I think that the US basketball team's loss to Puerto Rico is an embarrasment. And I do think that its members are some of the best players in the world. And yet I think that they still should have lost.
The US basketball team isn't a team. It's comprosed of superstars that don't work well together, and Tim Duncan. Each player is *the* star on his own team. Its co-captian, Allen Iverson, is a street thug who doesn't like to practice and has a problem with coaches. Like this year's NBA finals where the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Detroit Pistons, we've seen that the whole can be much less than the sum of its parts.
It's probably also noteworthy that the first 10 people asked to be on this team turned down the offer. I don't think that happened on Puerto Rico, Argentina, Serbia, Spain, or Lithuania.
I don't think that the US team underestimated Puerto Rico. I think that the US chose some great players. I think that the US chose a lousy team. And we'll suffer for it.
Dom