Olympic basketball team. Oh, you can hide behind a bunch of other excuses. You don't like the NBA style of play (which I don't). You're rooting for the underdogs. Shaq and Kidd and K.G. declined an invitation. The selection committee picked the wrong team. There are a million excuses, some of which might legitimize a teeny bit of hostility toward USA Basketball. But there's no reasonable justification for the out-and-out hatred of Larry Brown's squad. There's no reasonable justification for the sheer delight that many red-blooded, patriotic Americans are taking from the USA's struggles. In a poll on Page 2's Daily Quickie on Monday, 54.1 percent of the approximately 20,000 respondents said they wanted to see the USA team lose, and another 19.9 percent said they "kind of" would like to see it lose. I've sat on my radio show the past two weeks and listened to alleged patriot after patriot ***** about and shred Team USA and openly admit they want the team to lose. One guy, who identified himself as a former member of the American military, said he hates Team USA because the team doesn't "represent the America he fell in love with." I asked him to describe the America he fell in love with, and he said, "it was a country you could walk the streets without worrying about being mugged." So there once was a time when a man or woman could walk the streets without worrying about a wild gang of NBA players whacking them over the head with a bottle and taking their wallet or purse? That must've been a glorious time, because you can hardly go anywhere these days without looking over your shoulder wondering whether Tim Duncan or Stephon Marbury is stalking you. I know it's dangerous to make too much of the sentiments expressed by talk-radio callers. But they speak for somebody. Monday evening I wore my Team USA jersey to the Rams-Chiefs game. As I walked to the stadium, people laughed at me and my jersey and several people made disparaging comments about our basketball team. If this team doesn't win the gold medal (they beat Spain Thursday to advance to the semifinals), I half expect Americans to spit on Iverson, Duncan, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony at the airport. We haven't fielded a team this unpopular at home since Johnson and Nixon sent Team USA into Vietnam. This is ridiculous, and it hints at a much larger issue. Someone call Johnnie Cochran and have him send over "The Card" -- the race one. This team is being discussed unfairly in the media and being treated unfairly by American sports fans. There's a lot of convenient denial going on. No one wants to deal with the truth because they're having too much fun blasting a bunch of black millionaires for being lazy, unpatriotic and stupid. With the exception of adding the word "millionaires," this is a very familiar tune. It's just more denial. The truth -- and what needs to be discussed -- is that African-American basketball players no longer have a lock on the game. The rest of the world has caught up, at warp speed. The game has been exported and redefined in superior fashion. Go ask the folks up in Canada what the Soviets did to the game of hockey. Don Cherry can tell you all about the Red Army team whipping Canadian and NHL fanny on bigger rinks with faster, more creative skaters. It was 1972, and Team Canada -- the best Canadian-born NHL players formed into a Dream Team -- took on the Soviet Union team, which had pretty much dominated international play since 1954. It was called the Summit Series -- eight games between the world's two hockey powers. The Soviets won the first game 7-3 and led the series 3-1-1 before the Canadians rallied to win the last three games -- all by one goal -- to win the series. Paul Henderson scored a goal with 34 seconds to play in Game 8, or the series would've ended in a tie. One of the reasons Team Canada eventually prevailed is that the bigger, stronger Canadians began to resort to cheap shots and thuggery on the ice. Several Canadian players later admitted they were embarrassed by what they had to do to sneak past the quicker Soviets. A Canadian newspaperman had to eat his entire newspaper because he'd promised to do it if Phil Esposito, Stan Mikita, Ken Dryden and Co. lost a single game in the series. Canadians invented hockey in the late 1800s, and once dominated it the way African-Americans dominate basketball. Eastern Europeans reinvented the game and made up nearly 70 years of hockey experience on the Canadians in just two decades. Sound anything like what we're witnessing on the basketball court? Eastern Europeans introduced finesse, speed and creative passing to hockey. No longer could you just dump the puck into the zone and maul the guy in the corner. You had to play the game. The Canadians weren't stupid and lazy. They were just slow to adjust to a new, superior brand of hockey. "Back then, we thought our way was the only way to play hockey; and we found out it wasn't," American Ken Morrow, one of the heroes on the 1980 Miracle on Ice Olympic team, told me Wednesday. "The NBA is kind of going through that right now. Hockey went through it in the 1970s and '80s. The NBA should look at what we went through and learn from it." Morrow, the current director of pro scouting for the New York Islanders, played 10 years in the NHL. He vividly remembers the 1972 Summit Series. "You talk to people in Canada, and they'll tell you the Summit Series was like a national emergency," Morrow said. "It really shook the heart and soul of the Canadians." The similarities between hockey and basketball and the impact that international play is having on the games is indisputable. The high rounds of the NHL draft now favor European players. The NHL in the 1970s celebrated the Philadelphia Flyers' Broad Street Bullies approach, which included beating