The Inevitable Finally Happens
IT was inevitable from the day the celebrity pros from the United States embarked on a global strategy and hung the first racks of jerseys abroad that said, 'Buy me.'
Beginning with Barcelona, the basketball wannabes of the admiring world collected their autographs and took their pictures. They later lost their fear and established a plan. The Lithunians just missed in Sydney. The Brazilians got to overtime last summer at the Goodwill Games. Nobody remains infallible forever. In the case of the N.B.A., over a startlingly short decade in the international arena, supremacy gave way to superiority and then to survival and finally, last night, submission.
'For me, the game tonight, Argentina should be congratulated,' George Karl, now the first coach to lose with a lineup of millionaire stars, softly told the news media after the N.B.A.'s run of 58 victories from the 1992 Olympics came to a dizzying end. 'The excuses for the American team are for all of you to write.'
No Shaq, no Kobe, no McGrady, but please, no excuses, for more shocking than the score -- Argentina 87, U.S.A. 80 -- was how it was achieved. For all the talk of how the Europeans and Asians and South Americans now have game, the Argentines surely did not beat the United States last night at its own game. They won with the passing and precision you would have found in an Indiana country high school gymnasium with wooden backboards 40 years ago. They beat the United States at a game it abandoned -- for better or worse, and let that be open for lengthy discussion -- a long time ago.
In the second quarter, when the early Argentine lead ballooned to a hair-raising 20 points, they planted the seeds to this historic first by conducting a virtual lay-up drill.
'We kept switching when we weren't supposed to switch,' Andre Miller would say later. 'We were lost on defense.'
Ironically, the historic first loss was administered not by a team featuring legitimate N.B.A. players, but by a finely tuned and well-acquainted unit conducted by a former Temple point guard, Pepe Sanchez, lacking the jump shot necessary for the N.B.A. The best Argentine player, a stunningly fluid left-handed shooting guard named Emanuel Ginobili, is headed to San Antonio this fall, and he is likely to camp there a very long time. As for the rest of the Argentines, maybe the best you could say about them is that they are most likely headed to the medal stand Sunday. After last night, it will shock no one if it is for the gold.
'I think they were confused with all the screening and moving around,' Ginobili said. 'They didn't know to switch or not. I said yesterday that the only weak point for the Americans is that they don't know each other.'
This was also a debatable contention, given the assemblage of a team with enigmatic perimeter shooting, one go-to scorer, Paul Pierce, still in his prime and a front line lacking not only a center but what you would consider an established franchise player.
Still, Ginobili unintentionally got to the heart of the matter in the attempt to explain what we'd just watched. For all the romanticizing of the Dream Team and its 43-point average Olympic victory, it was as much a pickup team as this one here. They were just the greatest players of what may have been the N.B.A.'s ultimate generation, and in the depressing final seconds last night, Karl watched with his arms folded as the punctuation was applied to the belief that only the very best N.B.A. players may -- I repeat, may -- be good enough to guarantee victory at this level.
Before the game, Stu Jackson, who chairs the selection committee for the United States team, stood in the corridor and said, 'You can't blame the guys who pulled out or who turned down the invitation to play.' Shaquille O'Neal paid his dues in 1994 and 1996. Kobe Bryant has played deep into June three years running. Tracy McGrady had a bad back. And more to the point, the goals the N.B.A. had when it stepped onto the world stage -- first and foremost it was about marketing and making more money -- have essentially been reached.
The significantly improved quality of these teams and all the foreign-born players bounding into the league provide, when you think about it, the evidence of a job well done. No excuses. No disgraces. Evolution takes its natural course, or at least the one set in motion by David Stern and the army of sneakers pitchmen.
The rest of the world is not what it was. Reggie Miller is not what he was. In the final minutes last night, Sanchez said he feared one of those fourth-quarter runs that Reggie used to save for the Knicks. 'I was sweating until the last seconds,' he said. 'But with about four seconds to go, we were looking at each other and saying, 'Do you believe it? Do you believe it?' '
Do you believe in miracles? Not really, because this was no miracle. This was inevitable.
Sports of The Times