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August 2008 - Posts
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 Shhhh. Do you hear that?
It's not the rumble (listen closely) of Harley-Davidsons or the voice of Al Gore talking up a storm about the planetary emergency. No, though this last week in August has been loud and busy ... You know, it just might be the sound of some in the Milwaukee Bucks-o-sphere helping Michael Redd polish the gold medal he brought home from China earlier this week.
Luckily, the Brewers are in the pennant race, Packer season is a week away, hordes of Harley-riders have invaded the city and the Democrats this week nominated a basketball guy to run for president. The sounds of medal polishing are very, very faint in these parts.
Why this extra sheen on Redd's gold is deemed necessary is beyond me, even from the Bucks marketing standpoint. I just don't really see a reason why Brewhoop should be telling Bucks fans that, "True, Redd didn't factor heavily in Team USA's success, but the team badly needed highly capable players willing to play a reduced role and Redd fulfilled that need."
Or how about this headline from the Bucks website: "Redd, U.S. Capture Gold."
I guess I don't get it. Will telling people that the Bucks shooting guard captured the gold sell Bucks tickets? No. Anybody who followed Team USA realizes that Redd was not a factor in winning the gold. Saying so just makes grouchy hack writers like me feel less guilty about ignoring/forgetting Redd's birthday (it was on the day team USA won gold) in my last post and pointing out what a disappointment Mr. Redd's Olympics were.
It's OK. It's alll good, as they say. Bucks fans can handle a little more disappointment. At least we weren't paying for it this time. But we did see the Bucks shooting guard fail to shoot straight in the role of shooting specialist, then saw that role eliminated. It happened. Otherwise, Redd appeared to remain upbeat on the bench, in company with Utah Jazz' All-NBA power forward Carlos (no relation to 1971 Buck Bob) Boozer.
How and why did this happen? This is the part of the blog where I go into the blow-by-blow detail of the two 2nd quarter runs Redd was given in games 1 and 2 against China and Angola; how his shots didn't fall; and how Coach Mike Krzyzewski scrapped the shooting specialists' role after Angola. There would be all sorts of links to show that, yes, it did in fact happen that way and that, yes, Redd really did play nothing but garbage time minutes after game 2. I did all that in fact and decided to delete it. I will leave this:
Three-point specialist Redd finished last on Team USA in three-point shooting percentage. Yes, it's true. (The link is to the official Olympic stats.) Couple the disappointing Olympics with last year's shooting -- in which Redd shot 36.3% on three-pointers (not bad but very middle of the NBA road) and only 41.8% on jump shots outside the paint.-- and it appears that Michael Redd's mythology as a great NBA shooter is in need of some major rehab. His 41.8% figure on 2-point jump shots tied Redd with Rasheed Wallace for 71st in the NBA.
I suspect Bucks fans are tired of the team making excuses for its players. I also believe that on some level, owner Herb Kohl was tired of it as well -- isn't that why he fired GM Larry Harris and brought John Hammond in from Detroit to start a new era of accountability? I believe the Bucks organization realizes that the fans will not come back to the BC if the Bucks offer up more excuses instead of wins. Coach Scott Skiles said as much earlier this week in a column by Michael Hunt.
The Journal Sentinel, I should point out, has yet to do the obligatory "Redd returns with Gold" story, and we should be thankful for that. And to be fair the Bucks are not blowing the Olympics out of proportion on Redd's behalf. How could they? There's very little to work with beyond the gold medal ceremony photographs, which are plenty. I would, however, encourage a rewrite at Bucks online of the "Redd, U.S. capture gold" headline. Here's a nice, harmless, factual alternative:
"Happy B-Day Michael Redd: USA captures gold"
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I'd like to preface this item by saying I like Michael Hunt's column in the JS. It's much more enjoyable than Bauman's ever was, and, unlike Dale Hoffman, Hunt appreciates the NBA. I remember when he was a BadgerPlus writer and if you don't, you missed some great writing. Hunt wrote game stories with the kind of electricity that you don't often see in newspapers (and the sort of energy I sure don't feel writing about Michael Redd). It was as if rock writer Lester Bangs was posthumously writing about sports in Wisconsin all of a sudden - and why wasn't this guy writing in the main? He soon was as a Bucks writer, then as columnist.
