Something light

So with all the political upheavel goings on in regard to the presidential election, russian invasion forces, and energy costs being turned upside down I am going to summarilly disregard these things...even put aside my scathing attacks on Joe Biden who I destest more than any other senator and talk about something a bit lighter. We are nearing the end of week two at the olympics and the redeem team has been in top form. They looked a little weaker in their last game against argentina (which I couldn't watch live but saw later in the day). Still though, they win by close to 20 points and showed strength down the stretch with key performances by bench players. They advance tonight to the gold medal game against spain who looked like amateurs against them the last time they met. Spain led by Juan Carlor Navarro, and Pau Gassol has some seasoned NBA players and some top tier European talent but they show no signs of being able to stack up against the "redeem team." On a side note, I hate that name. I know its a play off of the 1992 "Dream team." But still, we don't need redeeming. We had a little slide 4 years ago because USA basketball forgot that playing defense helps in winning games and that team work is not just 5 guys on the court at once. Even still, the United States has one 12 gold medals in 15 attempts with an additional silver and 2 bronze medals. They boycotted the 1980 olympics so we didn't medal there but they have gotten a medal in every olympics they participated in. The US is to basketball what the Chinese are to Table Tennis. One loss, does not make us ripe for redemption. I guess what it does do is make the US realize that they should take more seriously the high expectations that we have here for them to be the best in the world. Its a shame that we don't take the international game more seriously. I understand that there are big NBA contracts out there that get in the way of all that but every so often we need to remind the world that there is no need for redemption here. More so that every win over the US in a major competition should be considered an upset victory. So tomorrow morning (2:00 am for those interested) I hope that we utterly destroy the spanish national team and put to rest the naysayers who say that the US can't play the international game. Furthermore, I think that the US viewing public should make just as big a deal about the FIBA world championships as we do about the Olympics and make sure that we send our best every four years there too so we never have to hear about the redeem team again. As a side note, Spain is the defending FIBA world champion(we came in third, no Kobe, Kidd, Boozer,Prince, or Redd)...time to make them look silly. Patrick OUT!!!