Surely I can’t be the only person looking at the performance of the U.S. men’s basketball “Redeem Team” and being underwhelmed. Even when they’re beating teams handily, they’re shooting like excrement, getting handled on the boards, missing free throws as if they were all channeling Shaq, getting bamboozled by the pick and roll, running into each other on defense, and not looking particularly “N’Sync.”
Yeah, they haven’t faced any formidable opposition yet, and maybe they’re lying low in the weeds and conserving their energy and focus for games that really mean something. But 97-76 over lowly Angola was, as far as I’m concerned, an utter disgrace. Not the 97 part, although had they shot even adequately that number would have been in triple digits, with the middle one being a 2 or a 3. But allowing 76 points to an opponent like that? And 70 to an undermanned China team? Remind me again about that alleged newfound commitment to defense.
Both games were actually closer than the scores suggested. China, and even Angola, actually hung with the Ugly Americans for the first halves of their respective games. What’s going to happen when the Americans face a team that can fight back? Who knows, that bronze from 2004 might actually start looking pretty good.
Oh, and what’s become of Kobe? Maybe the NBA Finals took too much out of him. He looks shot, spent, spurlos versenkt. If he keeps shooting at a 30 – 40 percent rate, those big jersey sales in China are going to dry right up.
As I say, maybe they’re playing possum and will crank it up when they start playing against real competition. I hope they do. I just wanted to get my pessimistic premonitions on record before, not after, they come a cropper.
The greatest thing about that Michael Phelps guy may very well be his mother, who raised him and his older sisters as a single mother, while ferrying them all ceaselessly and without respite to swim practices and meets — all while working full-time as a middle school principal in the Baltimore area. She seems to have had the right attitude about her kids’ athletic endeavors, too — encouraging and supporting them without putting on undue pressure. Eleven gold medals later, and still counting, all I can say to her, channeling Vic The Brick, is “mazel tov.”
The controversy about the apparently bogus ages of the Chinese women (I use the term advisedly) gymnasts and divers puts me in mind of some of the great age scandals surrounding teams from Asia that have plagued the Little League World Series over the years. Except then, the issue wasn’t that the Asian players were too young, but that they were actually older than was allowed.
I definitely remember seeing the players on the victorious Zamboanga, Philippines team that crushed a Long Beach team coached by ex-Major Leaguer Jeff Burroughs 15-4 in the 1992 Finals, and wondering how 11- and 12-year-olds could possibly have so much facial hair and mature musculature. Of course, LLWS officials didn’t want to open THAT can of worms, and instead DQ’d Zamboanga for having 6 players from “out of district,” but everybody knew. Just as everybody had suspicions about Danny Almonte — suspicions that proved to be true.
Personally, I’m more offended by age fraud when it’s older athletes pretending to be younger so that they can dominate kids, than when it’s prepubescent “tweens” pretending to be older so that they can compete against older kids. Sure, not having crossed the puberty Rubicon does give those girls an advantage. For some reason, once they reach puberty they seem to get a tad less flexible and to add enough pounds to screw up the ideal strength-to-weight ratio — though I’d hardly call most post-pubescent female gymnasts and divers “fat,” just less anorexic. Still, tough noogies. In the greater scheme of cheating in “amateur” sports, I can live with that.
Actually, I’m enjoying this year’s Olympics more than any I can recall in many years. Why? Mainly because I’m boycotting the NBC coverage, so I don’t have to sit through endless sob-stories aimed at the estrogen-rich once-every-four-years casual fan; don’t have to sit through hours of commercials and nauseating, bland, empty “expert” commentary to see a few moments of actual athletic competition; and, most of all, don’t have to listen to Bob Costas shill for the Olympic hosts and the sponsors, while doing his level best not to ask any tough questions or to say anything that would offend anyone.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Costas is smart, quick-witted, facile and well-spoken to the point of occasional eloquence, and as talented as it gets in that profession. When he does his HBO specials, and can let loose just a bit, he also reveals himself as someone with a keen analytical mind and an ability to ask through-provoking questions and deal with difficult topics without being nakedly aggressive or overly obnoxious. But on NBC, he’s a house man through and through, and I just tire easily of his mealymouthed hypocrisy and lack of substance.
Given how much money the network has at stake in its Olympics coverage, I wouldn’t expect anything different. He’d be insane to foment controversy, and I understand that. But I shouldn’t have to put up with a bombardment of such virtual barium enemas. Now, thanks to the Internet, cable and satellite, I don’t have to. Hallelujah.
By the way, what’s with the Spanish men’s basketball team and their incredibly racially insensitive team photo, where they all stretched their eyes horizontally to make it look like they had Chinese epicanthic folds? Sure, it was all in good fun. What if the Olympics were held in Africa. Would they all have put on Al Jolson minstrel-singer blackface? My favorite excuse was that the photo was supposed to be only for domestic Spanish circulation. Yeah, right. Like they’ve never heard of Youtube, the Internet, and all those other neat technological innovations that make privacy so last-century.
Mind you, China, although lovey-dovey with the genocidal African regimes like the one in Sudan, isn’t exactly yet known for its own great sensitivity when it comes to people of different colors. Just prior to the Olympics, there was a story going round that police officials had visited many clubs and restaurants in the popular Sanlitun area telling the owners not to serve black people because they’re known as prostitutes, pimps, and drug dealers. Someone will have to pass that important news on to Allyson Felix after her prayer meeting, or maybe Tony Dungy just before he does another charitable act.
And don’t even get me started about the popularity of a brand of toothpaste that (I kid you not) used to be called “Darkie,” and is now called “Darlie” (very creative), but has the same illustration — a grinning caricature in blackface and a top hat. And, lest any Chinese person be confused by the switch from “k” to “l,” the Chinese characters on the packages translate literally as “black man toothpaste.” They claim it’s a compliment to black people, because they all have such nice white teeth. I swear I’m not making this up. So please excuse me if I have trouble taking too seriously Chinese sensitivities about perceived racist slights.
Please send comments and criticism — especially criticism — to thonglaw@sprynet.com, where it will be dealt with appropriately.
