The 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics apparently had no players worthy of being sent to China to play for the US… despite spending the 2008 season wiping the court with the rest of the league. Oops… have I forgotten how successful our more flashy players can be in international play. We wouldn’t want to put in Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, or Paul Pierce… who collectively surrendered their individual games in favor of a cooperative team-centered style… would we? Do we really want to start winning against those other big-name basketball countries… like Greece, Argentina, and Puerto Rico? Countries who would gladly shove that basketball up your rear if they could score soccer tickets out of the “exchange”. Team-centered play… what’s that nonsense about?

Bless my soul, I thought basketball was a still a team sport!? Instead of sending the so-called all-stars to showboat, trip all over each other and screw up another year of international play (a far cry from the Bird, Magic, Jordan days)… why not send an actual team? Why not send the NBA championship team? That’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout. China baby! Someone said tea… I heard you ask for a little Boston 3 Party to march all over your misshapen paint!

Greece bumped the US Team (filled with NBA players) out of gold medal contention… Greece having only a single NBA player on its roster. This feels just like the 2004 Summer Olympics where the US got bumped from the gold medal round by Spain (I think). Geez… in the 2004 Summer Olympics we couldn’t even beat Puerto Rico, one of our own territories?!

Face it… United States basketball, embodied by the NBA, has become a spectacle… a spectacular exposition of attitude and showiness performed by grown, whiny children. We care more about dunks and 3-pointers than any of the fundamentals of the sport. Our fast-food entertainment culture desires the flash and sizzle of hard drives to the hoop and aerial acrobatics… not the mundane execution of 12-foot pullup jumpers and dependable foul shots. The NBA suits, knowing flash equals cash, restrain their own refs from calling the two-step rule on the big “playmakers” as they take 3-and-a-half steps to the hoop. Hey, if the crowds sing then the registers ring – somebody show me the money.

But alas… this perverted form of basketball encounters the truly objective challenge in the face of international competition. Are the NBA tricksters the best? Are the US court magicians superior? Nope. It turns out that a basket made from a 15-foot jump shot is worth the same as one made in a spectacular alley-oop. Without the Figure Skating judges giving points for “Artistic impression” the US style of flash over substance gives no advantage… and is possibly a disadvantage.

Things weren’t always like this. Remember the 1992 Summer Olympics? Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, and the rest. We utterly cremed the opposition. But these players listed were the best. They had the fundamentals of the sport down cold. They knew (even and especially Jordan) that flash was great, but it was SECONDARY to getting the basketball in the basket. People like to say that today’s players are the best there ever were. *cough* What?! I think not… just look at how they do against other countries whose teams aren’t filled with cash-pumped players and whose people would rather watch soccer.

Now you may also say, “Hey, this is all because so many of today’s NBA All-stars refuse to play in non-cash events.” It is true that today some all-stars duck out of representing their country in international competition (which is a blog post for another time), but that is only a further testament to their selfish, glitzy mentality… and probably reveals a deep fear of being embarassed by teams they outwardly perceive to be inferior. Do you really think that these results would be any different if there were different US players there? Not in today’s NBA. We’d be better off using our college team all-stars.

Here’s an excerpt from the article linked at the top:

As they warmed up before Friday’s semifinal against Greece, the U.S. players put on a jam session for the fans.

Dwight Howard dunked emphatically. Dwyane Wade bounced the ball off the backboard, caught it and stuffed. Elton Brand jammed an alley-oop pass. Finally, LeBron James flew down the lane for a tomahawk.

As the crowd roared, the Greeks lined up at the other end and shot free throws. The moment foretold Greece’s 101-95 victory in the semifinals of the world championships.

The U.S. has dazzling skill; the Greeks are a dazzling team.

“We have to learn the international game better,” U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “We learned a lot today because we played a team that plays amazing basketball and plays together.”

[emphasis added by Negative99.com]

You have to learn the international game better?!? If that means you have to learn how to score more points than the other team, then YES, you’re right. Bless my soul, though, but I thought scoring more points was the key to American basketball as well.

This is why myself, and a growing number of others, don’t watch the NBA. How long until March Madness 2007?

This blog entry will have no jokes, no fluff, and its links may lead to unsettling content… so if you’d like to continue your happy existence without the burden of other people’s suffering then please… by all means, click here instead.

If you go to one site today, let it be this: TheForgotten.org

Here’s the short version. Between 1915 and 1917 the Ottoman Turks (modern-day Turkey) killed 1,500,000 Armenians with military force and starvation through forced deportation death marches into the desert. The accounts of torture and rape are unspeakable. This is known as the Armenian Genocide. My grandfather was the only one of eleven kids to make it out of Armenia alive.

Most people have no clue about any of this… it is very possible that you, the reader, are saying to yourself you’ve never even heard of this. The reasons are legion why this genocide is so obscure in most circles… politics, mostly. Don’t feel too bad, though, because it was mostly forgotten by Hitler’s day… unfortunately for the Jews.

The United States hasn’t officially recognized the Armenian Genocide as a nation, but 39 of the 50 states have. And the following countries officially recognize the genocide: Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Uruguay, Vatican City and Venezuela. Notice that there isn’t one officially Muslim nation on the list (not even Lebanon – which faced Turkish murder as well). I could say that it’s mostly because the Ottoman Turks and modern-day Turkey are Muslim and the Armenians are Christian. Even to this day radical Turk Muslims will desecrate the memorials to the genocide because they either refuse to believe it happened or don’t believe it is wrong to kill Christians.

Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?
- Adolf Hitler… while persuading his generals that a Jewish holocaust would be tolerated by the West

…the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it … the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.
- Theodore Roosevelt… in a May 11, 1918, letter to Cleveland Hoadley Dodge

I am confident that the whole history of the human race contains no such horrible episode as this. The great massacres and persecutions of the past seem almost insignificant when compared to the sufferings of the Armenian race in 1915.
- Henry Morgenthau, Sr. US Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire

On this day, we pause in remembrance of one of the most horrible tragedies of the 20th century, the annihilation of as many as 1.5 million Armenians through forced exile and murder at the end of the Ottoman Empire. This terrible event remains a source of pain for people in Armenia and Turkey and for all those who believe in freedom, tolerance, and the dignity of every human life. I join with my fellow Americans and the Armenian community in the United States and around the world in mourning this loss of life.
- George W. Bush, April 24, 2004

never-again.com
april24.info
Armenian-Genocide.org
Armeniapedia.org/Armenian_Genocide
24april1915.com

UPDATE: Here is a picture from a Turkish rally in New York City this past Saturday protesting any recognition of the Armenian Genocide. The protester in the picture is holding a sign that says “Genocide Soccer Match : Turkey, one… Armenian Hate Merchants, zero.”

Nice, huh?