When I was a kid, one refrain I always heard was, “If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.” Apparently that old saw doesn’t apply to the IOC, which grudgingly and unconvincingly went through the motions of “investigating” the ages of key members of the Chinese women’s gymnastics team, for the sole purpose of making the controversy go away.
The “investigation” had all the sincerity and dedication of George W. Bush’s White House “investigating” who leaked Valerie Plame’s name to Robert Novak, or the firing of the U.S. Attorneys, or the numerous other illegal acts that have occurred in the past 8 years. In other words, whitewash. Like they were going to do anything to embarrass China with the Olympics in Beijing.
Frankly, although I admire the skill, grace, strength and toughness of women (and men) gymnasts, I think the REAL investigation should have been into how routines are judged.
Yeah, I said toughness. Female, and male, gymnasts regularly compete with excruciating pain, just like athletes in the sports we love all the time, not just once every four years — and they have to do it with a smile, and without appearing out of breath, because they’re judged on “presentation” as well as performance.
A Japanese male gymnast won gold for his country years ago with a difficult vault — with one ankle broken. So did Kerri Strug (with a sprained ankle, anyway) for the U.S. women in Atlanta in 1996. I mean, she STUCK that landing despite G-forces that should have made her collapse, writhing on the ground like an Italian or South American soccer player. Chellsie Memmel competed for the silver-medalist U.S. team this year (which likely would have become the gold-medalist team had the IOC actually conducted a serious investigation) with a broken bone in her foot. So don’t for a second think that gymnasts aren’t athletes and competitors just because they have to make everything look graceful, effortless and elegant.
But the flip-side of that coin — as with figure skating — is that the sport emphasizes “artistic presentation” alongside the incredible athleticism, and often seems to devalue the “steak” and overvalue the “sizzle.” The greatest athlete, who sticks every single move, may still come a cropper because of subjective comparisons of his or her “grace” and “artistry” compared to an opponent’s. And there are no truly objective, bright-line irrefutable standards for scoring the “sizzle.”
That’s why, in my opinion, anyway, gymnastics and figure skating (and we might as well throw diving and synchronized swimming in, too) are seriously flawed as credible competitive sports. The results depend way too much on judging, which at best is subjective. Proposed moves to increase points for “artistic presentation” and to decrease the importance of athleticism will merely make those competitions more of either a “crap-shoot” or a “Dance With The Stars” competition with even skimpier outfits.
And that’s if everything is on the up-and-up. Remember all those jokes about the East German judges, back in the day when there was a Soviet Union, and judges from “Iron Curtain” countries routinely gave Eastern Europeans high scores, and Americans low ones? It’s not as if nationalist prejudices have decreased over the years. To say nothing of out-and-out corruption, bribery and backroom deals. Remember the French judge taking a bribe from a Russian “mafia” multimillionaire to give the Russian pair the Gold over the Canadians in the 2002 Olympic figure skating in Calgary? That one stank so bad that the “event referee” actually filed an official complaint about the judging. But there’s suspicion that that kind of thing happens with some regularity, just better-disguised.
That’s what makes gymnastics, figure skating and their ilk, despite the athletic skills necessary to compete at the top levels, not “sports” worthy of consideration with other activities like basketball, hockey, baseball, football, soccer — even swimming and track.
Mind you, I consider boxing, basketball and baseball to be “real” sports, and none of them is exactly untainted by bad results caused by “judges.” Unless there’s a knockout or TKO in a boxing bout, there’s always a chance of a bad outcome. Even then there can be a bogus disqualification. Don’t bet against a Bob Arum fighter or Oscar De La Hoya in Vegas, or a Don King guy in New York or New Jersey.
It’s even worse in the Olympics, where there’s headgear, fights go only 3 rounds, and meaningless punches that barely land or are blocked with the arms seem to count as much as punches that do damage. There’s no doubt that the fix was in to help South Korean fighters in the Seoul Olympics. Just ask Roy Jones, Jr.
Heck, throw in Taekwondo, where — unlike fencing — there are no electronic sensors to prove that a “touch” occurred, and the determination of whether or not a blow landed is in the hands of a referee. No chance for subjectivity or corruption there, much?
