Now is as good a time as any to tell my thoughts about the U.S. and international basketball. I got an opportunity to watch the U.S. three times in person in Athens, which qualifies me as an expert (inasmuch as Bob Costas is an expert in anything).

The rest of the world is much, much better at basketball than I expected. Each of the top teams had several players who should be in the NBA but aren't. America has an edge over everyone in athleticism and ball handling, but that's it. The team we fielded was obviously worse in perimeter shooting than any other team that made it out of the prelims. But even without any pure shooters, we really didn't have trouble scoring after the Puerto Rico game. Our problem was defense. We didn't play the tight team defense that all good teams should play, and our rebounding was surprisingly weak for a team of our size and strength. I don't know why the rebounding was weak, but you can't expect AI to shut down a wing who's four inches taller than him, and to the best of my knowledge Steph Marbury has never shut down anybody. Larry Brown didn't have the opportunity to build a club -- he had to shift the guys he had around into the best team possible. They were pretty good by the end, but a lot worse than they should have been.

So what's the solution? The NBA champs would have been a better team than the guys we put out there (although I doubted that would be the case). The problem is, with more and more international players coming into the NBA, and with free agency, it's almost impossible to guarantee that you'll have an intact squad for international play over the summer. Plus, I doubt the players union would ever allow it to happen (the summer is the only time off for players, and the union would probably fight any effort to make playing compulsory, which you'd sort of have to do if you were to keep a specific squad intact).

In the alternative, I'd like to see the U.S. actually take international basketball seriously. We can't send the top NBA team to the olympics, but we can send them to international club competitions. Most importantly, we should keep an international team in the interim that can take root. Why should we change coaches every competition? Hire somebody and keep them there for a while so they're not distracted. Why have a new selection every competition? Make clear that being on the olympic team is a long-term commitment, so you have a core of players who play together internationally for a while. You won't get as many stars, but I'd rather have a bunch of mid-level NBAers who play together for a few years rather than a group of guys who are selected for marketing purposes and thrown together at the last minute. I don't know if the U.S. will institute either of these changes, but I hope they do.