Team USA Wins Gold

If you don’t want to read about Team USA basketball, you should probably just skip this post. Image borrowed from ESPN. Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images

WOW! What a game! I planned my whole weekend around watching the USA-Argentina and USA-Spain games, and I was thrilled to catch both games, even if they weren’t in HD and I had to deal with the Senal Colombia interpretation of how a game should be called and shown. Some thoughts on the game:

· Analysts have been saying 2 things for weeks:

o USA would have to have a poor day from the 3-point line for anybody to even have a chance to beat them.

o USA’s constant activity and effort on defense is what makes them so hard to beat.

Turns out that USA had a very good day from the three point line (46% on 13 for 28), but Spain kept the game tight all the way until the final two minutes. Additionally, Spain had absolutely no trouble scoring against USA's vaunted defense, shooting 51% from the field, 47% on 3PTers (Spain typically shoots ~30% 3PT), and limiting their turnovers to 14 (28 vs. USA in the first round). As a point of reference, Spain was on pace to score 128 points if the game had been NBA length (48 minutes instead of 40).

· Marc Gasol reminds me of the rubber big foot costume hoax from two weeks ago. Also here’s some other hilarious NBA look-a-likes. Here’s my favorite, from the Wizards.

· I don’t mind that the game is being announced in Spanish. I do mind that I missed the first 3 minutes of the 2^nd and 4^th quarters because Senal Colombia thought it should sneak a couple rounds of Olympic boxing into the game broadcast.

· I’m not an expert on the Spanish team, but what I have read is that they’re not a deep team, and their depth was hurt even more by starting PG Jose Calderon having to sit out due to injury. If you’re not a deep team though, as a coach, wouldn’t you play your starters heavier minutes? Nobody on Spain played more than 29 minutes! Sure 3 of the starters were limited by foul trouble, so I understand them playing limited minutes, but your best player, Pau Gasol only had 1 foul and only played 28 minutes, and your best guard, Juan Carlos Navarro, only had 1 foul and only played 25 minutes! Gasol AVERAGES 35 minutes a game during the NBA season, you don’t think it would help to have your best player on the court 25% more often?! The only explanation I can think of here is that FIBA games might have fewer breaks than NBA games, so players have less time to catch their breath and thus actually need to play less minutes. I STILL think I would have Pau Gasol play at least 30 minutes. Hell, 17 year old Ricky Rubio led the team in PT!

· Speaking of Ricky, Spanish announcers LOVE to roll the two R’s in his name “RRRRRRRRRRRicky RRRRRRRRRRRRRRubio! I maintain they would have more fun saying Bucarrrramanga. Somebody also needs to tell these guys that there is nobody named Anthony Carmelo or Paul Chris on the USA team.

· One more thing about the announcers. After every foul, the guy would say: “Falta Foul Foul Foul Foul!” (verbatim and definitely with the exclamation point regardless of the game situation). Courtney assures me this translates as “Foul Foul Foul Foul Foul!” This continues to totally baffle me.

· This has been said in a lot of other places, but I couldn’t agree more so I’ll repeat it: Dwyane Wade is back, and he’s angry that people forgot about him when he was injured. I can’t wait to see what he does on the Miami Heat this year.

· Spain showed a lot of heart cutting the lead back down to 4 points after Kobe hit the insane 4 point play that also fouled out Rudy Fernandez. That would have been the nail in the coffin against most teams.