MADRID – “Until they show us for 40 minutes that they are the better team, I am not going to say they are the better team.” Consider the gauntlet thrown down. The thrower was Serbia coach Sasha Djordjevic. You may never have heard of Djordjevic, but he was a pretty good point guard back in the day. And way back in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics, he played on a Yugoslavia team that was the first squad to play a competitive game
As the New Orleans Pelicans enter a pivotal season in their potential progression to a playoff team, swingman Tyreke Evans appears to project as a reserve. The good news is that if Evans comes off the bench for your team, your roster is pretty talented. The bad news is that Evans has shown that he is a much better player as a starter. Evans’ first season in New Orleans was filled with adjusting to a new team and adapting to a new role off
During one of Team USA’s exhibition games prior to the World Cup, international basketball aficionado Fran Fraschilla had a simplistic but telling observation. Fraschilla said that no team at the World Cup will have as many NBA players than Team USA. That is a big advantage. Another big advantage Team USA has it that it can afford to let down for brief stretches of games. Other teams cannot. Lithuania coach Jonas Kaslauskas had firsthand experience with that dynamic in Thursday’s semifinal. After playing
September 11th. It is a day that carries a lot of meaning in America. 13 years ago two hijacked airplanes crashed into the North and South Towers of the Word Trade Center in New York City, a third plane crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and a fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. All told, the nearly 3,000 people died as a result of the attacks. In the years since, the area where the Twin Towers collapsed, known
BARCELONA — Quite the bizarro scene in the post-game press conference after Team USA destroyed Lithuania in the semifinals of the World Cup. There was a reporter from Slovenia who had been going back and forth with coach Mike Krzyzewski over the past several days — he wanted to ask questions that Coach K did not want to answer, and Coach K told him he’d answer his questions over a glass of wine when the time was appropriate. So the guy from
So how does it feel, Spain? How does it feel to come up woefully short of expectations? How does it feel to be embarrassed by an inexplicable loss on your home floor in front of your blindly supportive fan base? How does it feel to be relegated to classification games while visitors vie for the international championship you believed was rightfully yours? Yeah, it wasn’t supposed to go down this way. Your march through the 2014 World Cup wasn’t supposed to be
Spain was targeting another classico with Team USA. Instead, they will have to settle for classification. In one of FIBA’s bigger upsets in recent memory, host Spain lost to France, 65-52, in the quarterfinals of the World Cup on Wednesday. The Spaniards came into this World Cup looking to avenge narrow losses to the United States in the final of the 2008 Olympics and the 2012 Olympics. They believed they had the personnel to match up with the Americans – especially after Team USA
BARCELONA — Two years ago, when Team USA was jam-packed with superstars at the London Olympics, they played Lithuania in the preliminary round. Forty minutes later, they were fortunate to escape unscathed. The final score was 99-94, as Lithuania stuck with the Americans until the final minute. It was the only competitive game for Team USA until the gold medal match against Spain. That version of Team Lithuania had a bona fide alpha dog in Linas Kleiza, who is not competing this