As for basketball, we have the scandal of Tim Donaghy. Not only has he admitted to gambling on NBA games and influencing point spreads and outcomes by judicious use of his whistle, but he’s suggested that he wasn’t the only one. I believe him.
In baseball, calling balls, strikes and outs isn’t an exact science, to say the least. Just ask St. Louis Cardinals fans, whose team lost the 1985 Freeway Series to the Royals on a blown call at first base by Umpire Don Denkinger. Or Braves’ fans, who watched the 1997 Marlins beat the Tomahawk Choppers in the NLCS, when the umps without warning narrowed the strike zone for Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, but widened it for the likes of Livan Hernandez.
So I understand that any sport that has referees is subject to outcomes determined by something other than objective criteria. But when the competitors aren’t even going head-to-head, and scores depend almost as much on how sinuously a competitor waves her arms, how well she points her toes, or even how her makeup, costume and hair ribbons look, there’s no hope.
After all, ballet dancers are incredibly skilled, too, and do wonderfully athletic things. They dance hurt, with sprains, pulled muscles and ligaments and what have you, all the time. They spend long hours torturing their bodies to get into and stay in dancing shape. But ballet surely isn’t a sport. Or is it? Let’s not forget that ballroom dancing was a demonstration “sport” at one Olympics. I don’t see a lot of difference between dancing and the “sports” of gymnastics, figure skating, rhythmic gymnastics, diving and synchronized swimming.
Not that I wasn’t impressed by China’s haul of Gold Medals, and not that I don’t believe the Chinese men and women were the best gymnasts and divers at this year’s Olympics (Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson being the notable counter-arguments), but it’s still worth noting that of that country’s 51 Gold Medals, 18 came in Gymnastics and Diving. Makes one think, at least.
I wrote the following before the U.S.-Spain Gold Medal game in Men’s Basketball:
How about those Argentine basketball players? They are tougher than their country’s renowned but chewy grass-fed beef. Even without Manu Ginobili, who obviously still hasn’t recovered from his ankle injury, they hung tough with Team USA, even after falling behind 30-11 in the First Quarter of their Semifinal match. They lost by 20, true, but the deficit was single digits for much of the Second and Third Quarters, and was only about 12 with 4 minutes to go. And let’s not forget that the bogus foul calls that always seem to go against U.S. players in international play, inexplicably went against the Argentines this time. I’d say that the U.S. team got at least 9, and maybe more, points from those phantom calls.
Luis Scola, who played so well for Houston last year, was an absolute beast, albeit a somewhat velocity- and gravity-challenged one. Oberto, Delfino and even Nocioni acquitted themselves more than honorably. I’m not even sure Team USA would have won had Ginobili been healthy, but they probably would have. With Manu in the mix, though, I’m convinced the margin would have been 10 or fewer. Team USA, 2004 version, would have lost that game by double-digits, even without Manu playing.
Amazing, when you think about it, because although the five players named above all play, or have played, in the NBA, I agree with Charley Rosen that only Manu (who barely played) could have made this year’s Team USA squad. Just goes to show you the benefits of having a team, with lots of time together and well-defined roles for the players.
Kobe, BTW, was 5-14 overall, jacked up 9 treys (made 2), and went to the line not even once. If he keeps up performances like that, sales of his jerseys in China may plummet faster and farther than Bears Stearns’s stock price. In fairness, he played some impressive, tight “D” on Delfino. But as we all know, defense may win championships, but it sure doesn’t sell jerseys.
Now that Team USA has squeaked by Spain, I haven’t really changed my mind a whole lot. Team USA’s win wasn’t a fluke. It probably deserved what it got. Its players, 1 through 12, were better overall than any other country’s. But please don’t try to hype what a great “triumph” the Gold Medal win represented, or try to sell me the idea that the win was the harbinger of a sea change in U.S. basketball. It wasn’t. The differences between the 2004 team aren’t as great as they’ve been painted, except that the players comported themselves with more couth. The players — and the veteran leadership — this time were just better overall.
