The US National Men’s Basketball Team had a 33-21 lead with about 6 1/2 minutes left in the second quarter. They ended up losing 101-95 to Greece with a team of NBA players who make hundreds of millions of dollars combine. The US will have to play Argentina for the Bronze while Greece will play Spain for the World Championship crown.
The US Men’s Soccer Team did not make it out of the preliminary round at the World Cup. The US Men’s Basketball Team lost in the semifinal. Our National Baseball Team did not win either. What is wrong with the American Teams? Are they not good enough? Do they lack the motivation?
For baseball and basketball it’s an issue of cohesion. I believe any US pro team or even college team can easily beat any team in the world. However it’s when you take these all stars and throw them together where the problems arise. Assuming there are no egos involved, which there are, there is still the issue of knowing how to work as a team. All star teams cannot accomplish this. It’s only with months of being together where this cohesion takes place. It’s the old saying, “The whole is better than the sum of its parts.”
Now with soccer it’s a little different. I think we are more of a true team than other national sport teams. The issue is that we suck. No offense, the US Soccer team is world class, but they are still a step behind.
I think if you go to any country other than the US, boys want to grow up to be soccer players. They start young and the best athletes tend to become soccer players.
In the US, it’s such a small percentage that dream to play soccer. The best athletes we can produce go on to do other sports. Until we can shake the stigma here that soccer is a wimpy unmasculine sport, we will never win on the world stage.
Soccer and chess are at similar crossroads in the US. As a chess player I go to tournaments and see the same faces over and over. I see many children play and do well, but its tough to get them to continue on as adults. Soccer is the same way. I play indoor and outdoor all over the city, and its always the same people. There are a lot of kids playing, but few play as adults.
Chess and soccer are still niche activities here.
May be they should send NBA champion team as US team to address the issues raised by jerry macdonald!!! and even after that if they loose, then what excuses can we find MR Jerry????
Any college team will beat any team in the world???? All American teams are losing because even intelligent American people who read this site think that way.
I disagree with Jerry Macdonald that any U.S. *college* team could easily beat any team in the world in these sports.
But otherwise, Jerry is basically on target. A true TEAM comprised of the best professional U.S. baseball or basketball players would indeed mop the floor with those of any other country. But the players we send to these competitions do not play like a team.
The problem is that, to Americans, international competition in baseball and basketball is unimportant. We have not made it a priority. It’s in the World Series and the NBA Finals that you see our best in these sports, NOT in the international competitions.
Soccer, as Jerry noted, is an entirely different problem. American football, baseball, basketball, and hockey are all more popular here than soccer. By and large, our best pro athletes don’t play soccer, because they can make more money at the other sports.
Two things: one, European basketball has been improving for the last 10-15 years, as witnessed by the growing number of good players from Europe joining the NBA.
Two, many NBA players these days are spoiled children whothink only of the money and not playing for pride.
All sport success in US is based on individual talent not based on coaching or planning development. Basketball prospers only because of street ball and later developed in college. Look at tennis where US was dominant for so many years, reason – federation does not provide any support. If person invited to play for the team but not offered to cover at least travel expenses…
Only families with very good income can receive good coaching.
Soccer is not big enough yet, the current school kids will make some noise in the World Cup.
Basketball is entirely different. The American players do not practice shooting or fundamentals only dunking. The days they can win on talent alone is gone.
Many good comments already about basketball. I’ll just add that in basketball and baseball, NBA and MLB pros respectively don’t have much incentive to play in the int’l tourneys. Unlike soccer’s World Cup, these WCs don’t have the ultimate prestige. And the players don’t get paid for the international appearances, plus run the risk of injuring themselves and decreasing their earning power.
In baseball, I’m not sure that the US is stronger than Latin nations such as the Dominican Republic. Interestingly, the DR, also composed of major league stars, also failed to win the World Baseball Classic!
I want to see our chess players and all good chess players around the world make the big money like these basketball and baseball players make.
What is wrong with the people who think that unless the US wins everything then there is something wrong? Other countries have good players in every sport (golf, tennis, chess, clearly also baseball and basketball).
The US is a strong competitor in almost everything, but like very country can never be an automatic winner in anything.
So, there is nothing ‘wrong’, you play, sometimes and in some things you win, other times ‘they’ ‘own’ ‘you’.
