Everyone including cousin Goober will jump on and analyze the U.S. men’s basketball team and tell us how they can’t shoot from the outside.

I think this problem goes a little deeper than that, don’t you?

This team, depleted of bona fide stars such as Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe…and…never mind. You get the picture.

As I was saying, this team had a total of SIX exhibition games and 12-that’s it, 12 practices to prepare for THE one and only Olympic Games.

Why?

Even if it is the United States’ second or third team out on the floor in Athens, with more time they would have become a much more cohesive unit than this. True leaders would have emerged to prevent a late collapse like the one against Lithuania.

So my suggestion? Why not a mixture of NBA and college stars? Why not? You’d have the college kids playing their hearts out and the NBA stars playing not to get embarrassed. It would be like the middle class scaring the petunias out of the rich.

Me thinks the NBA season is just too long for enough NBA players to get enthused about anything in the off season, considering how short the off season is to begin with.

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A nice touch for NBC to bring back the Olympic song that they’ve been prominently “showing.” I’ve noticed it played much more than the last Olympics, which seemed to be played only sparingly.

There’s just some things that one doesn’t mess with and that’s the Olympic song, no matter what network wins broadcast rights.

Just to nitpick, there’s one thing I’d like to see more of is action in NBC’s intro when they begin broadcast for the first time at night. The song is playing but they show nothing but scenery and not enough action from the Games.

Greece is beautiful but there are sporting events going on as well. The action adds dramatics to the whole thing. Unfair as it may be and NBC is doing a nice job, but nobody does sports like ABC-certainly not the Olympics.

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Does anyone else think some of these sports are just plain unnecessary?

I thought synchronized swimming was a bit much until one looks closely and sees the incredible athleticism it takes for that kind of precision. But synchronized diving? Good grief!

What’s perplexing is that there are sports such as team handball and field hockey but the Olympic committee was considering axing softball and baseball.

Strange decisions going on as the Games seem to get as big as the American budget. And that’s aside from what it costs for security. One would think they could at least figure out a way to get rid of glaring judge’s mistakes, corruption or not.

Filed by J.D. Long