All of which makes me wonder what was going on in his Aug. 26 column, "Bucks fly under the radar." Sure, the Bucks are out of mind for many in Milwaukee, with the Brewers chasing the Cubs, the #4 drama and the Pack about to start a new era, and they could use some attention. Hunt begins by praising GM John Hammond on a "good" draft, and that seems an overly strong endorsement -- but that's not the weird thing about Hunt's column. The statement raising quite a few eyebrows is this: "Already the new general manager has given the Bucks what they haven’t had in years — near-future cap flexibility — by somehow making [Bobby] Simmons and [Mo] Williams go away."
This near future of which he speaks certainly isn't 2009 or 2010. Charlie Villanueva's qualifying offer alone next season would put the Bucks over the 2009 estimated salary cap ($68 million). in 2010, the Bucks as are, would pull a relatively safe distance from the luxury tax because Luke Ridnour's contract expires. However -- unless Charlie V or some other power forward is willing to play for free in 2010, or Dan Gadzuric apologizes and walks away from his contract, the Bucks will only have about $15 million under the salary cap to sign a point guard and five other players. And that's a conservative 2010 estimate.
What this probably means for the Bucks is that this current core roster will need to click and make some big strides for the Bucks to hold this group together beyond this season, much less the 2009-10 season heading into summer of 2010. We shall see what happens in the next few months. For now, back to the Hunt column.
Hunt's effort to put the Bucks on JS sports readers radar, if only for a day, left many Bucks fans scratching their heads. You should read some of the discussion here at realgm.com, complete with a response about the column from hunt that made even less sense than what he actually wrote. I realize that misfires by the daily increase the credibility of bloggers one way or another (even though I'm writing like crap this week) but I gotta tell ya -- playing watchdog to paid journalists is a chore, and it's especially more of a chore over financial/business reporting. It doesn't make for good reading, I know. The "establishing of the record" reporting is supposed to be the business of the paper of record, not the fan blogosphere.
Bottom line: No cap flexibility for the Bucks in 2009 or 2010 - unless Richard Jefferson opts out of his contract and goes elsewhere (which could happen 2010) or if Hammond can find a way to move Gadzooks. A Redd trade could also achieve some cap flexibility if the Bucks receive player (s) with expiring contracts. In other words, something more would have to happen for the Bucks to get "near-future cap flexibility." There should be flexibility in 2011, but that doesn't have anything to do with anything Hammond did -- it just happens to be the way Redd, Jefferson and Gadzooks' contracts play out.
These are tough times in the Bucks-o-sphere. Disappointing Olympics for both the Bucks shooting guard and center, a stumbled through summer filled with questionable -- and factually flawed -- reporting from the daily, hasn't really helped fans look clearly into the future. Or maybe it has and these are just signs that we're headed for another rough season. But I do know this: If I'm going to be the janitor around here, I'll need the keys to the court after hours ....
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Remember this guy? That's Patty Mills, the Aussie guard who dazzled (and turned 20) during the games. He'll be back at St. Mary's (Calif.) college this fall, playing Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, Gonzaga et al. in the West Coast Conference (WCC). The quicksilver guard is now not only an NBA prospect, but he's being tracked by NBA.com. In addition, he's already been mock-drafted #14 in 2009 at Draft-Express.com. The draft junkies may may get the DTs over it, but why don't we play some basketball first before we have another draft?
Mills blew by the likes of Chris Paul and Deron Williams in a tuneup game Aug. 5 and in the Olympic quarterfinals Aug. 20, earning some oohs and ahhs from the Redeem Teamers as well as some Chris Paul point guard magic that shines "second coming" talk wherever there is quicker-than-quick guard play. The player everyone will be watching at St. Mary's next season led Australia in scoring in six Olympic games with 14.2 ppg, while turning the ball over only six times the entire tournament.
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 With the Olympics ending and the British proving the old axiom that if you have Led Zeppelin at your disposal, it's probably in your best interests to play some ... And now with the Democratic convention underway proving again one of its most tried and true party axioms -- that Ted Kennedy doesn't really resonate with the working class in Middle America, which won't stop the party from trying (he's not well and I'm sorry, but it's a strange feeling starting a week knowing precisely when and where and how many times you'd heard something before said in precisely the same way you just heard it said ...)
