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Although I believe there are a number of practices conducted by the NBA where it would be appropriate for David Stern to apologize, depriving Miami Heat fans of the thrill of seeing Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker is not one of them.
You want to apologize for unacceptable behavior?
Let’s start with that Miami public address announcer – the one who greets every basket like Mel Gibson greets torture in Braveheart.
Doc Rivers is one of the top choices — of not the top choice — to become the next coach of Team USA. This is a subject that was speculated upon in the immediate aftermath of Team USA’s gold medal triumph in London, and there is reason to believe it is closer to becoming a reality.
Why?
Take a look at the transcript below from Colangelo’s recent interview on SheridanHoopsRadio.
When the subject of who would replace Mike Krzyzewski was raised, Colangelo threw Rivers’ name out there without any prompting. (And while he was at it, he flat-out rejected the notion of Russia’s head coach, David Blatt, an Israeli-American who played collegiately at Princeton, coming under consideration for the job.
The next Team USA coach will lead the team in the summer of 2014 at the World Cup (formerly known as the World Championship) in Spain.
Here is the transcript:
CS: The word came from London that Coach K said that this was going to be it for him and if that is indeed the case, he’s going to go out with 50 wins in his last 50 games, and that’s a heck of an accomplishment. I know you want to change his mind. I know you guys are supposed to get together for a bottle of red wine and a pizza. Has that happened yet?
FIBA Secretary General Patrick Baumann
FIBA has spoken.
And their message to NBA Commissioner David Stern is this: We’re not changing the Olympics, bub.
In an in-house interview with FIBA.com, secretary general Patrick Baumann took a strong stance against changing to a 23-and-under rule, which Stern and NBA owners are pushing for.
Baumann said such a change would actually give the United States an unfair advantage because of the advanced developmental system in the U.S. compared to other countries.
“There is also a more general issue of what the Olympic Games represent. The NBA, the IOC and FIBA, we have all earned a lot – not just in financial terms – from professional athletes being at the Olympics since 1992. This is the case with regards to the way basketball has grown, from where we were then to where we are now,” Baumann said. “So it would be premature to make changes in the quality of basketball at the Olympics, especially before having maximised the potential of the World Cup. So it’s too early to make any changes in the Olympic programme.
Baumann is proposing moving the World Cup (formerly known as the World Championship) to one year prior to the Olympics, and making it the main Olympic qualification tournament. Baumann also said FIBA would again petition the ICO to increase the number of teams in the Olympic tournament from 12 to 16. The IOC has twice rejected this proposal.
FIBA also is petitioning the IOC to add 3-on-3 basketball to the game in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
Changes to the World Cup would not be instituted until 2019.
Interview excerpts:
Click here to read Baumann’s entire interview.
(RELATED CONTENT: Sheridan: An Open Letter to Commissioner David Stern)
(RELATED CONTENT: David Stern Wants to Ruin The Olympics, Part I)
(RELATED CONTENT: David Stern Wants to Ruin the Olympics, Part II)
Team USA beat Spain for Olympic gold on Sunday with a roster of 12 men that embraced their respective roles. They shoved their egos aside for the good of the team and yada yada yada.
Tired of the clichés yet?
After watching Team USA’s big, happy family roll over opponents for two weeks, I am too. But hey, they deserved each one. Getting a group of superstars to agree to a 12-way split of the spotlight is tough, and Mike Krzyzewski managed these personalities masterfully.
Still, Team USA’s gold medal run was not without its individual heroics: Carmelo Anthony’s 37 points against Nigeria, shattering Starbury’s U.S. Olympic scoring record, come to mind. So do LeBron James’ triple double against Australia and Kevin Durant’s 30 in the Olympic final versus the Spaniards.
So with medals handed out to the three best teams, Sheridan Hoops would like to reward the five finest individual efforts of these 2012 Olympics. And in a tournament where LeBron led Team USA in assists from the power forward slot, I decided to keep the positional rigidity at a minimum.
Manu Ginobili, G, Argentina
19.4 PPG | 5.4 RPG | 4.1 APG
Argentina came to London with hopes of squeezing one more Olympic medal into their satchel (gold in ’04, bronze in ’08), but reality struck early on as Pablo Prigioni missed some time with kidney stones and Andres Nocioni struggled to find himself. This team was old, and in desperate need of some youthful energy off of their bench outside of the fleet footed, junk jabbing Facundo Campazzo. Because Argentina couldn’t simply spawn talent and fresher legs, Ginobili demanded more out of himself. More as a ball handler, where Manu regularly initiated the team’s offense and thrice handed out six or more assists; more on the glass, where he pulled down 10 boards in a crucial opening win against Lithuania; and more from the free throw line, where he attempted 34 and made 34. We’ve likely seen Manu Ginobili in Argentina’s blue and white for the final time, but the 35-year-old made damn sure he wouldn’t be fast forgotten.