people up. The game was played at a slow, boring, defensive pace. Does that sound anything like today's NBA? "The skill portion of the game [hockey] is viewed as being superior by the Europeans," Morrow said. "But when it comes to character and heart and competing, it's still the Canadians and the American players. Just look at the top scorers in the NHL the last few years -- seven or eight out of 10 are European." Doesn't that sound like Dirk Nowitzki vs. Ben Wallace? The international style of basketball play is superior to the American game, particularly the NBA game. The wide lane, shorter 3-pointer and prevalence of zone defenses limit the effectiveness of the NBA's two-man game. You can't have three guys stand on one side of the court and talk to Spike Lee while your two best players go two-on-two on the other side. It's boring, and it doesn't work in international play. It's also foolish and arrogant to believe that we can throw a team together that can take on the world in two or three weeks. We can't do it. Even if we had Shaq and Kidd and K.G., our team would need time to prepare. We obviously need role players.What bothers me most are the charges that Iverson and Co. aren't trying and don't care. First and foremost, they do care and they are trying. They're competitors. They know what's at stake. They don't want to be ripped at home. But do they care about the Olympics the way Michael Phelps does? No. And we shouldn't expect them to. American basketball players don't spend their childhoods dreaming about playing in the Olympics. Their goal is the NBA. For swimmers and track athletes and gymnasts, on the other hand, the Olympics is the pinnacle. If there was a professional swimming league that would make Phelps filthy rich, I guarantee he'd dream of making that league more than he dreamt of making the Olympic team. Phelps might even turn down a spot on the Olympic team, if it interfered with his professional swimming offseason. Once every four years, Phelps and Carly Patterson and Justin Gatlin get an opportunity to strike it rich. They go all out. Don't romanticize it. They're chasing money -- endorsement opportunities -- just like the NBA players. Phelps, Patterson and Gatlin might be more cooperative and gracious with the media during the Olympics because they only have to deal with us once every four years. We don't know how they'd react if they were forced to talk to us every day almost year round. The criticism of USA Basketball is borderline racist, is definitely unsophisticated and exposes a lot of super patriots as hypocrites. Allen Iverson is wearing our jersey -- our red, white and blue -- and playing the game the way we taught him to play it. We owe Iverson support when he's representing us abroad. Save the hatred for when he's back home skipping Sixers practices and boring us to death playing a two-man game with Glenn Robinson. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sir Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 What do you hate about Iverson's game? Carrying his team to the finals, winning scoring titles, winning league MVP? It's not about how you play the game, it's about getting it done on the court(winning). Tim Duncan clearly plays the game better than anyone else, and that's why he's the best. That doesn't mean people should be condemned because they don't play as well as Tim Duncan. If thats the case then 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999% of people should be hated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost of Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Oddly enough, I was disgusted by Whitlock for a Tillman-related article he wrote. THAT SAID, when I think someone is on target, I think they're on target. That's it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kilmer17 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 I hate that he has no idea what the concept of team is. I hate that he guns it 100 times a game and the world is impressed that he scores 40 points. Why am I not allowed to hate him? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sir Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 You can hate him, I hate Antoine Walker. There's nothing wrong with it, I just don't understand how you could hate the way someone plays basketball so much that you'd actually root against your own country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbooma Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Originally posted by Kilmer17 I hate that he has no idea what the concept of team is. I hate that he guns it 100 times a game and the world is impressed that he scores 40 points. Why am I not allowed to hate him? don't you think hate is to strong a word to use here, you make it sound like he did something to his family is it his fault people pay him to play bball?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KingJeremy Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 If anything, it's more cultural than racial I think. The current crop of NBA players was raised in the shadow of Michael Jordan who made it inherently cool to lower your shorts (not necessarily a bad thing), make as much money as humanly possible off the court via endorsements and such, and be on ESPN every night of the season. Now, we all know MJ was about more than all that, as he had a love of the game and drive to compete as fierce as any that ever was. The current crop doesn't get that. And just because the league is dominated by african-americans doesn't mean it's a problem limited to them. Jason Williams anyone? Remember Cherokee Parks and all his ridiculous tatoos? Emphasis is no longer on the game and on fundementally sound basketball, but on advertising one's self. That's the culture of the NBA game now. And that's a problem that's