U.S.A.!!!

Here's the u.s Olympic team: MVP kobe, lebron, d-wade, melo, kidd, tayshaun, booza, bosh, dwight " superman" howard, cp-trey, big redd, and deron.
hell yeah, this team is loaded. these guys are going to dominate and return the u.s. to glory after a "disappointing" bronze in the 2004 O's. the reason the word disappointing was euphemized was bec to me it wasnt all that disappointing. dont get me wrong, i would have loved the gold, but there were issues with the olympoic team boiling up since 2000 that people just wanted to ignore. sometimes americans think that no matter what happens they deserve to win. im a realist. those guys had it coming.
to me, there were 3 very large factors contributing to the temporary downfall of u.s. basketball.
1. the rest of the world was simply catching up. 20 years ago drazen petrovic was a phenomenon. now, every team except the knicks have a european scorer/slasher/shooter. get my point. in two quick decades the serbias, montengros, germanys, and argentinas of the world progressed to a level international hoops has never seen. just a quick list of names to illustrate the point: (note-count how many of these names are arguably top twenty in the nba) dirk, manu, tony parker, nash, yao ming, pau, scola, hedo, okur, diaw, peja. obviously these guys are no kobe or lebron, but surely better than marbury and rich jefferson( both on the 04 squad).
2. the best american players, for whatever reasons, did not participate. the level of talent was not as nearly good as it could have been. guys like kobe, shaq, kidd, t-mac, vince, ray-ray, all didnt want to play for their country. oh, but we had lebron and melo and amare and wade you'll say. i say they were were 19 and 20 and 21 with barely no nba experience let alone international experience. the only super-star players at or near their prime were duncan and iverson. the rest of the team was just average. if its a gold you want, i dont think emeka okafor was going to cut it.
3. lastly, the guys they did have just got outplayed, outhustled, outshot, out everything. maybe larry brown was still high on crack from the finals after party, but this team did not come out to play. they thought they would win simply on talent and intimidation. the only problem was the disparity in talent, as we explained, was miniscule, and shaq wasnt there so no body was intimidated. i have found that when duncan holds the ball by his face with two hands and his elbows out so all you see is his eyes, it isnt so mean-looking as he thinks it is. the team was thrown together and none of these guys had ever balled together for a substantial time. on the other hand, teams like argentina and peurto rico had been gelling for years and had one thing we lacked and sorely needed, chemistry.

i know this was basically an article that is 4 years old, but i think 2004 directly affects the dynamics, chemistry, mindset, and outcome of this years games. the brass and decision makers (colangelo) apparently have learned from their mistakes. they brought in coach k and convinced kobe to play and lebron to return. they put better shooters(redd, kobe), more physical(lebron, dwight), hard-working(tayshaun, boozer), team-oriented(deron, cp, wade) players on the roster. this is starting to like a team.

i don't know about you but if they don't win i'll be disappointed.

jimmy sports