.. It's only fitting then that our Bucks, too, played out an axiom of their own in the 2008 Olympic games. Allow me to be the one to point it out, if only because someone should. (And because my notes got away and ended up published for a few hours yesterday) So ... here' goes:
Milwaukee Bucks players, when given an opportunity, will disappoint. They've done it for a few years now, to the point where it's become enough of a habit to pass into "axiom" stage. Changes in uniform, team, environment, venue and competition could not prevent our Bucks from disappointing in Beijing, almost as if the effects of the 2007-08 season were lingering like a bad hangover.
 How deep does this thing go? One of those players, Yi Jianlian, is no longer a Buck, yet even a trade with New Jersey couldn't stop our 2007 draft pick from disappointing. He had a terrible opener against Team USA; the proud debut for the host team. There was Yi on NBC live, going scoreless in the first half, eventually being yanked from the game in the 2nd quarter after an unsportsmanlike foul. Yi did come out in the second half after the game was over and score nine points in garbage time, but that didn't stop ESPN's Chris Sheridan from devoting an entire column to Yi's lousy play. Sheridan was brutal. Yi did have his moment: A key 18-foot jumper against Germany that helped send China into the quarterfinals. But he was a noshow in China's quarterfinal loss to Lithuania. The rookie wall, it seems, is made of granite. Disappointing.
 Bucks center Andrew Bogut had the best Olympics of any Buck, but that ought to tell you how deeply ingrained in the Bucks this disappointment factor is. Bogut's Olympics was an ordeal -- marred by injury and a start in which he shot only three times as Australia looked like a rec league team unsure whether or not they were in the right gym. The Aussie coach fumbled about for a couple of games and finally found his rotation in game four to salvage the Australia tournament -- but in Australia's biggest game in eight years against Team Redeem in quarterfinals, Bogut found foul trouble, more playing time problems and a second ankle injury.
Bogut did defy the Bucks jinx and dominate against Russia and Lithuania to lead Australia to the Team USA matchup - which had to make you wonder what was going on with the Autralian team. The Australian professional league is dying from lack of interest. This national team was the last hurrah for a few veteran NBL players. The coach, Brian Goorjian has been a long time NBL coach. We may never know what was going on with the team -- but did you know that in six games Bogut played less than half the available minutes? He averaged 19.7 mins per game. Out of 40. Unbelievable. Disappointing..
 Michael Redd? Can Bucks fans remember back on this: When was the last time Michael Redd was not disappointing? Were there a couple of games last year in which he led the Bucks to victory? He did beat Cleveland with a buzzer beater in February. That much I recall. It was his first walk-off gamewinner ever. Perhaps it was last summer when the USA Senior Men's team qualified for the Olympics by winning the Pan An games. Redd scored 14 pts a game in that tournament. Or maybe earlier this summer when the USA basketball cancelled its tryouts and Redd officially made the team. When the team got to Beijing, however, Redd's role on the team eventually whittled down to nothing.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Redd was intended to be the team's designated three-point specialist, the gunner brought on to rain highlight film jump shots to bust teams out of zone defenses. Redd began the Olympics generally receiving stints in the second quarter and the fourth. His first run, however, came up empty. He entered the game and instantly began looking for his offense, drawing a foul, missing a shot, missing another one. Coach Mike Krzyzewski pulled him from the game after 2 mins, 42 seconds. Later on in the 4th quarter it was almost sad watching Redd and Yi trade baskets after the game was decided. Sad and futile and familiar. Redd would finish the game with nine points on 3-9 shooting, three garbage time three pointers, one with 29 seconds left.
Redd would hit seven more shots over the next five games, but miss 15 and close his Olympics 10-31 from the field, 5-18 on three-pointers (27.7% rate from behind a line more than three feet closer to the hoop than the NBA's). Bogut, believe it or not, tied Redd with five three-pointers for the Olympics, making 5/8. Who knew he could shoot from 21 feet?
But the shooting specialist, Redd, couldn't find his shot. By the medal games, Redd was reduced to fourth quarter minutes only. He played 5:40 against Argentina and the final 26 seconds of the gold medal game. Only Carlos Boozer played fewer minutes in the Olympics. Here's a typical Redd note from the games, this one from Aug. 16-17 after Team USA blew out Spain:
* Redd played 12 minutes in the second half, scoring 4 pts on 2-4 shooting (0-1 from downtown). He did not play in the first half, but didn't try to force any offense during his stint in the 2nd. With all the frenetic defense and fast-paced transition the Redeem Teamers play, they haven't had much of a role for him.
