Greece shocks USA in semifinals (101-95)

cnnsi.com ^

[Jordi]

SAITAMA, Japan (Reuters) -- European champions Greece shocked odds-on favorites the United States 101-95 to reach the final of the world basketball championship on Friday.

[burzum]

Greece had an awesome field goal and 2-point percentage. For the most part the teams were evenly matched, but the US teams poor field goal percentage finally caught up with them. The earlier Italy game was really close due to this problem.

Greece:
2-point: 27/38 (71%)
Free throw: 23/33 (70%)
Fouls: 25

USA:
2-point: 24/38 (63%)
Free throw: 20/34 (59%)
Fouls: 26

These FIBA games are like the World Cup. If you don't prepare yourself for the penalty shots you are really hurting yourself. 51 fouls in this game! Good grief!

[burzum]

Greece had an awesome field goal and 2-point percentage.

Bah! Silly statement. Oops. Greece had an awesome field goal and free throw percentage.

[xzins]

Sounds to me like the USA lost.

I wonder why we don't play by international rules with an international key? Every little nuance makes a difference in close games.

[Korvac]

NBA play in the last decade or more has developed a style of play which emphasizes more showy lay-ups and showy running plays rather than fundamental skills - because being showy with the fancy lay-up shot ensures sneaker contracts and the like. Europeans have concentrated on boring looking but effective 3 point shots and standard by the book lay up shots and so on.

Fundamentals over showmanship.

[pas]

Exactly. Since there are very few shooters in the NBA, the players are lazy away from the ball. In international play it shows. You can allow most NBA players to catch the ball because they can't shoot. The international players catch and shoot the 3 well. NBA players don't defend and don't shoot.

[newfreep]

Who is coaching the US team?

[IndyTiger]

Mike Krzyzewski, the coach at Duke, is the team coach

[xzins]

I don't even watch the NBA.

They leave college and I lose interest. I can't quite place my finger on what about the NBA game is boring, but I just don't get into it.

Maybe it's that we don't have an NBA franchise, and after that I just don't care. I'm a UC Bearcat fan, and I love the college game, but the NBA doesn't keep me as a fan.

Season is too long, defense isn't that important, and I'm convinced they don't play 'til the last quarter.

I agree that the NBA guys aren't are best candidates for international ball. They've probably forgotten how to play defense....the Lebron James' case, maybe he never learned how.

(Go Bearcats! Go Wildcats (Kansas State under Bob Huggins.....best of both worlds. Huggs left Cincy (BA, 79) for KSU (MS, 96).)

[USNA74]

Looks like they lost this game at the free throw line and nowhere else. 59% is horrible at their level.

[Korvac]

Case in point - Almost every time Lebron James went for a lay-up shot he had to attempt some fancy harlem Globetrotter like move where he throws the ball from behind his back or trys to dunk it - he kept missing the basket more than scoring in this method - I was cursing a storm - is he showing off for the crowd or trying to win a game? The Greek players did the standard by the book technical lay up and scored more than missed. Americans kept missing the 3 pointers as well.

The first Dream team made up of old NBA players about to retire played the game the classic way which is why the blew away the rest of the world - the way the Greeks and other Europeans play reminds me of the old NBA type of play which will beat the 'bad boy' type of new NBA play any day.

[nativist]

If the US hit four more free throws they would have missed 10, same as the Greeks and still would have lost. I am sick of excuses for the US teams. We dope up our sprinters and our basketball team has the very best we have to offer and we lose and make excuses. The heavyweight division in boxing is dominated by ex-Soviet boxers, all four champs are ex-Soviet and we make excuses. Even before that the champ was British. Tennis? No. Baseball? No. Soccer? of course not. Basketball? No. Golf? Yes. Swimming? Yes.

The very idea of losing used to be hateful to all real Americans (Patton at least in the movie), now just get paid and go shopping.

[Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit]

The very idea of losing used to be hateful to all real Americans, now just get paid and go shopping.

This has tag line potential.

[nativist]

LOL, sure does.

[Korvac]

The very idea of losing used to be hateful to all real Americans (Patton at least in the movie), now just get paid and go shopping. That is more myth than true - Americans - judging by Olympic results - have only dominated after WW2 - before that the USA always did OK but we were not the world champs or the standard or anything like that. Jesse Owens was not a big deal not because he was black and defeated the then Nazi Germans (something that was played up later) but that he was an underdog American who won. I do know Americans don't do history well - organized sports are a young thing - remember prize boxing was illegal until maybe the late 1920s and early 30s. The first modern Olympics were only held in the later half of the 1800s and only came into their own in the early 1900s. The modern-modern Olympics (my phrase for it) where atheletes could actually earn sponsorship probably started in 1984 - 1988 and became a sneaker and sports apparel sponsored business in the 1990s. International baseball is still in its infancy. So don't get all bent out of shape about American not domionating a sport - we have not been around long enough in world competitions to claim dominance in many sports.

[Perdogg]

The US would have won if Roy Williams had been coaching.

[burzum]

If the US team shot free throws like they normally did (~70%), they might have won. Instead they shot free throws like they did when they played Italy (56% for that game). Another point that I failed to mention earlier is that the US team depended to much upon their ability to steal the ball from their opponents. This didn't work against Greece. They had 4 steals total in this game. For many games they had 15-20 steals in a game. Even against the harder opponents the US team typically had almost 10 steals. But this game they were evenly matched: 4-4 in steals.

Greece obviously studied hard on how to beat the US team from the earlier US-Germany match: don't allow steals, don't let the US team near the basket, and watch them flounder on free throws and field goals.

[Mr. Jeeves]

There are some great shooters in the NBA, but they don't tend to make the USA National team because they aren't the guys with the big shoe contracts. Adam Morrison is the kind of guy who could have helped this team a lot, but he got cut. The players they did pick have immense physical talent, but none has the will to win of a Michael Jordan or Larry Bird - that quality seems to have disappeared from today's NBA.

This result is a big embarrassment for USA Basketball.

[nativist]

Its one thing not to dominate sports in general and quite another to not dominate our own sports. Losing in anything has been hateful to Americans my whole life. When NY Giants play the Dallas Cowboys the fans of both teams want to win badly. We have always loved our local sports teams with a passion and our local sports teams used to hate the opponent (now so much money is involved athletes tend to see each other as business associates).

Americans my whole life wanted to beat the Soviets in the Olympics as they were our arch enemy. We relished in defeating them. We didn't always win but the passion to win and the desire to win and the hatred of losing was always there, in everything.

The problem I have is that we elevate these pro basketball players to god-like levels. In America we have pounded in the head of everyone that basketball is a black mans sport (as is boxing) and that their athletic prowess is superior to everyone else's, and for the most part most people believe that. Now we have Europeans and Argentinians beating us in what was supposed to be our sport dominated by the worlds best athletes.

Just because we lose doesn't mean the idea of losing isn't hateful. It may not be to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton but for most Americans it is.

[dfwgator]

I knew the US wasn't going to win the Gold. Can't shoot and don't care about defense, that will get you killed when it comes down to playing the good teams. And I emphasize the word "team" here.

But now they can all come back home to their multi-million dollar contracts and go back to making fun babies.