Kevin Durant, F, United States
19.5 | 5.8 RPG | 2.6 APG
Two summers ago at the FIBA World Championships in Istanbul, Kevin Durant routinely split and shot over double teams on his way to a gold medal for Team USA. Durant led the team in scoring and was the easy choice for tourney MVP, but what did we expect? No Kobe, no LeBron, no Carmelo. This time, they were all in USA jerseys. Kobe was the established veteran, LeBron was the alpha male and ‘Melo offered some of the prettiest scoring spurts we’ve seen in international history. But even with the veterans in attendance, the 23-year-old Durant’s 19.5 points led Team USA in scoring. With a gold medal on the line against Spain, it was Durant who poured home 30 points. And with the best players in the world all gathered in London, it was Durant who proved again why he’s the best scorer in the universe.
LeBron James, F, United States
13.2 PPG | 5.6 RPG | 5.6 APG
I remember a time when LeBron James would pass the ball late in a game and we would treat it like a white flag. He should have taken it himself. He’s afraid of the moment. Jordan never would have passed it. But with an NBA Championship ring on the way and a bouquet of talent around him, the pressure seemed to dissipate long enough for LeBron to relax into his do-it-all role and put on show after show. When he wanted to score—like in the fourth quarter of Team USA’s 99-94 win over Lithuania—he scored. Since Team USA was thin up front, Coach K asked him to defend power forwards and help out on the boards. And when he wanted to show us a little bit of everything, he turned in the first triple double in U.S. basketball history against Australia: 11 points, 14 rebounds and 12 assists. The best player in the world is even better than we thought.
Andrei Kirilenko, F, Russia
17.5 PPG | 7.5 RPG | 1.9 SPG
Look at the guys on this team with Andrei: Durant, Pau, Manu, LeBron. Four guys that can flat out make a play with the ball when you need one. Durant’s likely to shoot, Pau likely to post, Manu likely to attack and LeBron—well, we know he’ll do something impressive. But what makes Andrei a strange fit with this group is what makes him a perfect fit for Russia: he does his best work with the ball in someone else’s hands. As charming as that trait can be when Shved and Co. are hitting around him, AK’s reluctance to isolate and attack has drawn criticism from folks who want to see the Russian forward take games over. Would Russia like him to be more of a one-on-one threat? I’m sure they would, but that’s just not what Kirilenko does. What he does is exist seamlessly in an offense that requires its forwards to pass like guards, rebound likes centers and slash like wings. Instead of worrying about the very little Kirilenko doesn’t do, David Blatt is perfectly happy sculpting this Russian program around all of the brilliant things he does do.
Pau Gasol, PF, Spain
19.1 PPG | 7.6 RPG | 2.9 APG
When analyzing the gold medal rosters, it’s pretty difficult to point your finger at anyone on Team USA and call their London campaign “disappointing.” Everyone showed up ready to run fast and play a role and for the majority of these Olympics, each American did his job. But it’s a different story when you look at Spain’s roster. Jose Calderon dribbled the line between situationally aware and overly cautious, Juan Carlos Navarro gave us only one half of La Bomba (19 points in the first half against the U.S.), Rudy Fernandez’s 2012 will surely be remembered more for his histrionics than his high scoring, and Serge Ibaka’s play was up and down like the minutes he received. And then there’s Pau Gasol, who crept dangerously close to a triple double with his 24 point, 8 rebound, 7 assist performance in the gold medal game, and who led Spain in all three statistical categories for the tournament. Pau’s supporting cast can be mercurial at times, but the one thing that never falters is their undying trust in his ability to keep them in every game. With performances like these, it’s easy to see why.
Second Team: Patrick Mills (Australia), Alexey Shved (Russia), Nicolas Batum, (France), Luis Scola (Argentina), Marc Gasol (Spain)
Nick Gibson, editor of EuroleagueAdventures.com, covers the Euroleague and other international basketball developments for SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.
Hey, Dave:
Some gold medal game, eh? Guess what happened back here in the States?
They showed the whole USA-Spain match (pardon my FIBAism) on NBC Sports Channel without any commercials. That’s right, without any commercials!
Who had that in the office pool?
Nobody, right? It would have been like picking Tunisia.
That’s the thing about the Olympics, Dave … you never quite know what’s going to happen by the time the final day of the whole shebang comes down. And when that once-ever-four-years moment comes around, it’s fasten your seatbelt time –whether you are sitting in the stands at the game itself, like you, or sitting on a sofa back in suburbia, like me.
Once every four years.
It’s both a shame and a blessing that it happens so seldom. It makes us appreciate FIBA basketball (a superior product to your own) all the much more, and then it tends to make us forget just how special Olympic basketball can be by the time the next four-year cycle has run its course. And it’s not just Americans, Dave. The bookmakers around London had Spain as high as a 25-1 underdog in the hour before tipoff.
