Are we hipster or are we athlete?

Will you guys watch the olympics basketball?

What do you make of this article claiming the USA might fail to even medal:

http://www.theroar.com.au/2012/05/07/wh ... mpic-gold/

i'll believe it when i see it. if they don't medal it'll be because of all of the recent injuries to top players.

it was a pretty bad analysis imo.

This is all pretty much wrong.

The rest is pretty ridiculous too, I mean it's not all necessarily wrong, it's just he's forgetting that we have by far the best collection of basketball players in the world and because of that the USA is just generally better than every one.

I thought that would be the case.

I hope Australia is in the same side of the draw as the US, as I want to see how close we can get. In the women's basketball we're always a chance of beating you and definitely favourites for silver. We're not quite as competitive in men's basketball at the moment but we're alright. A medal for us in men's basketball would be pretty big here I think.

You can thank your lucky stars that Andrew Gaze is retired though otherwise you wouldn't have a hope. He would have defeated your dream team almost single handed with his niceness, grey hair and inability to miss a shot. With him now too old and Bogut injured we have to rely on Patty Mills being too short for your defenders to see and reach...

Who? One guy would make the Americans not have a chance?

Is Australia thought of as a country that has a chance in Olympic basketball?
I love Patty Mills, but if he's even worth mentioning when discussing your country's Olympics team, that country doesn't really stand a chance against USA.

looks like it will most likely be boston and philly next round. like the celts' chances there too. home court again is nice. the celts looked unstoppable last night. avery bradley has turned himself into quite the player. his defense is superb and has the ability to drop 15 points a game. not to mention the guy coming off the bench for him is ray fucking allen. arguably the best 3 point shooter this league has ever seen. its an up hill battle to get to the championship for sure but i wouldnt be completely surprised given how theyre playing now. paul pierce is going off. hes so good.

seriously, he's third string point guard on the spurs at the moment. he played really well in the last few games of the regular season though.

I'd like to see him play for a team (and maybe the Spurs are that team) where he gets a chance to get some good playing time and experience, because it's not just the Blazers fan in me saying that he's got huge potential. He's got so much agility and quickness. And I love his attitude.

I think you guys took MintCondition's post far too (read: at all) seriously

In women's basketball we've been 2nd in the world for years as Lauren Jackson (in particular) and Penny Taylor have been among the best players in the world for a long time (not sure if they're starting to get past it now or not?). We've beaten the USA a couple of times, but at the biggest stage the US is usually too strong. Still, silver is not too bad. We'd be disappointed with bronze I think but the Russians are around the same level so it'll be tough.

In men's I think we're an outside chance at a minor medal. If we snuck a bronze it would be great. We're not really one of the teams that has a chance at upsetting the US, but we have some chance of upsetting pretty much any other team in a one off match. In 2008 we were knocked out by the US in the quarter finals - got hammered by like 30 points so I'm interested to see if we can get closer now. We'll get better in future years as basketball has become a lot more popular here as a participation sport in recent years (though it's still no where near the level of mainstream popularity it was when Jordan was in his peak and made it massive).

Re Patty Mills, I think he's underrated in the US because he's short and doesn't fit the pre-determined mould. He had great games for the spurs recently when given the opportunity to start. He'll also play better for Australia too - he played great in that quarter final against the US, and he was still a college player then. I expect if fully fit at the olympics that he'll turn some heads. Our best player is Andrew Bogut, who's injured and will miss the tournament, but we have some other very good bigger players in Europe. They're just no where near as athletic as the Americans...no team is really, but I think the international rules mitigates that to some extent.

Pretty sure he wasn't being serious.

now i see it

holy shit great run by the jazz. that made me really nervous. the spurs couldn't get anything to drop.