[SmootSmack]

I'm part Puerto Rican/Spanish so I wanted Puerto Rico and Spain to do well. Spain's coach acted like an ass and sore loser though. Very, very embarassing.

As for the United States. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if all the other guys on the original team selected (excluding Iverson and Duncan) had agreed to play. Guys like Garnett, Shaq, Kobe. Could that talent have outplayed the International squads? My guess is no. I watched plenty of basketball this week. Getting up as early as 4 in the morning to see it!! How often can I watch Spain vs. Serbia? And what really stood out to me was the teamwork of all the different teams, except the US.

Now Larry Brown has said that he wanted guys like LeBron and Carmelo on the team not to play, but to learn. He wanted them to get a feel for being in the Olympics and playing a supporting role. I suppose the former makes some sense because if we keep the current format they'll be the stars of the team in 2008. But the latter really doesn't. If you want someone to play a supporting role, why not get supporting players. Guys like a Ben Wallace, a Ron Artest, even an Etan Thomas. The "dream team" needs to be more diverse basically.

And like redrock says it's really a shame the U.S. team got booed because it's not like they weren't putting in the effort they just weren't built like a team, which is what the other competitors were. This was just-well basically it was like the 2000 Redskins. Just slap a bunch of great players together and theyr'e bound to win.

I'd still entertain the idea of selecting the NCAA champions, or maybe the NBDL champs to represent the US. That way you have an official team that has played together for a good amount of time. I also wonder if the NBA might start trying to slowly adjust its rules to more of an international standard so that the game isn't so different when they play in 2008.