Oh, how times have changed. Although it was a little more than a decade ago, the ¹92 team seems like just a distant memory. This year, instead of dominating, the U.S. was considered fresh meat by some foreign opponents as the U.S. racked up two losses in the preliminary rounds of the Olympic Games. While the ¹92 team lived up to all the hype and expectation, the 2004 team fell way short.
The ¹04 squad would have been more aptly named the Left-overs because that¹s what they were. For the most part, they were players called to fill in because more celebrated athletes refused to play, citing injuries, exhaustion or just lacking the desire to compete for their country (or in the case of Kobe Bryant, legal trouble). Only two marquee players made it to Athens: Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson. Younger players such as LeBron James served as the inadequate replacements for the superstars who didn¹t make it.
There are many comments that one can make about the subpar performance by the men¹s team at Athens, but one thing is for sure: the result wasn¹t a surprise. Ever since the sheer domination of the ¹92 team, international players have slowly been catching up to the American¹s level of play. For instance, an increasing number of international players are joining the NBA. Instead of being a country that exports old or weak players to foreign places, the U.S. has now become a country that imports talented players.
However, it isn¹t just that the international players are getting better; we¹re just not as good as we think. This decline in ability was evident in Sydney at the 2000 Olympics. Even though we won the gold medal, we barely eked out victories. We weren¹t more talented than other countries; we just had more depth. While most teams had one star player that they inevitably relied on to carry the burden, we had a whole roster of players that could easily be exchanged for one another.
While we had managed to hide our weakness before, in Athens, we were truly exposed as an inferior basketball team. Before entering the medal rounds, the statistics showed that our outside shooting percentage was not only the worst among all the men¹s teams at the Games, but worse than many women¹s teams as well. That¹s truly an eye-popping statistic. The third place finish leaves many of us longing for the glory days of ¹92 and wondering where our ³Dream Team² has gone.
I certainly don¹t have all the answers to the many woes that plagued the 2004 U.S. men¹s basketball team, but I do know a place they can start looking: the U.S. women¹s softball team. The softball team didn¹t just merely win every game they played in Athens, they completely dominated their opponents, allowing only one run in the entire tournament. While the team is loaded with talent, they didn¹t just get their gold medal on skills alone. They worked hard and played as a team, something the men¹s basketball team needs to learn how to do.
Over the past few years, the U.S. women¹s softball team has reached such heights of domination that there has been talk of eliminating the sport altogether from Olympic competition because it is ³an American game, not an international game.²
This notion is, of course, ridiculous. A sport shouldn¹t be allowed or disallowed on the basis of domination by one country. Rather, it should be evaluated on the basis of whether it involves athleticism and skill. Synchronized diving and rhythmic gymnastics qualify as sports, but the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is questioning softball? Give me a break.
The questions raised about softball as an Olympic sport ring all too familiar for the ¹92 Dream Team. After their spectacular run, many thought that basketball was too American a sport, but the international players have caught up and the same will probably hold true for softball.
In addition to the possible elimination of their sport by the IOC, the U.S. women¹s softball team has also faced a lack of respect by other athletes. LeBron James, part of the failed 2004 U.S. men¹s basketball team, recently commented that he could easily get a hit off of pitcher Lisa Fernandez who completely shut down her opponents. James apparently struck out on slow-pitch softball, and is certainly dreaming if he thinks he could even swing at one of Fernandez¹s pitches. If James and the other prima donnas on the men¹s basketball team spent a little more time practicing basketball and a little less time being arrogant and condescending, maybe they too would have received gold medals.