A bit of a departure from the current train of thought in this thread....with China being a relatively closed society with control over the media, I was reminded of a story from something BTD had posted regarding athletes who don't win gold failing to bring honor to China.

I have an acquaintance named Charlie Hickcox (I used to coach his kid in basketball) who won several swimming medals (3 gold and a silver) in the Mexico City 1964 Olympics. He told me once the US swim team had a two country meet with the Soviets in Moscow shortly thereafter, and the US team beat them rather handily. The press in the Soviet Union reported that in the international meet, the Soviets took second and the US placed next to last.

I thought that was pretty creative spin. Might be tough for China to spin the media that much in this day and age.:)

I watched a lot of the USA-China basketball game. I think the US could struggle when they play against teams that know how to control tempo. From what I saw, the US struggled in the half court offense - they scored a very high percentage of their points off the break off of turnovers.

Also, China got many, many outside shots and just didn't hit them. The US will need to D up better than that on shooters.

I watched that game, and all I could think was how totally different world basketball is from the days of the Dream Team. The US beat China, by a lot in the end. As they should have. But it wasn't because China sucked. China played a great game in the first half. They let the US go on one big run, outside of that they played them even. They just don't have the conditioning to keep up with the intensity that the US can maintain for the whole game, especially since the game is 1/6 shorter than what they're used to playing. But China didn't look foolish out there, they looked like a somewhat outmatched team. LOVED Yao cheering them on for good plays, even when down by 27.

The difference between this team and the '04 team is that they're actually taking it seriously. The world snuck up on them in '04 and they learned they can't just phone it in. They've put a lot more work in than the '04 team did and it shows. Even the loose defense they showed in today's game would have been beyond that '04 team.

Of course, the other teams have progressed too, but I'm betting the US takes it.

Yeah, China didn't suck, but they didn't have any real shooting threats either. The US should indeed take it, but the European teams, and probably Brazil and Argentina will have much better perimeter shooting.

I have tremendous confidence in Krzyzewski.

The Dream Team was awesome. I watched the game too (used to love BB back when.... almost as much as I love hockey now). Completely different playing field. Team USA can't walk in and expect to win anymore. I think they see it, but they aren't used to the playing styles of the teams they are playing now - even if those teams have NBA players on them.

No doubt. But as long as they actually play and don't get sloppy, they'll win easily. And they've at least done a good job of making it appear like they've put the preparation in to make sure they don't get sloppy so we'll see.

Quick question - I seem to remember that when I was a kid, the Olympics were broadcast on multiple networks. Am I remembering correctly? I could swear that I remember (before a million cable stations) changing the channel to watch different events. And if they did used to be on multiple networks, when did it change?

All I recall is other stations like TNT or MSNBC or CNBC or some cable stations sometimes broadcasting (like they are this time around), but I don't remember being able to switch from ABC to CBS to watch a different event.

I'd forgotten anybody other than NBC ever did them.

According to information at Wikipedia, in the United States each individual Olympics has had single network coverage* since 1960, though the network involved has changed from event to event and this is NBC's fifth consecutive summer Olympics.

1960 - CBS (summer and winter)
1964 - NBC (summer) / ABC (winter)
1968 - ABC (summer and winter)
1972 - ABC (summer) / NBC (winter)
1976 - ABC (summer and winter)
1980 - NBC (summer) / ABC (winter)
1984 - ABC (summer and winter)
1988 - NBC (summer) / ABC (winter)
1992 - NBC (summer) / CBS (winter)
1994 - CBS (winter)
1996 - NBC (summer)
1998 - CBS (winter)
2000 - NBC (summer)
2002 - NBC (winter)
2004 - NBC (summer)
2006 - NBC (winter)
2008 - NBC (summer)


* Also according to Wikipedia, for the 1998 TNT paid CBS $50 million for rights to air 50 hours of coverage.

A fair number of hits that weren't counted as 'clean' seemed pretty damn clean to me. I need to look into it further, but if what I'm understanding is correct, all judges have half a second to all hit the button for a hit to be considered valid. One or two judges falling asleep at the switch could turn the tide. Caught a bit of a Brazil v Haiti fight, and they didn't give the Haitian points until almost the end, and punch after punch from him early on that went untallied indicated (to me) that he should have won the fight at the end of the day.


I'm wondering if there will be any challenges to this increasingly subjective style of judging.