Not that Spain was exactly lacking in the talent department. Their roster had lots of talent, more international experience, and was almost as deep as the U.S. squad, notwithstanding the misleading blowout in the Preliminary Round. They probably couldn’t have done much in a best-of-seven, but were certainly capable of testing the U.S. players in a one-game Final.
Pau Gasol, whatever our criticisms about his alleged lack of heart and toughness, is unquestionably a top-tier (or whatever we call the level just below “superstar) player in the NBA. I don’t know how well Rudy Fernandez will do in the NBA, but I can say that off his performance in the Olympics this year, I’m not exactly thrilled that an up-and-coming Portland team is going to have him on the roster this season.
Juan Carlos Navarro was stuck in a miserable situation in Memphis last season, and has returned to Europe, but there are plenty of NBA teams that would like him on their roster. Marc Gasol has limitations of speed and hops, but he’s big, smart and, like his brother, has a decent touch.
And that Ricky Rubio, who’s not even 18 yet, and made his Euroleague debut at age 16, just might be the real deal, if he ever learns to play a little “D” and to take some of the mustard off the hot dog. Sure, he made some mistakes and was inconsistent, but just remember how a 20-year-old Le Bron James, already a budding NBA star, played in 2004 before dismissing Rubio. Rubio’s first Olympics was certainly better than Le Bron’s first, and we knew LBJ was the real deal even as a rookie. Imagine what “Ricky” will be like in 2010, when he’s NBA draft-eligible. For the kid to play as well as he did, under pressure and on the biggest stage in world basketball, bodes pretty well for his, and his country’s, basketball future.
That’s forgetting Jose Calderon, who was good enough to convince Raptors’ management to make him the team’s starter at PG for next season and ship T.J. Ford’s ass back below the 49th Parallel. The correct decision, IMO. He’s not flashy, but he’s a very solid player. Who knows what would’ve happened had Calderon been able to play against Team USA? It’s not as if the “Redeem Team” had any breathing room with Calderon sitting out. Heck, it was 91-89 with only about 2 minutes gone in the Fourth Quarter.
For all the talk of how much better prepared, mature, committed, defense-oriented, yadda yadda this year’s team was compared to the one in Athens, it didn’t dominate in the “playoffs.” I’m not saying they were lucky to win, exactly. They were the best team with the best players, and finished where they should have. Still, they walked a thin line between success and failure, and should feel more relieved than ebullient about the result.
For one thing, they were lucky to avoid injuries to key players, while their top opponents didn’t. That certainly helped against an Argentine squad missing its best player, Manu, who can really call down the thunder in a hurry when he gets hot. And it really helped against a Spain squad that could have used its best — and best defensively — point guard.
Not that Team USA should be ashamed to take any gifts it was handed. You have to play the team that’s actually on the floor against you, not the team that might have been on the floor had things gone perfectly. Those are the breaks of the game. Not only do the breaks even out in the long run, but it often happens that the remaining teammates rally together and make up for the absence – especially in a one-and-done scenario. All I’m saying is that the breaks fell Team USA’s way this time. Had the situation been reversed, so might the results have been.
Then, of course, there’s international refereeing. It was, as it has always been, crappy with a capital “K.” Just ask Tim Duncan, who refused to re-up at least partly for that reason. That was to be expected. The surprise was that, this time, the questionable, ticky-tack and phantom calls didn’t all go against the Americans.
Mind you, I’m not down with the Spanish team’s whining that they would have won had the referees done their jobs. It sounds like a large vat of “uvas agrias” to me. They did a lot of hacking and obstruction of their own that went uncalled.
Still, it IS true that U.S. teams have pretty much always in the past received the short end of the stick when it came to officiating. It may be because foreign refs have an inbuilt dislike of U.S. players, or because U.S. players don’t really know the international game. Whatever the reason, U.S. teams have usually had to play 5 against 7 – 5 against 8, now that FIBA has added an extra official. When they’ve been way, way better than the opposition, they’ve overcome that burden; when they’ve been only a bit better, they haven’t always. This time, while I’m not prepared to say that the refs favored the Americans, it did seem to me that the bad calls were at least close to even — and that was enough to provide the margin of victory.