Yup, 25-1 for a team with two Gasols and the guy (Serge Ibaka) who got robbed of the Defensive Player of the Year award because be plays in Oklahoma City instead of New York City, plus another guy (Juan Carlos Navarro) who found the whole NBA scene so tasteless and devoid of true passion that he left after one year in Memphis to return to Spain, where you don’t need some guy with a t-shirt gun to get the fans out of their seats.
I hope you got to congratulate our guys afterward in the locker room, and I especially hope you gave a shout-out in that room to LeBron James. Folks can love him or hate him, but he is having a better year than anyone on this planet. We’re all being treated to the sight of this man-child finally transforming into a man, and it was a long time coming.
Which brings us to you, David, and your plan to meet with FIBA chairman Patrick Baumann to push for an age restriction that would limit the Olympics to players 23 and under. A word of advice: Don’t be as disingenuous as your deputy, Adam Silver, was when he said y’all were making the push in the best interest of the foreign NBA players, whose federations’ standards of medical care are not up to snuff with American standards. Yes, Sasha Vujacic may once have had a sprained knee ligament treated with olive oil; but no, that is not reason enough to break out the dynamite.
The American and the non-American players have spoken loud and clear over the course of these Olympics, as USA Basketball director Jerry Colangelo, and they all have spoken with passion.
Nobody agrees with you on this, David.
Nobody. (OK, Mark Cuban agrees with you, as do a few other NBA owners. We all understand that you work for them — although your dictatorial manner would suggest otherwise — and we all understand that you know where your bread is buttered.)
But a word to the wise on this one. Back off.
Permit me to repeat myself in all caps:
BACK OFF!
Nobody in America wants to see a World Cup of Basketball that would be open to players of all ages, which you claim would make up for the absence of those over the age of 23 in the Olympics.
Yes, that is the way they do it in soccer.
But soccer is a worldwide monster whose popularity basketball will never equal, at least not in our lifetimes. Soccer also has roughly a dozen teams with the ability to win the World Cup. Basketball has two — we Americans, and the Spanish.
A generation from now the playing field might be a little more level, but let’s face it: This is the sport in which the United States sends its most dominant team(s) — no, Dave, I haven’t forgotten about our women and their 20-year winning streak — and its most high-profile athletes. With all due respect to Michael Phelps, he could walk down any street in the middle of Manhattan and go unnoticed for block after block after block. James Harden couldn’t even do that, to say nothing of the 10 guys ahead of him in the rotation who will be flying home tomorrow with gold medals around their necks.
From the sound of things, Baumann is going to tell you to back off anyway. He has 220 national federations to deal with, and he is not afraid of you, nor will he allow himself to be bullied by you. As much as Baumann wants the World Cup or the World Championship to be a bigger event, he is not going to cut off his left hand to make sure his right hand becomes more useful.
You can fool some of the people some of the time, and most of the people most of the time if your last name happens to be Stern. Didn’t you have the universe convinced a year ago that the NBA needed to shut down for at least a year to get a financial system in place that would allow the Bobcats and Bucks of the NBA to compete with the Heats and the Lakers?
In this case, you are trying to fool a global audience of billions with your 23-and-under nonsense.
And you know what? The world will hate you if you push forward with this ill-advised scheme. You think it’s already bad enough that they boo you when you hand out the championship trophy, that they boo you as lustily when you call the 30th pick of the draft as they do when you call out the first pick?
I know you are comfortable being the designated bad guy. It goes with the territory in a job like yours.
But for your sake, and for the sake of all Americans (because you speak for us when you are on foreign soil), come to your senses on this and back off.
(RELATED CONTENT: David Stern Wants to Ruin The Olympics, Part I)
(RELATED CONTENT: David Stern Wants to Ruin the Olympics, Part II)
It’s already bad enough that we have to endure three timeouts in every fourth quarter of every NBA playoff game – timeouts that last 3 minutes. It’s bad enough that the guy with the t-shirt gun is often the only guy that can roust fans from their seats. It’s bad enough that the referees and their video-review system have slowed the pace of the NBA game to an even slower crawl.
Leave the Olmypics alone!
It is the one breath of fresh air that we get once every four years. It ain’t broken, so don’t try to fix it. If anything, try to emulate it. That gold medal game was a classic, just like the one in Beijing. Let us all have another four-year fix in Rio, and beyond.
Don’t be the ugly American who ruined Olympic basketball. It won’t help your legacy, it won’t help the IOC, it won’t help FIBA, it won’t help the globalization of basketball, and it will infuriate Planet Earth.
Leave well enough alone, and let’s savor the memory of what we just witnessed rather than worry that we’ve witnessed it for the final time.
Best regards,
CS
Chris Sheridan is the publisher and editor-in-chief of SheridanHoops.com. Follow him on Twitter.
