I promise this is my last post on Team USA, but I just finished watching the gold medal game from Beijing, and I have to talk about it because it was an amazing game. Spain gave the Americans their toughest game of these 2008 Olympics, which surprised me a great deal. I figured Argentina would prove to be the toughest competition, but the Spanish team showed that the 37-point loss in pool play might have been somewhat of a fluke. Amazingly, even though Spain kept it close for the whole game, The US won every quarter.

The MVP of the Olympic basketball tournament has to be Dwyane Wade, who played every game like it was the 2003 regional final. Wade set the tone of each game the moment he came off the bench, cranking up the defensive intensity, which in turn cranked up the defensive intensity of his teammates. On offense, he looked like a totally different player than he has been in the NBA since 2006. Heck, before these games, I said that Wade was the most overrated player in the league and was not worthy of his spot on the Team USA roster. Before the Olympics, all Wade did was drive to the rack and draw fouls. In Beijing, he shot the ball well and finished in transition.

If you don’t like Dwyane Wade, then you probably thought LeBron James was the best player in the tournament. James played most of this tournament like the 4th quarter in game 5 of the ’07 Eastern Conference Finals against the Pistons. He blocked more shots than I’ve seen him block in a long time, and I watch a lot of Cavaliers games. They’re on TV all the time, and if James defended like that in this past season’s Playoffs, Cleveland may have been able to stop Paul Pierce enough to beat Boston in that classic game 7. LeBron played with a contagious enthusiasm that definitely had an effect on his teammates.

Kobe Bryant couldn’t throw it in the ocean during these games, until the fourth quarter of the gold medal game against Spain. Kobe simply took over the fourth quarter of that game, just like the best player in the NBA is supposed to do. Every time it looked like Spain was going to make the big run that would put them over the hump, Bryant hit a big shot. When Spain cut the American lead to one possession, Kobe knocked down a huge four-point play. Great players aren’t always great. They’re just great when they have to be. Kobe was great when it mattered the most.

Going into the game, analysts pointed out two huge chinks in the American armor – free throw shooting and shooting the three. Up until the gold medal game, those analysts had been proven prophetic, as shooting clearly was a problem, but the defense created enough turnovers and transition opportunities to negate the shooting woes. In the biggest game of the year for Team USA, they hit 27-37 from the line (only 73%, but a huge improvement from the earlier games) and an amazing 13-28 from three. Many of the threes were timely, especially the seven combined threes from Bryant and Wade.

Tayshaun Prince only played limited minutes, just like he did in every other game in Beijing. Like he did in every other game in Beijing, Prince made the most of those minutes, going 3-3 from the field and grabbing two offensive rebounds. However, if you believe the announcers, the biggest contribution Prince made was off the court, as he apparently coached up fellow big men Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard on interior defense. Nobody on the Team USA roster was a better defender than Prince, but both Bosh and Howard did an outstanding job against every big man besides Luis Scola from Argentina. Yesterday, they held Pau and Marc Gasol to a quiet 32 combined points, and many attribute the defensive coaching from Prince as the driving force behind this defensive effort. I couldn’t be any prouder of Tayshaun. One of my favorite UK players of all time is an NBA champion and an Olympic champion. Why isn’t his jersey retired again?

I can only imagine one small downside to the big victory – Mike Krzyzewski will get more credit than he deserves for the gold medal. He does deserve credit for getting Team USA to play with maximized intensity on defense, the biggest flaw (of many) for the 2004 team that got blown out three times in Athens. At the same time, I always feel that when you deal with NBA players, it’s the players that deserve a large majority of the credit. I just know ESPN is preparing a bunch of Chris Connelly pieces on Coach K and I guarantee you that American Express is ready to run another recruiting pitch for Duke thinly disguised as a credit card commercial. But the play of Team USA is enough to not let that whole mess bother me one bit.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and it feels good to be on top of the basketball world again.