That, plus Kobe Bryant, one of the most infuriating great players ever. He’s obviously a preeminently great player, but he’s like the Cy Young pitcher with the weird delivery, or the Pro Bowl passer whose throws aren’t perfect spirals. Not that he’s not fundamentally sound. He is. It’s just that he seems to go for what the Aussies call “walkabouts,” when he forces things and obstructs the “chi” (or, since the Olympics were in Beijing, the “qi”). He does so many things on the court that seem stubborn, forced and ill-advised and make me want to shout at the TV — even if they succeed, which they often do. When they don’t succeed, welcome to the all-Kobe-hate-all-the-time blogosphere.
Yet, there’s also another side of KB24, or 10, or whatever number he’s wearing these days. That’s his flair for the dramatic, his ability to raise his game at the end of a close contest — even when he’s looked decidedly ordinary for much of the game — and pull his teammates’ “chestnuts” out of the open fire. He doesn’t do it all the time. No one can. But he does it more often than anyone else around these days, and he certainly did it on Sunday.
He certainly wasn’t the only reason for the success of Team USA. But he’s the guy who raised his game in the Fourth Quarter, and made certain that his teammates — All-Stars all — didn’t choke this one away. Had they done so — and they came perilously close — that loss would have been worse than the ones to Greece in the 2006 FIBA World Championships, or to Argentina in the 2004 Olympics. It would’ve been a stain on this country’s basketball reputation that all the Clorox in the world couldn’t have removed. And it would’ve cemented the prevailing view of NBA players as me-first divas with a hypertrophied sense of entitlement, more flash than filigree, who know nothing of team play.
Anyone who watched that Gold Medal game knows it could well have happened. A couple more bad possessions near the end, or a couple fewer stops on the defensive end, and it would have. It would’ve been an upset of Hurricane Katrina proportions – worse than Villanova’s upset of the Georgetown juggernaut (led by 1992 Dream Teamer Patrick Ewing) in the 1985 NCAA Final. The Americans had killed Spain — playing with a healthy Calderon — by almost 40 points just a few days previously. Sure, no one expected another blowout win, but no one expected such a close contest, either. A U.S. loss in the Gold Medal game, even by just a point or two, would have been a disaster greater than the 1972 medal robbery. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I believe the NBA itself might never have recovered its cachet.
It was Mr. Bryant who took matters into his own hands and refused to let that happen. KB, not anyone else. D-Wade was great. If there were any question that’s he’s back, this tournament, and the Gold Medal game, answered it. LBJ (the basketball player, not the dead President) was a stud. CP3 and D-Will, and Chris Bosh — and even Carmelo Anthony — were all there when they had to be. But it was Kobe the Closer whom Coach K asked to carry the team on his back in the endgame, and to whom all those great players deferred when the real pressure shots had to be taken.
The Mamba responded with panache, scoring 13 of his 20 points in the Fourth Quarter, including a nifty running 10-footer, and a cool three-pointer with Fernandez draped all over him, that not only went in, but had the added bonus of giving him a free throw (which he sank) and of fouling out a player who’d been a thorn in the Americans’ side all game.
He also had a team-high 6 assists (2 in a key stretch of the Fourth Quarter, including a brilliant pass inside to Dwight Howard after a fake that parted Rubio from his shorts and his jock), and made some key defensive plays at the end, in a game where defense wasn’t at a premium. Had he done even a smidgen less, his rep and marketability would have taken a hit from which he’d never have been able to recover. Global jersey and sneaker sales can now proceed apace!
I was gratified to see the members of Team USA, 2008 version, led by Le Bron, make it a point to go over after the game to shake announcer Doug Collins’s hand. Collins not only was the point guard of the 1972 team that had its Gold Medal stolen by inept or corrupt referees and by the head of FIBA; he was the guy who calmly sank 2 free throws with just a few seconds remaining in that game, to give the U.S. a 50-49 lead and what should have been the game. It was a nice “we paid ‘em back for you” for Collins and all his teammates from that team – none of whom, to this day, has deigned to accept or collect his tainted Silver Medal.