These things won't be written about in Bucks country as the gold medals are polished in the sports pages. Why ruin a golden moment when Redd's the Milwaukee connection to the Redeem Team? But when is Michael Redd going to be part of delivering winning moments on a basketball court? One key play is not a lot to ask, is it? Something, anything for Bucks fan to get excited about would do. Disappointing.
Realgm.com's fine Bucks forum moderator, PaulPressey25 made a great observation on opening day of Olympic basketball play. After spending Sunday morning watching Redd, Bogut and Yi, he wondered whether their struggles stemmed from playing last season in the losing environment of the Bucks or whether the source of the problem is that, as players, they really aren't all that good.
I'm sure many Bucks fans who saw those games had similar thoughts. The grace period on delivering excitement this coming season may be very short for the 2008-09 Milwaukee Bucks.
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Well that sure was a downer, wasn't it? But it had to be done. I will say that, having followed Bogut and the Australia Olympic team through the Olympics, things were not as they seemed in the Aussie camp. In the end, Basketball Australia got what they needed out of the Olympics -- they made the medal round and found their way to a high profile matchup with the Redeem Team. Bogut went from looking like an almost substandard center in Game 1 to all-world in Game 4 vs. Russia. Very strange stuff. Perhaps the Aussies were just to too much of a team still in transition toward its next generation to have it be any other way. I do hope the Bucks are working to get the clearest possible picture on the medical treatment Bogut received on his ankle (s) during the games.
Remember this guy? That's Patty Mills, the Aussie guard who dazzled (and turned 20) during the games. He'll be back at St. Mary's (Calif.) college this fall, playing Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, Gonzaga et al. in the West Coast Conference (WCC). Definitely a player to watch in the NCAA this season and a hot topic all over the college and draft boards after Beijing. In fact, he's already been mock-drafted #14 in 2009 at Draft-Express.com! The draft junkies may may get the DTs over it, but why don't we play some basketball first before we have another draft?
Mills was one of a quite a few players who opened a few scouting windows during the Olympics, and some of them may be worth taking a look at, even in an immediate or short term context with the Bucks ... hypothetically. But there'll be time for that in a later post. Now, in the interest of ending this post on a positive, upbeat note, here's some more fun Luke Ridnour video.
No, Luke, no - too serious ...
And don't bother getting up, dude. Look for Luke at #4 on this Top 10 ...
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 Hell hath not frozen over ... yet, but some believe that this phenomenon may indeed become something more than a hackneyed cliche Sunday during closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics. No, no not a Spanish upset of the Redeem Team. No, this is an even more unexpected event, the sort of thing previously believed to be unthinkable ... unholy even. And apparently it will be aired at an as-yet-unspecified time Sunday evening on your local NBC Olympic channel.
Guitarist Jimmy Page, the mercurial genius who gave the world Led Zeppelin, will write the coda to the Beijing games and lead British "X-Factor" pop icon Leona Lewis in a performance of Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love." For those of us who don't know, including me, X-Factor is the British version of American Idol. In fact it's the next generation of the show "Pop Idol" which spawned American Idol. This is the Brit TV crap produced by the same Simon guy whom we see on our TV sets crabbing at cheezy singers and picking fights with Paula Abdul.
One might wonder whether Page's groundbreaking sonic slab of pseudo-sexual mojo is an appropriate piece of music to cap an Olympics ("Kashmir" would have been a better choice, but then Pagey'd probably require Robert Plant for that). One might also wonder how this union ever came to be. Turns out it has everything to do with the British hosting the 2012 games in London. The Brits are allotted some performance time during the closing ceremonies to accept the Olympic flag from the Chinese and carry on.
The all-too-obvious emissaries for this important British Empire task? Well, of course, soccer posterboy David Beckham, the guitarist from Led Zeppelin and the 2006 winner of a pop idol TV show -- who, although she may be one of the sensual things ever born on British soil, sings the sort of souless pop nothings that turn Zep fans to stone. She cites Mariah Carey as an influence. Of course.
As these things go, once Page agreed to allow the use of the song, his involvement grew to encompass composition of the British musical score and a starring role in final production:
 I prefer to look on the bright side and remember that Pagey's recent collaborations have been brilliantly executed. The Black Crowes tour (1999-2000) was the next best thing to Led Zeppelin; the encore guest appearance with the Foo Fighters earlier this summer rocked; the Led Zeppelin reunion in December has been hailed as the concert of the decade. Brilliant, all of it.