I was six years old when the Dream Team put on the most dominant performance in the history of team sports. First things first, I know a lot of people who are close to my age don’t remember the Dream Team, and that’s okay. Let me just refresh your memory very quickly. Here was the roster.

Charles Barkley
Larry Bird
Clyde Drexler
Patrick Ewing
Magic Johnson
Michael Jordan
Christian Laettner
Karl Malone
Chris Mullin
Scottie Pippen
David Robinson
John Stockton

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong. Don’t worry, Laettner didn’t play much. The Dream Team won all of their games with an average margin of victory of 43 points. I’m not trying to be like Mike & Mike and make some asinine comparison of the 1992 team and this current edition. Everybody knows the talent gap has closed significantly, culminating with the pathetic bronze medal performance of the 2004 team in Athens. We can thank the Dream Team for that. As those guys retired, the quality of play in the states got worse, and when Richard Jefferson is starting at small forward for Team USA, you know you’ve hit rock bottom. Now consider this year’s Team USA.

Carmelo Anthony
Carlos Boozer
Chris Bosh
Kobe Bryant
Dwight Howard
LeBron James
Jason Kidd
Chris Paul
Tayshaun Prince
Michael Redd
Dwyane Wade
Deron Williams

This obviously isn’t the Dream Team, but they’ve been playing with the same swagger that the 1992 team had. Before the Dream Team debuted in Olympic pool play against Angola, somebody asked Charles Barkley about his thoughts before the game. Barkley said, “I don’t know where Angola is, but I know they’re in trouble.” I think they won that game by over 60. Fast forward to Beijing. Team USA just got finished rolling Spain, a team many considered to be the second best in the tournament, by 37 points. After that flawless performance, the seeding was set for the medal round, despite one more game remaining in pool play. That game happened this morning against my second favorite team in the tournament, Germany. I figured Team USA would sleepwalk in this one after the much-publicized Spain game. Instead, they routed the Germans 106-57, the largest margin of victory of the tournament.

One thing that makes this team so great is that they get contributions from everybody. Against Spain, Tayshaun Prince, the proverbial victory cigar on the team, got early action with the intent of shutting down Spanish wingman Rudy Fernandez. Prince did just that, and he also scored 10 points and recorded a couple of nice assists, namely a great lob to LeBron James for a sweet jam. Against Germany this morning, it was Michael Redd and Jason Kidd who put in solid performances on offense. I can’t stand the term “Redeem Team” that NBC and ESPN are trying to shove down our throats, but I do believe that everything about the 2008 USA Basketball team has been designed to show the rest of the world that America is back. A great personnel executive (Jerry Colangelo) + a great coaching staff (Krzyzewski, D’Antoni, McMillan & Boeheim) + SOME of the best players in the country = the best possible team. I love that they threw in guys like Boozer and Prince who don’t have to be the alpha dog to give significant contributions. The 2004 team was comprised entirely of alpha dogs, and you saw what happened.

So now that the brackets are set for the medal round, I actually think that all three games will be tougher than the media was hyping the games against Spain and Greece to be. Team USA plays Australia first. The Aussies are the second highest scoring team in the tournament and gave Team USA the toughest test in the preliminary rounds. If we win (and as an American, I have a right to refer to Team USA as “us”), we’d play the winner of Argentina and Greece. I think Argentina will prove to be the toughest test of the whole tournament. If we survive, the championship would likely be against the winner of Spain and Lithuania. Spain does not worry me as much as Lithuania because the Spanish play a very Americanized style compared to the rest of the teams.

Predictions:

USA by 25 over Australia, by 15 over Argentina and by 20 over Lithuania.

Tayshaun Prince will play a huge role in one of these games, especially if we end up playing Argentina.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and this is a great day to be an American.

I’m not really a big stats guy, but this morning I dived into stats, media guides and everything else to debunk a myth.

You see, some dummy decided to comment on Seth’s UK/Duke 1998 WGCGA and echo another dummy who said UK was done as a top program. Yeah, those are mostly fearful comments, so I don’t pay any attention. But the second idiot said to quote top teams don’t have down years. He even referenced Duke and UNC as two programs that don’t have down years. I’m here to debunk the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.