Not only was the gesture moving, even if possibly staged, but I was impressed by the fact that a group of young men, none of whom was even alive in 1972, actually were attuned to this black day in U.S. basketball history. I mean, few young baseball players – even African-American baseball players – knew who Jackie Robinson was or why what he did should mean anything to them. Good to see some sense of history from players who I’d always thought believed basketball started with Magic and Larry.
Incidentally, in case anyone wonders why NBA GMs and coaches are ambivalent about their players playing for their countries, it looks like the Bucks are going to be without the services of Andrew Bogut, and the Spurs minus Manu, for a while. Both of them suffered ankle injuries. Oh, yeah, and the aforementioned Senor Calderon has what appears to be a serious groin injury, which wasn’t what the Raptors were hoping for when they anointed him the starter. Luckily for those players, and unluckily for their teams, they all have guaranteed contracts.
There’s been a lot of ink spilled in comparing this year’s “Redeem Team” and the 1992 “Dream Team,” and speculation on which would win head-to-head. The comparisons are ridiculous. Dream Team, for sure — especially in a 7-game series.
Forget about the superstar nucleus. Jordan, Pippen and Barkley in their prime were formidable enough. Even the post-HIV Magic was a force to be reckoned with, despite not really having played for a couple of years. Larry Bird was aging and spavined by back pain. I’d still take those five as a better than “not bad” nucleus. But forget about them. Just consider the big men.
Dwight Howard is a great but still unfinished (boy, is he unfinished!) talent. He still hasn’t shown an understanding of the nuances of the center position. Chris Bosh is skilled, surprisingly tough for such a skinny guy, and played a tournament and a very solid game for the U.S. in the Final, but he’s no center. Carlos Boozer has his moments, but he’s a poor man’s Karl Malone.
The Dream Team, by contrast, had the REAL Karl Malone, to go with David Robinson and Patrick Ewing inside. Whatever their limitations – neither was my favorite player, as I’ve mentioned more than once in previous columns – The Admiral and The Hoya Destroya were head and shoulders above Howard and Bosh. That does it for me, right there. Add in Chris Mullin, who was a more consistent outside shooter than anyone this year’s team had, and John Stockton even hobbled as he was by a leg injury, and that was a pretty formidable team.
In fairness, every team since 1992 has faced increasingly tough competition, of a level with which the 1992 team never had to deal. I’m pretty confident in asserting that the 1992 team wouldn’t have gone through the competition so imperiously, had they had to face the current top international teams. Ironically, that’s partly the fault of the 1992 team.
As Pau Gasol said, watching the NBA stars perform in Barcelona inspired him, and lots of Euro kids, to work on their games to emulate those stars. The skills gap has narrowed significantly. And, over the years, lots of Euros have made it to the NBA — a trend that started before 1992, but accelerated after that watershed Olympics. They play against NBA stars all the time. They respect the great U.S. players, but they’re no longer afraid of them. The mystique – and the fear of U.S. players’ athleticism — is long gone.
The days of cakewalks, even when we send our best players and take the process seriously enough to do long-term planning, rather than just throw together a bunch of disparate talents a few weeks before a tournament, are past and won’t be coming back. In that sense, the Redeem Team has nothing to be embarrassed about, even though their last two wins weren’t blowouts.
Still, c’mon. The outcome shouldn’t have been in the balance with less than 5 minutes to play. It just shouldn’t have.
I’m not very big on showboating in sports. I tend to subscribe to the “when you get to the end-zone, try to act like you’ve been there before” school of thought. I particularly hate showboats who dance around as if they’ve accomplished something worthy of celebration when they score a meaningless TD when their team is behind by 30 points in the Fourth Quarter, make a sack in garbage time, or otherwise do things that don’t really affect the outcome of a match.
But I have to confess that I’m just fine with braggarts and arrogant athletes who back up the talk with impressive action. As “Wee” Willie Keeler said: “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.” As witness Usain “Lightning” Bolt, who now owns the mythic title of “World’s Fastest Man.” Not only did he pull off the rare 100- and 200-meter sprint Gold-Medal double — a feat accomplished only 8 times in Olympics history — but he did it with two world record times. To top it off, he anchored the Jamaican 4×100 relay team to a Gold Medal in another world record time.
