Thursday, August 26, 2004

Too much crying in sports...

Granted that I haven't been paying too much to the Olympics this year, all I hear about it is news about athletes whinning about this and that and about how things are unfair and such. Just today, when I was talking to my office mate Brian, he had mentioned that the Spanish coach Mario Pesquera was complaining how the US only played 40% of its capacity in the early rounds and has now just begun to turn it around. Spain had been undefeated in the round-robin games with 5 wins and earned a #1 seed in the quarterfinals. The US team earned an 8th seed, which drew them to Spain for their quarterfinal matchup.



Someone needs to tell Mario to suck it up and take it like a man. I didn't hear him complain before the game about playing the US. In fact, I would be willing to believe that he was glad to be playing a sub-par US basketball team that had been struggling. But now, only because his team has come up short, he now wants to whine and bitch that "oh, it's not fair! The US team was playing possom!!!" Come on Mario, look at the history of US basketball teams before. This year's US basketball team might not be the dream team, but they do have pride and compete hard to win every game. Do you really think that the US would purposely downplay in order to get an advantage in the later rounds? And if you really did think that the US would downplay, why didn't you just lose a game or two so you didn't have to play them?



Granted that the US basketball team wasn't the best that could have been put together, you don't see the players complain "oh, if we had so and so (insert Kobe Bryant, Shaq, Kevin Garnett, etc), we'd be dominating this tournament!" The US players have taken their lumps along their way in this year's Olympics, continued to play hard, and it probably was a matter of time before everything started to fall together. The team shot over 50% from the field and from 3-point range against Spain, and only struggled a little bit at the free-throw line. The players on this US basketball team should be applauded for their efforts thus far as many of them probably realized that this might not be the best team put together, but they have managed to put aside their egos and pride to proudly represent the US.

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