And who can forget "Come with Me" - the *** son of "Kashmir" meets Sean "Puffy" Combs and a Godzilla flick? The very mention of it caused bloodletting in the Houses of Holy, but the result was astonishingly ... good -- with Page even writing for "Kashmir" a fresh new bridge. It was so good, the youtube police have zagged the incendiary, full orchestra 1998 Saturday Night Live performance ... but leave it to the anime kids to give us something cool to look at here:
As for Leona, she of "Bleeding Heart" or whatever the hit was called, I think we can all agree that "Whole Lotta Love" is a stretch for a girl who wears hoopish gowny things in concert and says she's not brave enough to pose nude, even for PETA. Leona may be exotically beautiful in an Aphrodite rising from the foam sort of way, but this is not a gig where she can get by on sultry looks alone. For this collaboration to work she'll have little choice on the world's largest stage but to loosen up and embrace Whole Lotta Love's grinding, gutteral surges which leave little to the imagination. Will Page and Lewis tempt the erotic depths of the song's middle section?
This could be incredibly hot or an embarassing disaster, but I'll hold out for the former. I'm sure Page knows exactly what he's doing ...
Keep-a-coolin baby ...
The youtube police have nabbed video of the final production but here's what it looked like:
They've nabbed that too, and we know who they are. You may find it on the nbc.olympics.com I'd imagine, but here's another idea: Go back up to the interview with Page and let it play through. You will then get a menu 1-7 of "related video." Pick #7 -- you won't be disappointed.
Keep a coolin' baby.
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The job is done, but not without a few tense moments in the 118-107 gold medal victory over a talented and resilient Spain team. The Redeem Team has returned the basketball gold to its home turf, and there are six words that describe how and why it happened better than barrelfuls of ink or kilobyte upon kilobyte of analysis ever could.
Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwyane Wade.
(Thazz a party - and it looks like Carmelo's into the silly weed ...but back to our story)
The three stars -- two of whom, Lebron and D-Wade, were All-rookie team members on the 2004 team that necessitated this redemption -- were not about to allow the 2008 Olympics to end in any other outcome than gold. Wade led all scorers with 27, including a whirling dervish 21 in the first half when Lebron and Kobe were in foul trouble. Kobe took over the game coming out of a USA timeout with 8:13 to play in the 4th quarter and the lead cut to two, and finished with 20. Lebron did a little bit of everything - scoring, defense, unselfish team play, again leading the team in minutes played and hauling down 4 key rebounds in the six-minute 4th quarter stretch that won the game.
The game lived up to its billing, as Spain fought a great fight and became the first team in the Olympics to put four quarters together against Team Redeem. Like a good yet overmatched boxer, the Spanish took hits but minimized the damage, swayed to the ropes but did not fall and stayed alive with salvos of their own until Team USA delivered the knockout punch in the final minutes. Spain may not have missed injured point guard Jose "I made T.J. Ford expendable" Calderon as much as expected. Calderon's absence opened the game for Juan Carlos Navarro, who awoke from his Olympic doldrums with drive after drive into the US lane, giving Chris Paul fits and scoring 18.
Why have world championships and the gold been so elusive for the USA since the 2000 gold medal until now? The simple answer may be the absence of players the caliber of Lebron, Kobe and D-Wade. They are something to the NBA today that most of the 2004 bronze medal team, including the rookies Lebron and D-Wade, did not represent. Team USA, 2008 model, is much more representative of the best the 2008 NBA has to offer than the 2004 team was of the league's best in that year. We've heard a lot from the USA basketball and basketball media about chemistry and attitude and other intangibles, but the bottom line with the 2004 team has always been that USA basketball sent to Athens Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson and a poor-defending 2nd or 3rd team.
The 2004 NBA MVP was Kevin Garnett, who was in his prime and had posted career highs in scoring, rebounding and blocked shots. Garnett was completely healthy yet declined to play on the Olympic team. The Shaq-Kobe dynasty in LA had ended bitterly - they weren't interested and Shaq was reconstituting in Miami with Wade. Detroit won the 2004 championship, yet no Pistons were on Team USA. The desired shooter, Ray Allen, was recuperating from injuries. The Mediterranean didn't seem like the safest place in the world to be an American, and player after player declined.