Not only did he win, he won big. In events where the difference between the Gold and Bronze may be just hundredths of a second, he was FIVE-TENTHS of a second faster than the guy who won the Silver in the 200. He ran the last 15-20 meters of the 100 with his arms upraised. How fast might he have gone had he waited to celebrate until after he’d crossed the finish line?
So, naturally, Jacques Rogge, the President of the IOC, just had to call him out for displaying “poor sportsmanship.” Well, it undoubtedly was irritating to opponents who are The Flash compared to you and me, but who looked like plowhorses in Bolt’s wake. But lighten up. If a guy can run like Bolt, he’s entitled to enjoy himself and to celebrate his greatness, as long as he can back it up. It was pretty clear that he was reveling in the joy of his superhuman achievement, not the inferiority of his opposition – and well he should. When he stops winning but still acts like an ass, we can revisit the question.
I have no reason to believe or disbelieve that Mr. Bolt is taking performance-enhancers, but I won’t be surprised if it later comes out that he got some artificial help. If BALCO taught us anything, it’s that the creators and users of “designer drugs” are always a step or two ahead of the enforcers.
Drug testing can catch only known substances – or make that, only known substances that aren’t too expensive to test for. That’s how Marion Jones got away with her juicing for so long – she was using drugs that the tests couldn’t detect. Had her own (former) coach not had a brain-fart and provided a sample of the drug she was using to USADA in a fit of pique, she’d have been competing in Beijing and maybe picked up a few more medals.
So I’m unimpressed with the knowledge that an athlete has never tested positive. All that means is that the athlete was never positive for whatever the testing could detect. And let’s also acknowledge that Jamaican athletes are subject to a lot less random drug testing than athletes in North America or Europe.
I’m not saying Bolt used performance-enhancers. I’m just saying that if it comes out that he did, I, for one, won’t be shocked, and no one else should be, either.
Oh, by the way, the guy’s first name, “Usain,” sounds suspiciously like “Husein.” If he lived in the U.S., there’d be talk that he’s a Muslim, which would inevitably morph into claims that he’s a terrorist. After all, isn’t that what people are suggesting about that “Muslim,” Barack Husein Obama?
Maybe Barack should drop the “H” in his middle name, to make everyone think he’s not only not a Muslim, but maybe related to track’s newest “Golden Boy.” Of course, Barack might then be subject to being thought of as Jamaican, and we all know that aside from incredibly fast sprinters, Jamaica is best known for Rastafarians, Reggae, rum and ganja.
Can we all puh-leeze stop ganging up on Becky Hammon, the U.S. heartland born-and-bred basketball player who, despite being runner-up in the 2007 WNBA MVP voting, wasn’t deemed worthy of being invited to try out for the women’s version of Team USA. Since she’s a star in the Russian women’s league in the WNBA “offseason,” and, according to her, always dreamed of competing in the Olympics, she jumped at the chance to get fast-track Russian citizenship and compete for Russkyland.
We still haven’t stopped hearing U.S. team members, coaches and commentators pulling out all the stops. “Unpatriotic” is the least of the insults directed her way. That oaf Steve Mason goes so far as to call her a “traitor.”
And thus do serious concepts get cheapened into farce. If Becky Hammon is a “traitor,” what can we then call U.S. citizens who steal our nuclear and other technology secrets and sell them to other countries; who actually take up arms against and kill other U.S. citizens on the field of battle; who aid and abet foreign terrorists who plant bombs in our public places? If she’s a “traitor,” the word no longer has any legitimate meaning. All she did was get another country’s citizenship so that she could play in the Olympics — which, just by-the-by, was allegedly started to promote international friendship and unity, not the carrying-on of war and propaganda by other means.
Also, just by the by, she’s not even the first U.S. basketball player to take out Russian citizenship. Because of roster restrictions on “foreign” players in the Russian leagues, several top non-Russian women players have become Russian citizens, to allow their teams to sign more foreigners.
