NBA Falls Flat in Athens

I was struck watching the men's Olympic basketball loss to Lithuania today how much more fundamentally sound and skilled the Lithuanians were than the NBA players. In all aspects of the game that showed true skill; free throw shooting, passing, three-point shooting, and game awareness the Lithuanians dominated. This underscores for me why the NBA has become so much less interesting over the past decade. The game relies too much on pure physicality and too little on skills. I'll take the college game any day. I wonder when USA Basketball will accept the fact that they need to take fundamentally sound players and good shooters over pure athletes.

In other Olympic news my wife's sister's husband Jim Gruenwald is a Greco-Roman wrestler for the American team at 60kg (132 lbs). His tournament starts August 24th and can be seen live on MSNBC at 4:00AM. Since Rulon Gardner when the gold in Sydney there should be more coverage of the entire team this time around. Jim suffered a serious injury in the 2003 World Championships and battled back to win at the Olympic trials. He also wrestled in Sydney and got 6th place. Hopefully, he'll get a good draw (its random) to start the tournament.