inter-racial. Now, I obviously don't want the USA to not medal in this Olympics. It's Team USA. I want them to win in spite of themselves. But I can't help but think that this tournament has to be a wake-up call to the NBA and future players to develop the skills and mental competativeness that their icons embraced, and that the rest of the world has embraced... Jer Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kilmer17 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Not just 1 guy. But the majority. I hated a couple of guys on the Hockey team in 02 but still rooted for the US. I hated Brian Mitchell and Deion Sanders when they were on the Redskins but still rooted for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kilmer17 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Youre right, hate is the wrong word. I dont hate them. I hate the way they play the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sir Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Why'd you hate Brian Mitchell? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kilmer17 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 I hated the way he played and acted on the field. Search the archives and you'll find dozens of threads with me displaying my hatred for ****ell. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbooma Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Originally posted by Kilmer17 Youre right, hate is the wrong word. I dont hate them. I hate the way they play the game. I can live with that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Renegade7 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 They represent this country, and well, I live in this country. How can I root against them? GO USA!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hitman56 Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 I think you can legitimately root for Team USA to lose in order to make the selection committee realize that they can't just put a team of all stars out there to sell more jerseys. The only way to make them understand that they can't base the Olympic basketball team on marketing is if they don't win the gold. The NBA has long been much more concerned with making money than doing what is best for the game and they must be stopped. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
miragv Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Originally posted by Kilmer17 Im rooting against them. If somebody wants to leap and call me a racist, then they are an ignorant fool. Exactly what I feel, that article is idiotic. I am far from a racist and I am rooting against them, i want a bad showing to be a wakeup call to USA bball. I dont care if the whole team is black or white, that doenst factor into my decision to root against them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ghost of Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 so losing two games in Olympic play isn't enough of a bad showing to you? You think they don't already get the picture? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pr11fan Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 I for the life of me will never understand how an American could pull against anyone representing the US in the olympics. I mean did you people root against the skins when they signed Darrell Russell last year, he's guilty of far worse than anyone on the olympic team. If we got TO or Corey Dillon or Moss would you hate the skins b/c of the players on the team. It ain't about the players it's about the uniform and to quote the movie miracle, "the name on the front is a hell of lot more important than the one on the back." Dislike the members of the team all you want but they still represent your country. My :2cents: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The X-Factor Posted August 26, 2004 Share Posted August 26, 2004 Originally posted by pr11fan I for the life of me will never understand how an American could pull against anyone representing the US in the olympics. I mean did you people root against the skins when they signed Darrell Russell last year, he's guilty of far worse than anyone on the olympic team. If we got TO or Corey Dillon or Moss would you hate the skins b/c of the players on the team. It ain't about the players it's about the uniform and to quote the movie miracle, "the name on the front is a hell of lot more important than the one on the back." Dislike the members of the team all you want but they still represent your country. My :2cents: Great post. If you don't like the players, just don't watch it. The style will probably never change. It has worked up and until now and it is still working now. We might not have had as much success in this tournament an in the past, but the system still works. If the team was built with role players, this team woukld have rolled easily to gold. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSteve Posted August 27, 2004 Share Posted August 27, 2004 Originally posted by Kilmer17 Duncan is one of the guys I like and root for. Why? Because I love the way he plays the game. He's always in the right place and is always a team first guy. Is that the freaking reason he wouldn't step out on screens during the lithuania game and in others that caused the opponent to hit 3's that came back?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afkidd Posted August 27, 2004 Share Posted August 27, 2004 so...did they suck on purpose in the first couple of games? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Sir Posted August 27, 2004 Share Posted August 27, 2004 Originally posted by afkidd so...did they suck on purpose in the first couple of games? No, but they sure stepped it up today Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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