Not just the women, either. A guy named Travis Hansen, who grew up in Utah and played for BYU, then played for the Hawks for a season before heading overseas, to Spain and finally to Russia, is now a “Russian citizen” who plays for Dynamo Moscow. He’s become one of the top players in the Russian Super League, and was approached about maybe playing for Russia in Beijing. He didn’t make the team – I believe some unknown named Andrei Kirilenko nabbed the spot he’d have occupied – but it’s entirely possible he’d have played for Russia had AK-47 been unable to go.
Some guy named J.R. Holden, who grew up in Pittsburgh, played college ball at Bucknell, and hit the shot that won the 2007 Euroleague championship game, DID play for Russia in Beijing — and played darn well, too. Yet there was no great outcry to brand those two men as “traitors.”
Chris Kaman did the same. He’ll never in a million years be good enough to play for Team USA, but he’s plenty adequate for the German national team and, as it happens, he has grandparents who were from Germany. Under EU law, he’s eligible for German nationality and an EU passport. Not that he speaks German or anything, or had even visited the country before he joined its basketball team. But nobody dumped on him when he assented to Dirk Nowitzki’s request to become a German of convenience to play in the Olympics.
What’s the difference, that Kaman has some attenuated ancestral connection to Germany, while Ms. Hammon has no Russian forebears? Big deal. She’s actually visited and played basketball in Russia way more than Kaman’s done with Germany.
Or is it that Ms. Hammon is one of the top players in the WNBA, while Messrs. Hansen and Holden might never even have a shot at riding an NBA bench? If that’s the case, why didn’t the people filling the tryout roster for the women’s team even invite Ms. Hammon to camp until AFTER she’d made her commitment to Russia? What was she supposed to do, hang around for a phone call that might never have come, like some teenage girl dying to get asked to the prom by the high school quarterback, only to find out too late that that the guy had already made plans with the cheerleader, and that now even the geeks, nerds, misfits and nosepickers have other dates?
It’s so easy for people like Lisa Leslie, and Anne Donovan, the team coach, who was a mainstay of U.S. teams in international competition for years, to say that Hammon should’ve waited for the call that might never have come. THEY’ve never had to wait for those phone calls; they were always automatic shoo-ins to be invited to every national team training camp around. They were always the Prom Queens (figuratively speaking – just look at Ms. Donovan) whose only worry was which date to pick out of a long list of suitors. They don’t understand rejection, because they’ve never felt its sting.
Becky Hammon is 31 years old, and, despite the fact that she was an All-American in college and a very good WNBA player for a fair number of years, has NEVER been invited to try out for Team USA. If she’d hung around waiting for the call, she’d have missed out on this year’s Olympics. This was probably her last shot at it. What’d the odds have been that she’d have been invited in 2012, at age 35? Ah, but she’d have shown true “patriotism” by accepting the snub meekly, wouldn’t she?
It’s not as if the U.S. has any problem giving foreigners who happen to very good at Olympic sports fast-track citizenship so that they can compete for the U.S. — especially in sports where the U.S. is behind the curve. That’s OK, because after all, we’re the U.S. and they’re not. But God forbid that any other country try to do that, and we get our knickers in a major twist. Please, spare me the hypocrisy.
Strange how people can jump on a red, white and blue bandwagon to tar and feather an individual U.S. citizen who didn’t even get the chance to turn down, let alone try out for, the U.S. team, but have nothing to say about corporations founded in the U.S. that routinely do more damage to the fabric of our nationhood than Becky Hammon could do if she lived to be a thousand. I’m talking about U.S. corporations that reincorporate holding companies in foreign countries of convenience to avoid paying U.S. taxes even as they keep their operations here. And about U.S. corporations that care so little for the people of the country that makes them rich that they fall all over each other outsourcing U.S. jobs to foreign countries.
I’m also talking about megawealthy U.S. citizens who wouldn’t be hurt much in the pocketbook if they paid their fair share of taxes, but who illegally maintain large secret deposits in offshore tax havens so that they can avoid paying even the paltry tax levies that they’re subject to, courtesy of Dubya. About oil companies that make obscene profits, in large measure by helping inflate the price of oil and by NOT building new refineries. About armaments manufacturers and military contractors who overcharge our military for shoddy goods and incompetent services, and directly put the lives and safety of our troops in danger — and, to add insult to injury, “offshore” a lot of their profits.
