3rd place in Japan.

[Francisco]

What's going on with the NBA? No longer the best league in the world?

[Curtis Metcalf]

I wouldn't say that.  The NBA still has the best players.  The problem is more with the USA national program. The US is no longer so dominant that it can assemble an all-star team, hold a few practices and send them out to conquer the world.  Other national teams play together over much longer periods and have complete defensive and offensive schemes.  The US played like an all-star team and that's just not good enough anymore.  Greece killed them with the high pick and roll, over and over again.  Of course, it would have helped to have Michael Redd or Ray Allen. 

[Francisco]

Good points Curtis, it is not that the NBA has gone down it is just that the other leagues accross the world have gone up.

[Curtis Metcalf]

Exactly.  Cats out there can ball.  Another way to go would be to just send the NBA champion to the world competitions where they would win.  No way to work that out contractually though.  Also, it's effectively a penalty for the champion because they come back tired and injured.

[CIENCIANO]

Exactly.  Cats out there can ball.  Another way to go would be to just send the NBA champion to the world competitions where they would win. 

what are you saying?? most of nba champions have a lot of foreigner players. for examlpe the spurs in 2005, a lot of foreigners. they wouldn't be able to play for the u.s.a national team, they have their own national teams.
now, i don't think that the miami heats would have had a better performance than the team that participated in this championship (3rd place).

simple as it is: SPAIN and Greece plays better basketball than the U.S.A. simple as that.

[Curtis Metcalf]

Exactly.  Cats out there can ball.  Another way to go would be to just send the NBA champion to the world competitions where they would win.

what are you saying?? most of nba champions have a lot of foreigner players. for examlpe the spurs in 2005, a lot of foreigners. they wouldn't be able to play for the u.s.a national team, they have their own national teams.
now, i don't think that the miami heats would have had a better performance than the team that participated in this championship (3rd place).

simple as it is: SPAIN and Greece plays better basketball than the U.S.A. simple as that.

Good point about many NBA teams having foreign players, e.g. SA Spurs. 

Even though it couldn't happen, for the sake of argument, the Heat would have housed the competition even with the international rules because they would have cohesive defensive and offensive schemes. 

Spain and Greece have better national basketball programs than the USA right now.  They are not more talented players.

[Francisco]

Exactly.  Cats out there can ball.  Another way to go would be to just send the NBA champion to the world competitions where they would win.

what are you saying?? most of nba champions have a lot of foreigner players. for examlpe the spurs in 2005, a lot of foreigners. they wouldn't be able to play for the u.s.a national team, they have their own national teams.
now, i don't think that the miami heats would have had a better performance than the team that participated in this championship (3rd place).

simple as it is: SPAIN and Greece plays better basketball than the U.S.A. simple as that.

Are you nuts? Put Shaq/Cobe in there and neither Spain nor Greece would stand a chance. Saying they play better baseball would be like saying the Japanese are the best baseball players in the world because the won the world classic and that Italy is the best because they won the world cup. Nonse!!

[CIENCIANO]

Exactly.  Cats out there can ball.  Another way to go would be to just send the NBA champion to the world competitions where they would win.

what are you saying?? most of nba champions have a lot of foreigner players. for examlpe the spurs in 2005, a lot of foreigners. they wouldn't be able to play for the u.s.a national team, they have their own national teams.
now, i don't think that the miami heats would have had a better performance than the team that participated in this championship (3rd place).

simple as it is: SPAIN and Greece plays better basketball than the U.S.A. simple as that.

Are you nuts? Put Shaq/Cobe in there and neither Spain nor Greece would stand a chance. Saying they play better baseball would be like saying the Japanese are the best baseball players in the world because the won the world classic and that Italy is the best because they won the world cup. Nonse!!

francisco, you think that shaq is a good basketball player??? c'mon man...
koby wouldnt have made any major difference anyway. really your argument ''with koby and shaq, they would have been unstopable'' is pretty ridiculous man.

spain and greece play basketball better than the northamericans simple as that. they have better players. At least this year. 2006.

Now you are saying that the world champions are not the bests ?? i don't get your point, so who are the bests then?? the losers?? the ones who get eliminated in the first stages of competition?

[Hypestyle]

things went downhill when the restriction on professional players was ended.. after the first few "dream teams" (and shame on whoever chose Christian Laetner over Isaiah Thomas for the first one), now half the American "superstars" can't be bothered with international competitions..

[Curtis Metcalf]

spain and greece play basketball better than the northamericans simple as that. they have better players. At least this year. 2006.

Naw, they really don't.  Have better players, that is.  What they have are better national basketball programs that yield better teams for international play. 

things went downhill when the restriction on professional players was ended.. after the first few "dream teams" (and shame on whoever chose Christian Laetner over Isaiah Thomas for the first one), now half the American "superstars" can't be bothered with international competitions..

I don't think the problem is the availability of players.  Who declined that you would have wanted to see on the team? (other than Shaq who is 34 and struggles to get through the NBA season.)  I think the problem is that you just can't put together an all-star team, no matter how talented, have them play together for a few weeks and expect them to develop the kind of cohesion you need to compete on the world stage nowadays.  Using the international rules and referees.  I'm not sure what the solution is, but the current system seems likely to yield more disappointments.

[Vic Vega]

Here's an idea:

Let's go back to using college atheletes. They have the time to train together as a team and probably have more of a grasp of b-ball fundamentals. U.S. Superstars for the most part, are 2/3 talent, 1/3 fudamentals. In the international game solid fudamentally sound team play beats your dream team more than half the time. 

When a pick and roll utterly confuses Team USA (and D-Wade admitted as much), the writing is on the wall.       

[Curtis Metcalf]

Actually, Bill Simmons suggested a variant of your idea: having a national team made up of the guys who don't want to go to college but aren't yet ready / eligible for the NBA and having them stay together for a year or so before the competition.  It's not so much individual fundamentals as team cohesion that is the problem.  You don't defend the pick and roll individually.  It's all about knowing what the other guys are going to do and making the right rotations as a team.