"That’s the difference between the first Dream Team and the
rest. The first were players with class, these are immature kids.
They have huge talent, but they need to grow up."

These words were spoken Saturday night by Puerto Rican national
team player, Eddie Cassiano, after losing to Team USA in Olympic
qualifying play. To be frank, Cassiano’s comments were put in about
as genteel a manner as possible. He’s right. Since the 1992
Barcelona Games, Dream Team basketball has continued to dominate
the world in Olympic and international competition. However, since
leaving Spain with the gold, the class, behavior and intensity of
the U.S. players have become increasingly shameful each year. The
antics of Saturday night culminated in an embarrassing spectacle of
overzealous bravado which has grown to be expected in professional
basketball today.

As the first half came to a close, with the U.S. up by fewer
than 10 points, Cassiano held the ball for the Puerto Ricans in
anticipation of a final shot. Against general basketball etiquette,
Tracy McGrady took it upon himself to play ultra-aggressive defense
in guarding a holding player. McGrady eventually managed to swat
the ball down court, where he took a moment to glare back at
Cassiano then slammed it home so the whole world could see. Taking
obvious offense, Cassiano offered McGrady some choice words and
bench-clearing shoving match ensued.

This altercation helped accentuate an earlier conflict that
found Kenyon Martin scuffling with another Puerto Rican player
after a hard foul. Displaying his usual exemplary behavior, Martin
left the court blowing kisses to taunt a booing crowd. So much for
games of international goodwill.

It seems depressingly appropriate that this was the night Team
USA qualified for the Athens Games. As usual, we were the heavy
favorite, overflowing with talent, coming out slow and lazy,
letting the far inferior opponent stick around, only to finally put
them away in the nick of time while simultaneously offending all
present with pretentious antics. What happened to the class the
good old players used to show?

When the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird
wore the red, white and blue, other nations were honored to face
them, even in the light of certain annihilation. Saying they had
shared a court with players of such skill may have highlighted an
entire career of basketball. There were no standoffish dunks and
there was no crowd-taunting. The first Dream Team played together
to win and to represent America.

Today’s Olympic basketball team has forgotten that when they
play in the Olympics, they stand up for something more than
themselves. Many have forgotten that there actually are things
bigger than themselves. They see the gold medal as some sort of
"bling-bling" piece of ice to be added to their list of
accolades instead of an honor for their country. It’s no surprise
that the Games were not even widely televised. Something must be
done to save grace.

The appropriate course of action in righting the landscape of
the Olympiad would be to put collegiate amateurs back on the
national team. Given the popularity of NCAA basketball, star power
would not be an issue; but at the same time, they would actually
have to put forth effort to win.

In all honesty, many would rather see a team of American
amateurs play well but lose, instead of this bunch of pompous
derelicts bringing home the gold in representation of our country.
It’s not asking much of multi-millionaire celebrities who play
basketball for a living to take a summer vacation and throw down on
far lesser players, many of whom would not even be drafted by the
NBA. That’s probably why most of them treat it as a pickup
game.

After Saturday’s incident, Team USA was able to regroup and
handily defeat Argentina on Sunday. They jumped out to a big lead,
wowing spectators the entire game. It was almost as if they were
playing apologetically for the previous night’s transgressions.
Maybe that can carry over to the Athens Games. It’s sad that they
had to swallow their pride to earn respect. That seems to be the
opposite of what the Olympics are about.