Yet, Becky Hammon, whose actions harm not a single American, is the modern-day transgendered “Benedict Arnold,” while the scoundrels who rape and pillage our nation and endanger its wellbeing are just fine? George Orwell was off by 24 years.
J.R. Holden said it best, I think: “All I do is play basketball as a Russian. I pay taxes in the U.S, I live in the U.S., I do everything in the U.S. except play basketball. So I’m a traitor because I’m over here making a living? What about all the businessmen who travel overseas to do business?” Yeah, what about them? And what about the companies that not only do business overseas, but find ways not to repatriate their profits? Who are the real “traitors” here?
Speaking of women who’ve gotten way more criticism than they deserved, anyone remember Hope Solo, the women’s soccer team goalkeeper, who got slammed royally when she spoke out after the U.S. women lost 4-0 to Brazil in the Semifinals of the 2007 FIFA Women’s World Cup? She had started (and won) the 3 prior games, but the coach had replaced her on a hunch with 36-year-old veteran Briana Scurry. Ms. Solo simply said that she thought she’d have made the saves Ms. Scurry had missed, and that the U.S. team would have had a better chance to win had she been in.
Oy, what a storm of fecal matter ensued. She was benched for the Third-Place game, which the Americans won, and was Typhoid Mary to her teammates and to the American public.
It turned out, however, that she was still far and away the best player the U.S. had at her position, and the new national team coach took her back in a heartbeat. Wise decision, because it ALSO turned out that Ms. Solo had spoken nothing but the truth.
Facing the same Brazil team in the Gold Medal game at the Olympics, she did, in fact, make the saves. Brazil demonstrably outplayed the U.S. women, and launched hard-to-play shot after hard-to-play shot at the U.S. goal. Ms. Solo stood on her head, as they say, to stop every single one of them, allowing her teammates to win the game on a fortunate overtime goal against the flow.
More politic now, though, to her credit she spoke only about the team victory, and said nothing about the vindication she must be feeling after having been punished for being right last year. To their discredit, the media types who delighted in piling on her for her alleged egotistical statements last year, failed to point out that this year’s performance may be proof that she wasn’t being egotistical, but merely honest. Just goes to show you that honesty isn’t always the best policy.
Finally on the vindication front, how must Kobe be loving the latest wrinkle in the Shaq saga? While Kobe was refurbishing his tattered image, basking in the glow of the hero-worship in Beijing, and getting photographed enjoying the Olympics en famille, with wife and daughters prominently on display, the Shaqinator was getting his name on the TMZ website for, allegedly, stalking a threatening a former paramour, an Atlanta female rap artist whose stage name is “Mary-Jane” with such vigor and purpose that she’s gotten a restraining order against him.
According to the complaint, that fun-loving, impish, lovable lug just couldn’t take “drop dead” for an answer, and came up with the following puckish pranks to win back the lady’s affections:
Threatened to hurt her and harassed her with heavy-breathing over the phone.
Threatened to “blackball” her from the recording industry by paying established artists $50,000 each for their agreement to refuse to perform or record with her in the future.
Wrote her an E-mail or a text message that reads: “I dnt no who the [rhymes with “duck”] u think u dealin wit u will neva be heard from one phone call is all I gotta make no try me. Sho me.”
And, in a real display of class and savoir-faire, sent her “an unsolicited vulgar and offensive illustration of a man physically restraining a woman while forcing her to engage in sexual intercourse with him.”
Oh, what a practical joker.
Not exactly nonconsensual sex in a resort room in Eagle, Colorado, but not all that far away from it, either.
Of course, the claim against Shaq is just civil, not criminal, right now, and one shouldn’t believe everything a gold-digging floozy says to extort money or publicity. That never stopped the Court of Public Opinion from indicting and convicting Kobe, though, even as the charges in the REAL court system were dropped and the civil case settled. Shaq being Shaq, he’ll get the benefit of every doubt. But I just wonder if in a dark corner of his mind, Kobe’s thinking: “Hey, big guy, how does MY a** taste now?” Schadenfreude, the gift that keeps on giving.
Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.
