Exhibition or meaningful, this never should be the result
Team USA losing a basketball game to another country? No!
As most basketball fans are well aware, Team USA lost twice this week to Australia and Nigeria in exhibition games leading up to the Olympic qualifying round. It could happen again Friday when Team USA squares off in a doubleheader against Australia again.
Many people have written this off as if we shouldn’t care about losing since they are just exhibition games.
Wrong.
Every time a player puts on a Team USA jersey, it should be about pride, about representing the Red, White and Blue, and it should be about going out on the floor and showing everyone this is the greatest basketball-playing nation in the world. Because we are.
Sure, countries have caught up to us and the easy way to see that is to look up and down NBA rosters at all of the international players playing key roles for their teams. Luka Doncic (Slovenia), Joel Embiid (Cameroon), Nikola Jokic (Serbia), and even Vooch (Montenegro), just to name a few.
No, I didn’t forget him. Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece) is currently the biggest name in the NBA.
The NBA All-Star Game was filled with players not even from the United States. Of course, that’s our fault. Michael Jordan took basketball to a worldwide level, with his game and his shoes. Everyone across the planet wanted to be like Mike. Then came LeBron James, who continued the trend and even extended that pattern. Guys like Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Steph Curry and on and on have also helped.
Kudos to Durant and Damien Lillard and Bradley Beal (although COVID puts his status in jeopardy) for wanting to be a part of keeping America’s pride intact. I can’t help but wonder why Steph can’t put his offseason concerns aside and show off his USA pride.
Others are hurt, like James Harden, Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis. Donovan Mitchell is nursing an ankle sprain, reportedly, and then LeBron won’t be there either, but he’s put in his time, winning two gold medals.
That doesn’t stop the world from coming at us.
Every country with a hoop not only wants to beat the Americans at our own game, but they also believe they will beat us prior to even stepping on the floor.
There are plenty of ways to look at it, and the fact that these ARE just exhibition games is the most predominant American viewpoint. One of the biggest issues Team USA has is its cohesiveness or lack thereof. The Americans are just learning to play together, whereas the other countries have been together for a long, long time.
Some people point to the grind of the NBA season catching up to the Americans, but players from the other countries don’t just sit around waiting for the Olympics. They have their own leagues and are likely just as physically challenged.
We, as Americans, however, don’t want to hear any of that. When James Naismith hung those peach (or apple, or whatever) baskets in Springfield, Massachusetts, this became America’s game. We’re expected to dominate it unless we somehow were to get screwed. (See Munich, 1972).
In 1988, the world seemed to catch up to the Americans, who barely medaled with bronze at the Seoul Olympics. Four years later, we had seen enough, and the roster was opened to professionals. Jordan, Magic, Bird, Barkley and the rest of that Dream Team made it look like they were taking on a bunch of kids at recess.
We’ve only not won the gold medal in basketball four times — the aforementioned Munich debacle, the 1980 boycott when we weren’t even there, 1988 and the 2004 embarrassment with Allen Iverson and a young LeBron.
We can thank head coach Mike Krzyzewski for resurrecting things. He led Team USA to three straight gold medals, including Brazil in 2016. We’ve won four straight gold medals and LeBron has two on his mantel.
Former Indiana assistant coach Dan Dakich, who worked with Bobby Knight for years and who now has his own radio show in Indianapolis, as well as on ESPN through Sirius XM Radio, has his own thoughts on the subject.
“Coach K did such a great job of getting LeBron and all of those guys to buy in and bringing it back. In 2004 ... that thing was a mess ... a freaking train wreck,” Dakich said.
Dakich is old school and thinks, like myself, that when it comes to the Olympic Games, if you’re not hurt then you should be representing your country. There are, however, a lot of things that go into the decision process with players like Curry, who decide to not play.
“I applaud Durant for playing ... I don’t know, it’s just different [now]. Whether it’s better or worse, I don’t know,” Dakich said. “But if you want to continue to grow basketball, if you want to continue to enhance popularity, I think the best players need to be involved in slam dunk contests and Olympics and things like that.
“I’m not saying every United States basketball event, but I do think the Olympics is big enough. LeBron’s done his thing. LeBron’s been great with it and he’s done wonders, but I think some of these other guys ought to understand that the guys who came before them, that allowed them to get these 100s and 200s and 300-million dollar contracts, did a lot of really good things laying the groundwork, not only here, but across the world by their presence on international teams.”
And that’s the bottom line. When the game has done so much for you, it’s time to think about how much you can do for the game . ... Oh, and for your country.
GO USA!