21st
After a bit of a hiatus…
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve posted - I think I wore myself out with my Olympic blogging. (… or, more likely, my Olympic watching.) Things have been busy in the 4 weeks since, too. Hopefully, I’ll get back to posting every few days.
I never did get around to writing my “favorite Beijing moments” post, and it may not end up happening, but an article by Bill Simmons demanded referencing. (Bill Simmons is perhaps my favorite sports columnist, though I haven’t followed him as closely in the last couple of years as I used to.) He wrote about the gold-medal game in men’s basketball between the US and Spain, which I mentioned as a final-day highlight on a previous post - but it was such an amazing game that it deserves a month-later lookback.
Bill calls it “one of the 10 most dramatic games” of his lifetime. I’ll go further and say that it merits consideration as the highest-quality basketball game of all time:
- Which teams in history were better than this year’s US team? Probably the 1992 Dream Team, perhaps the 1996 Dream Team , and maybe the 1960 Olympic team. I’m sure some people might argue for one of the great Celtics or Lakers teams, but I won’t.
- None of those teams ever played a close game. Well, with one exception - the 1996 Dream Team, in its first exhibition warmup before the Atlanta games, was down 17 at the half before edging the “USA Select” college all-star team 96-90 (Mike Montgomery was the coach, and Brevin Knight played point guard for USA Select).
- Thus, you’ve got one of the best 5 teams in history, playing in the gold-medal game, and an excellent Spain team gives them all they can handle.
From a purely aesthetic perspective, too, the game was a joy to watch. As Bill points out, the 118-107 score came in 40 minutes - the equivalent of a 142-128 NBA-length game - and it wasn’t because the defense was terrible; it was because the pace was fast and the offenses were skilled. Again, to quote Bill: 65% FG, 55% 3FG, and 85% FT in the first half (combining both teams).
Bill also accurately characterized the performance of Ricky Rubio - amazing not because he dominated the game, but because he stepped in for the injured starter and played well enough that you forgot that he was a high-schooler was playing against the best players in the world. His physical talent is incredible, but just as impressive was his mental approach: he wasn’t scared and he didn’t do anything silly to prove himself - he simply ran the offense, played decent defense and generally filled his position on the court with a high degree of competence. In the previous Spain-US game, he was a little flashier but more out-of-control; in the gold-medal game, he played calmly within Spain’s system like a seasoned veteran. Biggest stat: only 2 turnovers in almost 30 minutes. Incredible.
Bill nails the officiating, too: “…three incompetent FIBA refs speaking different languages … providing an I-hope-this-doesn’t-turn-out-like-the-last-three-seconds-of-the-‘72-Olympic-gold-medal-game edge.” The thing is, the referees in the gold medal game were better than those earlier in the tournament. I suppose that I should appreciate the NBA refs in comparison. (Pac-10 refs are still terrible, though.)
One quibble with Bill: he slams Coach K for “starting a washed-up Jason Kidd”. Look, Kidd’s well past his prime as a basketball player, and he didn’t add a lot to the USA team on paper. … but that’s clearly not why Kidd was there: Jason’s role on this team was to be a leader, as much off the court as on, more from an emotional and maturity perspective than from a basketball one. Kidd may not have contributed a lot on offense or defense, but I think he was important part of helping the team keep its collective head on straight, and that more than justifies his place on the team and his role as a starter. In fact, it’s a bit reminiscent of Mike Eruzione on the 1980 Olympic hockey team (minus the dramatic final goal against the Soviets, of course).
I’ll end with another quote from Bill: “We wanted a selfless team that cared. We wanted a team to come through when it mattered. We wanted one unforgettable game. We got all of it—well, those of us paying attention, anyway.”