So let’s take a look. I’ll start by saying that yes, Kentucky had a down year last year. They’ve had done years before, in the early Rick Pitino era. And in doing this research, I’m pretty sure that every great coach at every top basketball school has had some down years. So I’ll refrain from dipping into the Kentucky records, because I’m admitting now that they’ve had down years.

So I picked what I thought were four other top programs that weren’t UK rivals. I withheld Indiana because well, obviously they are down right now and I don’t want to pile on, yet. I didn’t pick Louisville because we all know how those Denny Crum years ended. Instead I went with Duke, UNC, Kansas and UCLA. Let’s break it down.

UCLA
I decided to throw out everything before John Wooden in the interest of fairness. Of course, the immediate six seasons before Wooden won his first title in the ‘63-’64 season, he had only one 20 win season. After back to back titles, Wooden didn’t even make the tournament in 65-66. That qualifies as a down year to me. Of course, Wooden picked it up after that.

UCLA fairs pretty well under it’s next three coaches, until Larry Farmer comes along. He makes the NCAA tournament once in three seasons and didn’t even make it out of the second round then. That’s down for a team that had made the NCAA tournament for the last 16 years before Farmer was hired. Walt Hazzard stays longer and doesn’t do any better, making the 80s pretty bad for UCLA.

Jim Harrick wins a title in 1995 and Steve Lavin mostly embrasses UCLA for too many down-year seasons. Howland has the program back on top, if he can ever win a title game.

Kansas
Quick fact: the inventor of the game, James Naismith, had a losing record at Kansas. Very interesting.

We’ll start with Phog Allen, Kansas’s biggest coach. Mr. Allen didn’t do much of anything before his National Champion in 51-52. In fact, he consistently had below 20 wins. He was national runner-up after that title win. And he had that same claim to fame a little earlier in his career, but otherwise… pretty uneventful.

His successor, Dick Harp, as a national runner-up in his first season. He only made the tournament one other time after that. Down years. Ted Owens seemingly took two years off after every NCAA tournament he made, as he almost could never string back to back tournament years together. Down years.

Larry Brown arrives, restores Kansas (or creates Kansas, maybe), then leaves. Roy Williams continues the prestige. He often exits in the second round, but makes a few final fours. Of course, Bill Self just won the national title.

UNC
Sadly, I couldn’t find a lot on UNC. Maybe they just didn’t make it as easy for me. I did see this… Dean Smith had below 20-win seasons and seasons he didn’t make the tournament. Down years for such a great coach, no?

Oh and Matt Doherty. 2000-2003. Anyone want to argue those weren’t down years? I think this can sum up UNC.

Duke
Let’s be real, before Coach K… Duke was nothing. Three final fours. TONS of down years in between. Many back to back losing seasons. That settles your pre-Coach K history.

Coach K has a nice run between 1988-1992, winning two titles and two more final fours. Runner up in 1986. Years in between, decent. First three years? Well.. nothing pretty. Of course, you have 1995… a losing season and a fake back injury by the Coach. 1996 was ugly too, no tournament. Down years. 1997, out in the first round… down year.

From 1998-2005, Coach K is back on track… at least making the sweet sixteen every year. Since then, Duke has struggled in the tournament. Down years.

So that pretty much ruins the arguement that top teams don’t have down years. Great coaches even have down years. But here’s the thing… down years are usually based more on if the coach is good or not. UCLA’s down years were mostly Steve Lavin and other bad coaches. Matt Doherty? Bad coach. See the trend?

The other thing that will lead to a bad year is probation. That’s what happened to Kentucky and Kansas. It’s all about coaching. Have a good coach, then you’ll have good years. In transition, on probation, made a bad coaching hire? Then you’ll have a bad year. Every program, even the top ones, have bad years. If you don’t believe that, then don’t open you mouth about college basketball because you’re only making everyone else dumber.

Oh and have a good Saturday!