Too soon? Maybe. Yesterday morning, we finished off Spain in a game that was entirely too close for comfort after Team USA smoked everyone else throughout the Olympics. Now, just 24 hours later, the gold medal celebration has worn off and we can start looking forward to 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Read More »

Rudy Fernandez won’t be playing in the NBA this year, which means he had to empty his bag of tricks during the Olympics if he was going to use them on a global scale. What better place to pull off one of the worst flops (though effective) in the whole tournament than the gold-medal game against Team USA? In a game where both the Spanish and Americans had legitimate gripes about officiating, Fernandez’s over-the-top way of drawing a foul on Andre Iguodala summed up the night. Read More »

Team USA is just two wins away from winning a gold medal and continuing their dominance in the international competition. Before they can get to Sunday’s gold medal game, they must get past Argentina yet again, as today’s game will be the team’s third meeting in the last three weeks. Read More »

Basketball players these days like each other, and former players scoff at such chumming. But not everyone on this year’s Team USA squad are friends. There’s Kobe Bryant, the old vet, Kevin Love, the self-described token white guy, LeBron James, the goofball leader, Anthony Davis, the pledge, and Andre Iguodala, the non-superstar role player who’s more effective than anyone’s willing to admit. It’s easy for such players to mesh rather quickly, if only because talents cures many ills. Read More »

The Olympics are always a bit of a wild card given that teams are almost always cobbled together just a matter of weeks before the Opening Ceremonies. The momentum gained from world championships or FIBA’s qualifying tournaments means little when most teams have been disbanded for months. The unheralded players who toil playing overseas the rest of the year add seasoning to the mix as another unknown. Take, for example, Tunisia. How much tape could Coach K have dug up on Makram Ben Romdhane? What hasn’t been a surprise is the U.S. dominance; no matter how many perceived weaknesses the team has, there are more ways to cover up the cracks than any other team can match. What has caught our eye, however, are these five surprises. Read More »

Throughout the early games of the Olympic run, Kobe Bryant was colder than ice, and at one point, he had missed 17 of 21 shots. Then yesterday against Australia, with the Aussies making a third quarter run and every Laker fan watching on TV, online, on Twitter sitting there with jittery fingers and wide eyes, the nervous twitches became something more. Wait, is it just me or does Kobe look more and more like Michael Redd after knee surgery? Bryant was out of sync with everyone, taking extra dribbles when he shouldn’t have, running people over on the break, stealing rebounds away from teammates and then stepping out of bounds. It got to the point where I wanted LeBron to smack him across the face and say, “Snap out of it!” Read More »

While Brazil wasn’t able to pull out a win against Argentina yesterday, Leandro Barbosa dropped 23 points and Andres Nocioni. I always give Nocioni credit because the man always plays D, but right here there’s no way around it. He got dropped. Maybe now someone will actually sign Barbosa. Read More »

Since when did Nicolas Batum become a tough guy? We guess this is what happens when you are on the verge of an upset in the Olympics, and then your entire team completely shuts down in the fourth quarter. Batum didn’t shoot well, missing nine of 12 shots, and by the time he rocked Juan Carlos Navarro in the balls with a nasty clubbed fist, the game was over. How did he justify it? He told Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, “I wanted to give him a good reason to flop.” Read More »

It seems like Baron Davis is up to a lot of weird stuff this offseason. Last time we saw him, he was throwing basketballs at New Yorkers that weren’t paying attention. Today, Davis has resurfaced alongside his alter ego, Baron Davies, an Olympic reporter. Read More »

It might be hard to recall, but before Team USA wiped Argentina off the court in the second half, there was a ballgame going on. At this point, when Andre Iguodala missed a dunk because it hit off his shoulder and bounced back through, and then Argentina countered with a triple on the other end for a five-point swing, I was nervous. It didn’t feel like the Americans’ night. Of course, we all know what happened from there, and while Chris Paul probably initially started the run, the energy first came from Iggy. I spent most of this morning looking for his amazing play where he ripped an offensive player, threw a pass between a defender’s legs and then caught a putback slam all on the same possession. Alas, we’ll have to go with this one instead, the team’s biggest blooper of the Olympics. Sorry, Andre. Read More »