Don’t Diss the Effort

It's an embarrassment.

How could this happen?

National pride just went down the drain.

This is exactly what I expected.

Those are just some of the statements people are saying and thinking after the U.S. basketball team's result on Saturday. The squad may have won the bronze medal, but they lost a lot of support in the process.

Seriously, is a bronze that bad? Yes, I know. Basketball is a U.S. sport, born and bred. The game's most talented players still grow up here. Plus, the coach just became the only one to ever win both the NCAA and NBA championships.

However, there is one point I'd like to make. Have you seen the NBA lately? First of all, there seem to be more foreign names and backgrounds at the draft than inside the U.N.

Peja Drobnjak, Manu Ginobili, Darius Songaila, Carlos Arroyo are all pro ballers here. Yet they understand the concept of playing as a cog in the overall machine of their home country's team. Second, the NBA offers a more slowed-down, man-to-man, one-on-one style of play. You want the international game, look to the U.S. college scene. Up-tempo, deadly shooting, and room for "zone-out" defense. It's something that the American players couldn't adjust to, at least in the short period of time together.

When you take a step back, the losses aren't so bad (okay, maybe Puerto Rico was a little too much). You can't sneeze at losing to gold-medal toting Ginobili and his Argentinean mates. The Dream Team couldn't stop the shooting effort of Lithuania, led by former Maryland sharpshooter Sarunas Jasikevicius and the aforementioned Songaila. Then again, Team USA got the last laugh, beating the same squad in the third-place game. All right, there's really not an excuse for Puerto Rico I can think of, even though Arroyo is the starting point guard for the Utah Jazz.

Americans also seem to forget the quarterfinal victory their team compiled over Spain, probably the best all-around squad with the best overall player (Pau Gasol) in the tournament. As impressive as that was, however, people are still viewing the outcome as a failure. Now that it's over, though, how do you remedy the situation?

Over the past few weeks, everybody's had a suggestion, ranging from re-using college players to taking the team that loses the NBA Finals that year. I can't speak to which theory is the correct one, but there is one thing that needs to be implemented. Make sure the potential international team knows the international game. Like national soccer, set up a schedule to play other national teams in exhibitions each and every year, not just prior to the Olympics. This way, the players get a chance to see how the game works while forming chemistry.

And if you don't think that's important, look at the team one spot ahead of the U.S. (What? You mean Italy isn't a basketball powerhouse?)

The Dream Team has outlasted its usefulness, but Team USA doesn't need an overhaul. A few tweaks should have people believing that this country will stay the dominant force in the sport for a long time. Looks like we'll have to wait until 2008 in Beijing to see if any of these experiments might work.

By the way, how many breaths of relief do you think George Karl is taking right about now?