United States’ redemption is complete. The story is over and they did what they needed to do. Now let’s look at the results of this competition that pitted NBA teammates against eachother.

Preceding the Olympics there was a lot of talk about NBA players heading east to Europe. Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, and even Lebron James said that they would consider playing in Europe. There’s more money to be made there and a completely different atmosphere, something that they may easily welcome.

Now, I don’t know whether there was any validity to the comments but if there it’s not there any more. The rest of the world is in no competition with American basketball. Not only that but the international rules are not condusive to a successful career. The game seems to be sloppy, choppy, and reckless. A career ending injury is basically imminent.

I appreciate what international players have brought to the NBA, but the last thing I want to see is NBA players going to Europe. David Stern and the NBA need to do whatever they can to prevent this. Call me selfish, but I want these guys over here so I can watch them, too bad Europe.

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It’s been two years since the FIBA Championships in which the Greeks picked apart the US National Team to win the FIBA Championship leaving LeBron James and US disappointed. In their first challenge in this Olympics the US National team defeated Greece, holding a Greek team that put up 101 in their last meeting to a mere 69 points.

This victory by the US is more about the Greeks beating themselves than the US beating the Greeks. Greece decided to play a one-on-one type game, a game that is no match to a team that has Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh off the bench. They failed to get going offensively as Wade’s defensive gambling paid off as he had 6 steals in the game. But, is this the true Greece?

After winning the first two games, it seems as if the Greeks will make it past the group stage easily. Now, European teams have been known to do this…under perform, resting their players making it seem as if they are worse than they really are and then when the elimination round comes around, a completely different team shows up. Now, this routine has been argued about as to whether it’s really done, and whether it’s smart, unethical, or just plain stupid. Either way it doesn’t matter if you’re USA.

No team is short of any tom-foolery but if the Greeks truly did this on purpose takes the cake. Whether it will pay off or not is yet to be seen. I like the idea of resting your players for the next round to a certain extent, but to risk putting them in a bad rhythm for the rest of the Olympics is beyond me. One thing’s for sure though, Kobe Bryant, LeBron, and company are playing too well right now to be fooled by this.

So far throughout this Olympics and even exhibition games leading up to them, it seems as though the mantra of the team is not to underestimate any team at all. So I don’t see how they will underestimate a team in the latter rounds. If this move was done on purpose by the Greece national team, it will be a move done in haste as the Redeem Team will have golds around their necks.

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