Olympic basketball...

[GROGtheNailer]

I have never really followed the sport but am very suprised to see USA losing, bad fundamentals? For those who can tell me whats up, whats going on here??

[Naples39]

The short version -- no tenacity on defense, horrible passing, and a complete and utter inability to hit an outside shot (3-25 on three pointers, even when the olympic three point line is 3 feet shorter than the nba one).

[Dave]

This team is spawned from years of the NBA selling the sizzle, not the steak.

Where have players like Chris Mullin gone?

[Kazuya]

I have never really followed the sport but am very suprised to see USA losing, bad fundamentals? For those who can tell me whats up, whats going on here??

There was a thread on this in here talking all about it not too long ago. The players on Team USA are just fine. It's just that the days of throwing a bunch of players on the squad and winning are over. The other TEAMS are too good... and basketball is and always has been a team sport. Time to start up a team of non-NBA players that practices year round.

[Alan_Bernardo]

I have never really followed the sport but am very suprised to see USA losing, bad fundamentals? For those who can tell me whats up, whats going on here??

There was a thread on this in here talking all about it not too long ago. The players on Team USA are just fine. It's just that the days of throwing a bunch of players on the squad and winning are over. The other TEAMS are too good... and basketball is and always has been a team sport. Time to start up a team of non-NBA players that practices year round.

What many fail to realize is that most if not all of these European teams have played together as a team for quite some time (minus those who have players in the NBA).

This isn't the case for USA. Despite all that, I don't think the US takes these other teams seriously enough.

Another factor in this bad play is that the International game favors the outside game. The US has almost no good outside shooters, while the European teams thrive on the outside shot.

If you've watched these games so far (six pre-olympic games plus the one today), it's pretty obviously that the US is leagues ahead of these teams.

But it just seems natural to the US players to play all out of sorts at first, which gets them to look at things a bit more seriously.

The US team will take this loss as another "wake-up" call. I expect them still to win the Gold.