Susan you can trace the loss of American pride and love for the game erode with the advent of televised sport in the late 50’s. Slowly through advanced marketing and greed, revenues earned from televison has spoiled the American athletes pysche forever. Amercian professional sport is now about athletes who speak in the 1st person with an inflated ego to upstage the team and perform on their own for Prima Donna glory, ruining team chemistry needed in international sport. The NBA Dream Team of Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley etc. was a throw back to old time sports, plus these great players understood pride and team play. Unfortantely they are the excemption not the rule. A good comparison would be the attitude and preparation of this years U.S. chess Olympiad team compared with the team you were on a few years ago. I guarantee you if you added prize money to the tune of millions of dollars in the international games American athletes would be motivated and win except for soccer which isnt an American game yet.
i can not abstain from writing it:
Greece took out USA as Greece took out Troy, 3500 years ago …
… but modern Troy Horses are for example european athletes (spaniards, germans, greeks!, russians, lativians, etc. etc. etc. etc) playing basketball in the NBA …
:)) Vohaul
USA loses at basketball? What next? They lose at eating contests?
Ha ha ha ha, the US fails to cover the point spread and everybody gets all riled up about inflated egos, et al.
Why can’t kids just be kids?
Sure marketing hype and American commercialism have unrealistically inflated a few over sized American men’s importance while throwing a ball around or “playing hoops”, but given the larger scheme of life, with problems facing humanity like “Will we ever cure Aids, global-warming, and will women ever get equal pay for equal work (play)” truly, what’s the big deal?
I still can’t believe that any sane person would pay a kid playing hoops $20 million/year, and a coronary surgeon, who saves peoples lives every day as a matter of course, $200,000/year.
In the end, I suppose that some of us grow up, and some of us merely grow older.
@perspective – your post needs a “post scriptum” – i feel free to add it.
PS: – despite ourselves, the greek obviously delivered the goods for more than 3500 years to break their own rules… panta rei! or – even better – read the “Politeia” …
Dear perspective, I believe billythekid was trying to say that in American sport it is not a game anymore its a business. Forexample just count the commercials on your average NFL football game. As far as salary goes, Babe Ruth who singlehandely saved baseball after ‘The Black Sox’ scandal, (where the Chicago Whitesox threw the World Series for money), and the public was disillusioned with baseball, in his peak years recieved no more than 75,000 dollars, and he was a universal social and sports icon not an average joe with I Me Mine syndrome! Now college players who have yet to play one single minute in their prospective professional sport recieve 100 million dollar contracts and the marketed “Superstars” recieve multi million dollar shoe endoresments and also recieve million dollar signing bonuses just to sign their name on a contract, that in all likelihood will be terminated and renegotiated for “market value”. Reality has gone out the window. This type of celebritydom and money creates egotistical mindsets of players like Terrell Owens who sat out almost the entire Dallas Cowboys pre-season on a bogus hamstring issue because he simply didnt want to pratice. In his mind “Terrell” doesnt need to practice. Pride and love for any game cannot exist with this type of across the board greed from owbers to sportsagent and to the players themselves.
I discussed at length the subject of Team USA’s play in FIBA competitions at my basketball website, 20SecondTimeout. Here is a link to one of my posts on this issue (the others will not be hard to find if you visit the main page and go through the archives; I made a post after every Team USA game):
http://20secondtimeout.blogspot.com/2006/09/carmelo-anthony-selected-to-all-world.html
Various pundits have cited several factors to explain why the U.S. no longer coasts to the gold medal in FIBA competitions (World Championships and Olympics) but the issue boils down to this: other countries have national teams that practice and play together under FIBA rules for an extended period of time, while the United States generally throws together a team three weeks before the event. In the past, the talent disparity was so great that the U.S. would win anyway. By 1988, the U.S. could no longer win this way by sending college teams. In the 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympics the U.S. won with hastily thrown together teams of NBA players, but each year the U.S. won by smaller margins. Now, one fourth of the players in the NBA hail from outside of the United States and it is no longer possible to overwhelm other teams with talent alone. The FIBA game has a different lane, different three point line, different goaltending rule, different defensive rules, etc. and it takes more than three weeks for even a team of talented individuals to beat cohesive teams that are used to this style of play. USA Basketball will be selecting its 12 man roster from the same 24 player pool for the next 3 years and I believe that this improved cohesion will lead to a gold medal performance for Team USA in the 2008 Olympics.
–David Friedman