In fact, of the 12 American players on the 2004 1st, 2nd and 3rd All-NBA Teams (scroll down at that link) ONLY ONE played on Team USA - Tim Duncan. 1st-team All-NBA selections Shaq, Kobe, Garnett and Jason Kidd all declined. 2nd-teamers Sam Cassell, Tracy McGrady, Ben Wallace and Jermaine O'Neal didn't play for various reasons. (Peja Sojakovic was the fifth). From the 3rd team, Ron Artest, Baron Davis and Michael Redd stayed home. And of the nine Americans on the All-Defensive 1st and 2nd teams, only ONE - Duncan again - played in Athens.
This left Duncan and Iverson, whose Sixers were slipping fast, and a hodgepodge of players, including Stephon Marbury, Lamar Odom, Richard Jefferson, Carlos Boozer, pre-rookie Emeka Okafor; and Lebron, Carmelo Anthony and D-Wade, who had just finished their rookie seasons. The Nets Jefferson, believe it or not, led that B-list group in playoff experience. When they settled for bronze under Pistons coach Larry Brown, the natural reaction from many fans was: Why didn't we just send the Pistons?
The 2008 team was a much, much better cross section of the best of its NBA year. No, there were no Celtics on the team and no Spurs, but of the 11 American players named 2008 All-NBA, six had joined Team USA, including 4/5 1st-team selections: Kobe, Lebron, center Dwight Howard and point guard Chris Paul. Kobe, Howard and Paul were also All-Defensive selections along with Tayshaun Prince.
Deron Williams from the 2nd Team All-NBA played a solid role off the bench; forward Boozer, a 3rd Team selection, saw very limited action. Making an allowance for D-Wade, a 2006 and 2007 All-NBA selection returning from injury, the Redeem Team counted seven All-NBA players, six of them in coach Krzyzewski's rotation. The All-NBAers were the backbone, with an inspired Chris Bosh, captain Jason Kidd, scorer Carmelo Anthony and All-Defensive Prince stepping into roles that developed around this core.
This was quite a difference from 2004, more than enough to make the difference between bronze and gold on both ends of the court. Down the stretch in the 4th quarter against Spain, All-Defensive Howard got key stops in classic post-ups against Pau Gasol. Chris Paul, the MVP runner-up to Kobe, handled the majority of the point guard duties and led the team in steals. Deron Williams was solid and team-oriented, a good perimeter shooting option and a decided upgrade from Marbury. Good things happened whenever Tayshaun Prince was on the court. There was all of that and this:
Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwyane Wade.
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 PREGAME: After two weeks of early morning games, we get a Team Redeem night game, an after midnight special - and, yes, the time is correct. TMJ4 will broadcast the USA vs. Spain gold medal game at 1:30am CST.
This will be the first rematch in these Olympics for both teams, which should make things interesting. No one should expect a replay of the first game last Saturday in group play, when 2006 world champion Spain played Washington Generals to Team USA's Harlem Globetrotters, turning the ball over 28 times in a 37-point Redeem Team romp.
The Aug. 16 game was also perhaps the only Olympic game in which Team USA shot well from 3-point range, Carmelo Anthony and Tayshaun Prince combining for 7-10. The rest of the team shot 5-15, which isn't going to stop Spain from packing defenders in the paint and daring Team Redeem to prove it can hit jumpshots.
Team USA hasn't spoken well for the state of shooting in the NBA. The 3-pointer in international play is just 20' 9" out from the hole, a good 2-and-a-half feet closer than the NBA 3-pointer. The top two NBA outside shooters in these Olympics, as ranked by 82games.com, are not on the USA team. They are Spain's Jose "I made T.J. Ford expendable" Calderon of the Raptors and Mavs all-pro Dirk Nowitzki of Germany. Kobe, Carmelo, Lebron and even Michael Redd, Team Redeem's alleged shooter, are nowhere near the top in NBA shooting.
Unfortunately, that's the way the league is these days; and the Redeem Team happens to be a very good reflection of today's NBA. Kobe, Lebron, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh -- this is their era, though one might get an argument from Boston. Eventually an international team would make Team USA pay for its poor shooting, but I'm not expecting the payday to come tonight. (ESPN's Chris Sheridan seems concerned but this Spain team isn't the one.)
Fortunately, Team Redeem also reflects the best NBA qualities -- the tough defense and mean, hungry competitive spirit that one finds on the NBA's top teams. No, there are no Celtics on this team, but if you watched the NBA Finals or the Cavs-Celtics series, you might wonder whether it's humanly possible for a Pau Gasol-led team to beat a hungry Lebron James team. And this Lebron team has Kobe Bryant on it. (Funny, the end-of-week media angle was to annoint a team leader. NBC says it's Lebron; other media tabs Kobe; the coach and ESPN's Chris Sheridan says Jason Kidd. And so it goes.)
