'Dream Team' really a nightmare
August 16, 2004
BY RICK TELANDER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement
THENS, Greece -- Let's just say it's over.
That would be the United States and the thing formerly known as basketball dominance.
Those items don't go together anymore.
Just like J-Lo and Diddy don't go together anymore.
Not after Puerto Rico -- yes, the same little American island territory that specializes in rum and cruise ship stops, and even has "The Star-Spangled Banner'' as its official anthem -- laid an ungodly 92-73 butt-whipping on the U.S. men's hoops team.
It was remarkably, stunningly, almost humorously devastating.
This is our "Dream Team.''
This is the flag-sporting, bling-bling-wearing, super-yacht-stylin' crew with The Answer and 'Melo, and King James and Starbury aboard.
They're big and they're bad and they're bustin' and they're BEAT!
Puerto Rico?
Why, that basketball behemoth has Elias Ayuso and Rolando Hourruitiner in its starting lineup!
It has a 6-1 point guard named Carlos Arroyo, who plays quietly for the Utah Jazz, and who lit up A.I. and Starbury like they were mini-Olympic torches.
Arroyo led all players with a game-high 24 points and a game-high seven assists, and he outrebounded Starbury, 'Melo and King James combined.
On one startling second-quarter fake and drive to the rack, he came as close to breaking defender Amare Stoudemire's ankles as a person can do without a baseball bat.
Arroyo feinted Stoudemire nearly to the floor and then left young and wide-eyed LeBron James flat-footed and grasping at vapor.
"We were playing the best team in the world,'' said the modest Arroyo, who pulled his jersey out at the end and held it up from his chest to show fellow Puerto Ricans how proud he was. "I told my guys at the start of the game, 'I'm going to run. Run with me.'''
Was he showing up Team USA by yanking out his jersey there in the festive craziness at the end?
"Oh no,'' he said in near shock. "No, no, no. I wouldn't do that.''
Thing is, he didn't have to.
The United States and its super-dupes showed themselves up, showed what has been growing clear for years: our elite basketball philosophy is wrong, wrong, wrong.
They showed us that all the verticals and facials and clear-outs and one-on-one, show-biz, "And 1'' tour moves don't mean a thing when another team won't let you fly to the rim and you don't know how to shoot from midrange or outside and you sure-as-hell don't know how to play with heart, pride or like a team.
"These Olympic Games are not the NBA,'' said 40-year-old, soon-to-retire Puerto Rican starting center Jose Ortiz. He played briefly in the NBA, so he knows.
Everybody knows.
Except our directionless stylers, who shot more air balls, clangers and side-of-the-backboard bricks than a junior high team.
But the truly pathetic aspect to this loss was that the United States plays stupid basketball.
The international game allows free zones, offensive goaltending, has a bigger lane and a much-shorter three-point line than the NBA.
Only morons would not notice this and adjust.
Way to make it happen, coach Larry Brown, reigning NBA champ, genius du jour, only American to both play and coach in the Olympics.
Take a bow, Larry, and join George Karl as another man who couldn't turn all-stars into anything more than loose bolts in a bucket.
And here is U.S. team captain Allen Iverson -- my God, that is a hard thing to say without gagging -- standing before us, stating after the fiasco, "We have to stop shooting so much from the three-point perimeter and try to get the ball inside, where we are dominant.''
This from a man who had just launched 10 threes, missing nine of them.
This from a man who should have noticed the United States couldn't get inside because Puerto Rico was in a collapsed zone, defying the American brick masons to fire from anywhere outside eight feet.
But then it's possible Iverson never observed any of this.
After all, he's the captain who was suspended by Brown for a training game, along with the last two NBA Rookies of the Year James and Stoudemire, for being late to a meeting.
Iverson said that discipline didn't "sit well with me.''
The operative word there being, of course, "me.''
Guess whom the United States played and beat in that July tuneup without A.I., his bad self?
Puerto Rico.
In fact, the United States had played Puerto Rico six times in official or exhibition contests since the summer of 2002, winning them all. They whupped them 96-71 just two weeks ago. Puerto Rico had never beaten the United States.
Until Sunday night in Greece in the opening round of the 2004 Olympic Games. When it mattered.
It's hard to state how mind-boggling this flagellation was.
But consider that the U.S. men's team was the gold medalist in 12 of the 14 Olympics in which it had played and came to Athens with a 109-2 record, lifetime, in Olympic play.
Since NBA players were allowed to play in 1992, the Dream Teamers had been 25-0 in Olympic matches.
But now the United States has lost to Argentina, Serbia-Montenegro and Spain in recent World Championship play.
And here we have Puerto Rico.
Take it, 'Melo.
That would be Carmelo Anthony, standing here shirtless, a red do-rag on his head, a red New York Yankees cap on top of that, sideways, naturally.
"We're guaranteeing a gold medal,'' he crowed in late July. "We're bringing it back.''
Now he says, "We gotta come back ready to play.''
What would it take to shut them all up?
