Sports

From an article of the same title (sub-titled Why does the United States keep losing in international sports?) by Robert Weintraub on slate.com:

In the wee hours of Friday morning, another American basketball team met its international Waterloo, losing to Greece in the semifinals of the 2006 FIBA World Championship. This squad was supposed to be a corrective to prior failures, most notably a bronze in the 2004 Olympics and a humbling sixth at the 2002 Worlds. Yet once again, despite a more strategically built team and the Madison Avenue-minted genius of Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, the United States once again came up shy. Cue the recriminations. According to the newspaper columnists and television pundits, the Americans lost because they relied too much on individual talent at the expense of team play. They didn't pay attention to fundamentals and defense. They looked to make dunks and no-look passes instead of hustling for loose balls and setting screens. They were felled by hubrisitic arrogance. Seems like we've been here before, very recently. Two months ago, the U.S. flamed out of the World Cup under a hailstorm of criticism. But strangely enough, the American soccer team was criticized for the exact opposite reasons. The players didn't have enough flair. They were fundamentally sound but lacking in creativity and athleticism. The U.S. team was faceless, artless, and empty. They're "trained monkeys" who are "incapable of having an original or ad-libbed thought on a soccer pitch." Basketball and soccer aren't all that different, except in scoring rates. Both sports prize fast, fluid athletes who can think on their feet. Teamwork usually trumps individuality. So, why the contradictory excuses for America's bad showings in international play? The U.S. basketball team lost because it ran into an extremely hot Greek team in a one-and-done game... The single biggest reason for the loss was the Americans' failure to defend the high pick-and-roll. Greece ran this simple play on almost every possession after the first quarter for layup after layup. The United States' lapses against the pick-and-roll don't have anything to do with the me-first nature of the American player, though. This was a deficiency in scouting-Coach K and his staff should have been better prepared for Greece's offense. But more than anything, team defense depends on reps and familiarity, something this hastily assembled team didn't have. By the time the 2008 Olympics roll around, the U.S. defense won't be a sieve. Now, let's look at the U.S. soccer team. As I wrote in June, the Americans' failings in the World Cup had more to do with our guys failing to challenge themselves in the top European leagues than with the team's supposed deficit in creativity.

From an article of the same title by Daniel Gross on slate.com:

Star-endorsed basketball shoes have long been one of the great rip-offs in footwear. Nike wants $130 for a pair of Zoom Kobe I sneakers and $110 for Zoom LeBron IIIs. You'll pay at least $90 for Allen Iverson's signature shoes, the Answer. (The question: What costs too much?) But now cheap is suddenly cool. New York Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury has just put his name on a line of cheap athletic wear and shoes, dubbed Starbury. Marbury's signature Starbury One basketball shoes retail for a mere $15. Marbury isn't the first basketball player to put his name on cheaper shoes. In 2004, Shaquille O'Neal's Dunkman line of shoes retailed at Payless for $40 a pair. But what distinguishes Marbury's shoe is its extreme cheapness combined with his vow to actually use it in his professional life. "I'm going to wear the shoe on court. I'm going to wear the sneakers all season," he said in a piece that aired on National Public Radio this morning... And rather than affiliate with a sleek, design-conscious company like Nike or a mega-retailer like Target, Marbury has chosen to cast his lot with a scrappy upstart. The Starbury line is available only at the up-and-coming cheapo apparel retailer Steve & Barry's. Steve & Barry's started with a single store at the University of Pennsylvania in 1985, expanded to other college campuses, and then to malls. Today, there are about 130 stores, with six opening in August and September alone. This piece in Business Week explains how Steven Shore and Barry Prevor have managed to undercut Wal-Mart and Target by scoring great deals from landlords at crappy malls, buying directly from overseas, and offering only house brands. The result: absurdly low prices. Walk through the aisles and you'll shake your head in disbelief: polo shirts, rugby shirts, hats, university T-shirts, bulky hooded sweatshirts, jeans and khakis, shorts, warm-up jackets, all for less than $10.

From an AP story of the same title on ESPN.com:

Eddie Johnson is still getting over what he calls the worst day of his life. He scratched his way out of the Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, fashioned a long and successful NBA career, turned that into an opportunity on TV and built a reputation as an all-around good guy who loves to work with kids. His worst scrape with the law involved a couple of traffic tickets. Now he's dealing with a case of mistaken identity that shocked him and his friends and, he fears, might have permanently sullied his reputation. "Devastating. Hard to explain," Johnson said Thursday. Eddie Johnson was mistaken in some media reports for another Eddie Johnson -- a retired 10-year NBA player from Florida who was arrested Tuesday night and charged with sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl. The Eddie Johnson who had nothing to do with that hideous accusation is a former Illinois star who went on to a 17-year career with the Kings, Suns, Rockets and other teams. But when some media reports about the alleged crime included his bio information and file photo linked on the Internet, his phone started ringing. "The thing that disappointed me the most is some people were overzealous enough to think it was me and attack me with a ferocity I can't comprehend," Johnson said in a telephone interview from his home in Phoenix. "That's the part that didn't allow me to sleep last night. That's the part that forced me to reach out to as many people as I could and say 'Shame on you, that's not me.' "

The name of Midland's new single A minor league baseball team was unveiled yesterday...the Great Lakes Loons. The poll on the teams web site indicates a disapproval level of 45 % concerning the name, but my informal poll of people from church today was more like 100 % against.

From an article of the same tite in The Christian Chronicle:

The Dallas Mavericks made Maurice Ager - a faithful member of the Holmes Road church, Lansing, Mich., during his four seasons at Michigan State - their top pick in the recent NBA draft. Holmes Road associate minister Todd Greer describes Ager, the overall No. 28 pick in the draft's first round, as not only a great player but also "a young man who has his priorities in line."