From: thtxmail@cc.curtin.edu.au
Subject: Re: The Olympics ANd The Dream Team
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1992 23:41:56 GMT

In article <20320@optima.cs.arizona.edu>, gln@cs.arizona.edu (Gary L. Newell) writes:
> In article <1992Aug10.145840.1@cc.curtin.edu.au>, thtxmail@cc.curtin.edu.au writes:
>> But did they win well enough?
>> Well, yes and no.
> 
> This should be interesting - I can't wait to hear how they didn't win "well 
> enough"....
> 

Hey, I have you guys saying that teams would be lucky to break 30 points
against the dream team. I never said that they WEREN'T way ahead of the
opposition, but not by as much as everyone had been telling me.

>> Charles "Mr Elbow" Barkley made himself look like a real creep
>> and won no fans anywhere.
> If this is true, then those potential "fans" have a lot to learn about 
> true basketball. How anyone could watch the effort and skill shown by 
> Charles and not appreciate his ability is beyond me - he appeared to be the
> best player throughout the Olympics. As for the elbow, as has been pointed out
> in this group before, there were games not involving the Americans where
> many more elbows were thrown - but alas who cares? We should instead
> focus on the Barkley elbow and no others... also, as I've tried to point out
> before, Charles *is* a top player in the NBA - the NBA is the best basketball
> in the world - by definition (in my eyes at least) it is the responsibility
> of the "rest of the world" to either learn to play like Charles or at least
> learn to handle that style of play without whining...
> 
Hey, I never said that Charlesd wasnt a great player. I said that the image
he presented for basketball to the world suxed.  The Dream Team was meant to
be the true face of basketball. The best. And in playing they showed they
were no doubt. BUT as the best you have a lot of responsibility to maintain.
Everyone is looking to you, and you have to be mature enough to accept this.
How about all those 9 or 10 year olds watching. Is it OK to behave like
Charles did on court? 

>> Croatia using Petrovic, a few NBA rejects and Kukoc were ok but lacked the depth
>> once the game started going. Stuck with the USA for almost a half. If the other
>> players from Serbia had been available (ie: mainly Divac) would they
>> have been able to last longer?
> 
>  Who knows - 32 points not enough for you? Let's not get absurd here - a
> 32 point win is a blowout no matter how you slice it...

Hey, no denyning 32 points is a blow out. But they didnt blow it out till
the second half. And it was mainly against the Croatian bench and what
was turning out to be a very tired bunch of Croatian starters who had
been playing close to 38 minutes a game. How much closer could the
FULL Yugoslavia team gone? I think 20 points is not that unreasonable.

>> Onl>> And where did the USA boys get those egos from? 
> 
> Geez I don't know - could it be due to the fact they pounded "the best" the 
> worlkd had to throw at them? I think back over the past years (in particular
> before the announcement that the dream team would play) and remember posts
> from European, South American, and Aussie fans who insisted that the NBA
> players would have trouble playing international ball against the
> top temas of the time. They carried on about the NBA players inability to
> handle a zone, or play a zone for that matter, the imagined "weak" defense
> was going to cause them to lose to teams like Brazil, Australia etc. - well
> it didn't happen - they stomped every team they faced - I think my ego would
> be pretty big if I were a part of that team also...
> 

No one ever claimed they werent going to win. Especially not me.

>> After Magic and Stockton
>> the rest basically acted like 2 year olds.
> 
> Don't suppose you'd care to elaborate on this would you? Care to tell me
> how the others (Bird, Pippen, Ewing, Robinson, Jordan and company) acted
> like "2 year olds".
> 

Did you see their press conferences? Or the reaction on sponsership?
Or the 'treat me better than everyone else' reports? 

>> Good win, but the image most of the team left wasnt good.
> 
> Sounds like whining and sour grapes to me. They were a *much* better
> team than any in the competition and there is no reason for them to
> have acted as if they were lucky...
> 
> 			gln

I agree here. There WERE much better. But I still think they werent even
close to as good as I was continually told they were going to be.

King Green Frog II

 


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