The Team USA defense has been the story of the Olympic basketball tournament, and there's no reason to expect the D to let up in the gold medal game. I'm expecting the opposite -- one of the most astonishing and relentless defensive performances in Olympic history. Spain should be ready to play, especially after the drubbing they took in the teams' first meeting, but it shouldn't matter.
Unfortunately, the Spanish will be playing without their point guard, Calderon, who's out with a "slightly torn abductor muscle" which is somewhere in the thigh-to-groin area of the legs. (I wonder how the Australian team would have handled this injury.) Calderone's absence should mean plenty of playing time for 17-year-old Ricky Rubio, a kid who makes NBA scouts drool.
In addition to Pau Gasol (Kobe's talented-but-soft Laker teammate), brother Marc Gasol (traded to the Grizzlies for Pau last season) is a bruiser who likes to mix it up. Another guy to watch is burly big forward Felipe Reyes, Spain's leading scorer and best player in the first USA game. (Note to John Hammond - Real Madrid's Reyes has a nice shooting touch and is precisely the type of 6' 9" forward the Bucks could use, immediamente). Guard-forward Rudy Fernandez, who had 18 in the semifinals against Lithuania, is another Spanish player to watch, but Fernandez is the type of international player who's out of his league against the likes of Kobe, Lebron and D-Wade -- which is really the main problem international teams have had with Team Redeem.
So if Spain sounds slim going up against team USA, that's because it is. Juan Navarro, who played in Memphis last season, isn't playing well. Calderon is out. The front court is good, but the Argentina big men were good, too, as was Australia in the quarterfinals. Kobe and Lebron are hungry for gold. They may not shoot well enough to utterly dominate, but they do everything else so well that it shouldn't -- and doesn't -- matter.
How they got there: The semifinals featured the four teams clearly a cut above the rest of the Olympic pack but the games left a lot to be desired. After a very quiet and noncontroversial 10 tournament days, the officials made themselves big factors, and that's never good.
 USA 101, Argentina 81 This game was a bit closer than the final score indicated, as Team Redeem dropped its intensity after Manu Ginobili sprained his left ankle early in the game. As Bill Walton described it in his postgame analysis: When Ginobili went down "the energy was just sucked out of the atmosphere." Down 21, the Bulls Andres Nocioni and the Rockets Luis Scola pulled Argentina within six just before half when the officials intervened to start the Carmelo Anthony free throw parade. Carmelo shot 3-14 from the floor but 13-13 from the line for 21 pts. That ain't earnin' it. Scola finished with 28 pts, 12 rebs.
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Chris Sheridan, the saving grace of ESPN basketball writing, has an excellent recap in his column. Carmelo very nearly lost his cool due to Argentinian rough stuff and has been talking about what "a war" the gold medal game will be, etc. etc. Somebody get 'Melo a beer and a spliff before he starts something; let's hope Tayshaun Prince and Michael Redd get some minutes while he's coolin' his Nikes on the bench.
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Michael Redd played three minutes at the end of the first half and two garbage mins at the end of the game. Redd didn't shoot or score, but grabbed three rebounds. Wouldn't it be nice if Redd hit a few threes in the gold medal game? That's all it would take to erase memories of his poor shooting through seven Olympic games. (10-31 from the floor; 5-18 on threes).
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Spain 91, Lithuania 86 Lithuania led 66-62 going into the 4th quarter but a huge Spain advantage from the foul line put Gasol and company over the top. Being ever so curious and not having watched the game, I went to the fourth quarter play-by-play to find out who got hot and won the game for Spain. Pau Gasol and Felipe Reyes (remember that name John Hammond) scored 2 quick hoops apiece to get it started, then Rudy Fernandez hit a two and three. 76-74 Spain. From there on in, the final six mins of the game, Spain didn't score a hoop and shot 17 free throws.
The fourth quarter totals - two buckets apiece for Gasol, Reyes and Fernandez, and 16-18 from the line. That's not basketball, folks. In the process, Nuggets forward Linas Kleiza of Lithuania was tossed for two unsportsmanlike fouls. Something tells me Lithuania should be playing for gold against the U.S., not the Jose Calderon-less Spanish team.
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