The Fate of Tyrlon and other Dubious Things

If you’ve been following anything about the Beijing Olympics (other than Michael Phelps successful 8 gold medla wins), you have probably heard about the U.S. Men’s 2008 Olympics Basketball team that has been cleaning house over in China.

After winning decisively in the first game versus China by a score of 101-70, they went on to beat Angola in the second round 97-76.  What surprises me the most is that we did not dominate Angola nearly as much as you would expect since we beat them so badly in 1992 when the real Dream Team was at the Olympics (including Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Larry Byrd, Magic Johnson, David Robinson..need I go on???).  The 2008 team are calling themselves the “Redeem Team” to make up for doing so poorly in the 2004 Summer games in Athens where the USA only took home a Bronze Medal.

In the third round the USA beat Greece 92-69 and then in the fourth round beat Spain 119-82.  The fifth round the USA soundly trounced Germany 106-57 and now advance to the quarterfinals where we will face our strongest challenge yet by playing Australia.  Australia almost beat the US team a couple of weeks ago during an exhibition game, so i’m a little worried about this next game.  If we can get past this next game against Australia we will face either Argentina or Greece.

This new team certainly isn’t as explosively dominant as the Dream Team was in 1992, but Basketball has changed a lot since then so i’m not sure it’s really a fair comparison anyway.  Basketball internationally has had a renewed sense of interest since 1992, so the competition is quite fierce in the international community now.  Also, many of the foreign teams include top NBA players since the NBA imports a lot of talent from international locales.

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