The world of international basketball has been one of major disappointment for Team USA every since the "Dream Team" left us. No World Championship since 94 including an embarrassing 6th place finish in 2002 as well as a 3rd place finish at the 2004 Olympics and many had began to doubt the Americans commitment to international basketball.
Enter Jerry Colangelo, Coach K and a new attitude and it appears that the old ways of international basketball are back. Team USA still has more close games than what we are used to but it is pretty clear that despite the fact that other countries are getting better and better at basketball, they still cant match what we have to offer when everyone has the same focus. Coach K has done a marvelous job of bringing a bunch of rich basketball players together and convincing them to give up their self for the better of the team.
We seemed to have gotten to a point late in the 90s where we simply thought we could 'out athlete' anyone we played and forgot that we actually had to have basketball skills as well as a cohesive team. Now here we are in 2010 with what most NBA insiders would probably call our Team USA "B" squad and we just dominated the World Championships. If the NBA players continue to stay committed to the process it seems quite clear that no one will touch us for quite a while and thats exactly how it should be.
Great article, nice to see the range of this writer.
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