World Championships

The Dish: Ugly Americans At World Championships
By Christopher Harris

There is no joy in Krzyzewski-ville.

Maybe it's because they're holding the thing in Japan, so it's a bit of a challenge to watch on TV here in North America. Maybe it's because we've all still got the taste of the '02 World Championships from Indiana (seventh-place finish) and the '04 Olympics (third-place) in our mouths. Maybe it's because we still associate America in these world tournaments being represented by surly Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury, and, well, we don't like those guys.

But whatever the reason, nobody seems to care about the basketball World Championships.

Coach K is heading the squad, which through Wednesday was undefeated in group play. The USA opened with a 111-100 win against Puerto Rico, which doesn't sound like a big deal until you realize Puerto Rico shocked the world by upsetting America in the first game of the Athens Olympics two years ago. USA also crunched Yao and the Chinese and Primoz Brezec and the Slovenians.

It seemed that, leading up to Wednesday's game against Italy, Coach K had whipped the current group into a more humble, less ridiculous group. The last Olympic team and (even more) the '02 World Championships team were so easy to root against. They somehow seemed a symbol of American arrogance and blitheness across the globe: clueless millionaires waltzing around the Parthenon, calling it an ugly bunch of rocks. I'm an American, but did I really have to cheer for Marbury, Iverson and Lamar Odom? Ew. With Krzyzewski around, I had higher hopes: hopes of fundamental basketball, and, like, being able to take joy in my team's wins.

Unfortunately, the moment adversity struck against Italy on Wednesday, the U.S. all-stars reverted to one-on-one play and long-distance shooting. They found themselves down by 12 points in the second half, and only scalding late-game performances by Carmelo Anthony and Dywane Wade saved them. Still, the seeds of disaster were sown, and this group officially has the potential to become just as unlikable as its predecessors. They dribble. They dribble some more. They dribble still some more. They threaten to go to the hoop. They threaten some more. They get frustrated and pass the ball out-of-bounds. It happened time and time again. If it hadn't been for Anthony and Wade saving America's bacon on Wednesday, you'd be reading nothing but articles of basketball humiliation once again.