I’d like to tell you that I was upset about the United States losing last night, but that would be a lie. I wasn’t. And it has nothing to do with the bet with the Cavalier, although that is awesome, and I’m sure will be talked about more a little later.

But if you were just some random dude with no allegiance to any country, and you turned on the game last night… I don’t know how you wouldn’t be rooting for Greece. They clearly played better basketball, they executed better, were better prepared, had bigger nutsacs, and deserved to win in every possible way. That’s just the way things were.

And I say that not to slam Team USA, or the players that comprised it. This had nothing to do with poor attitudes, or lack of effort, or lack of team unity… none of those things that get unfairly applied to NBA players. The fact of the matter is that the Greeks play with a continuity and intelligence that takes literally years for a team to develop, and that they had better fundamentals. And it was just proven, beyond any doubt, that you can’t put an all-star team together and make up for that difference, no matter how talented those all-stars are, in three or four weeks. You just can’t.

And it also wasn’t a case of, despite what Jim Durham would have you believe, the Greeks just having a hot shooting night. They did make some shots they probably don’t normally make, but… they shot over 70% in the second half, and most of those were on easy looks around the basket that they earned. Their offense was so… sophisticated. Option, after option, after option, accompanied by the patience and passing the pick the right one. Those ugly Greek bastards play some very attractive basketball. In no way was this a fluke.

In fact, if Carmelo Anthony wasn’t on Team USA, this probably would’ve been a blowout. That’s the one positive I’ll take from this tournament on the US side of things: Carmelo Antohny is a man. Of course, the negative is that no one else was. LeBron James never, with the lone exception of meaningless points and a show-off dunk at the end of this game, made himself stand out. He was a bystander. Maybe we’ll get more into Carmelo vs. LeBron a little later.

You know, I once said that I think Team USA got it right with the coaching staff they selected for this thing. And I still believe that. The trouble is, though, that if they didn’t get it done with this group… they’re never going to. These guys were all willing to play unselfishly, they all played very hard, they were all committed to defense, they were all committed to each other… with the exception of some issues I had with the team selection, you really can’t do it much better than this. And it wasn’t good enough.

Our approach to this, to take our best players and try to mold them into a team in a month, just doesn’t work. We’re still the best basketball-playing nation in the world, don’t let there be any confusion about that. But we just do things ass backwards from the way the rest of the world does them in these international competitions. They have national teams, with some continuity in the coaching, that never really stop existing. We decide to put a team together everytime we need to.

Somewhere, Ben Wallace, Jermaine O’Neal, Paul Pierce, Michael Finley, and George Karl are sitting around thinking, “Ah, screw you guys.” After the 6th place finish in the 2002 World Championships, they, and the rest of Team USA’s roster, were called selfish, lazy, and everything else you can think of. You know, maybe they tried their best, and everyone else was just better.

You’ve just gotta give it up for the Grecians. They were extremely deep, extremely sound in the fundamentals, and just very very good at what they do. In terms of sheer athleticism, if the United States is a 100 on a scale of 0-to-100, then Greece is still like a 58. But they know what they’re doing. They can ball. How many times last night did they bring a guy in, ice cold off the bench, and then see him make a perfect play to get a lay-up? It was beautiful. It really was. And it made our game look ugly.