U.S. Team Is Big On Hype, Not Results
Down by 20 points before halftime, dumbfounded by a former Temple University point guard in need of work, 12 N.B.A. players and their tortured coach were shockingly outplayed by a team from another continent tonight.
A bunch of ambidextrous, unfazed players from Argentina thumbed their noses at the American stars, took the game to the United States and won, 87-80, in the world basketball championships.
It was the first loss by N.B.A. players in international competition -- a streak going back 10 years and 58 games -- and it came before 5,623 fans at Conseco Fieldhouse, which seats 18,345.
In the heartland of hoops, with even Reggie Miller unable to bail his team out, the Argentines delivered, picking the Americans' pride and panache clean at midcourt.
'It's an embarrassment,' said point guard Andre Miller, who scored 14 points. 'It's obviously an embarrassment. We're supposed to be the so-called superstars, representing the U.S.A., and we didn't even lead the whole game.'
Indeed, this was not the product of some foreign 3-point binge, some fortuitous bounce at the buzzer, or an officiating travesty, à la Munich 1972.
Argentina never trailed, led by 52-32 a minute before halftime, and took 14 fewer 3-pointers than did the United States. Argentina outmuscled, outpassed and outshot a United States team that looked more poorly constructed as the game wore on.
Without a dominant presence down low and with spotty perimeter shooters, the United States team is big on athletes but short on height and balance.
A brave new basketball universe was always rumored to be out there, ever since Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and the Dream Team took their skills and their lore to Barcelona, Spain, in 1992 and gave the rest of the world something to emulate. But never had reality set in so hard, the notion that someone on another continent could actually beat, let alone rout, N.B.A. players.
'The symbolic importance is, it's a great game,' United States Coach George Karl said. 'It's a game the world has fallen in love with. In this time of feeling poorly and awful, there's a part of me that's a celebration of basketball. It's a game that a lot of countries love and we must accept the challenge to compete stronger and better.'
At the end, Emanuel Ginobili, a 6-foot-6 shooting guard drafted by the San Antonio Spurs whom most of the world has yet to hear about, went hard to the basket for layups against Ben Wallace, the N.B.A's defensive player of the year, sneaking in left-handed shots off the glass.
Jermaine O'Neal, Elton Brand and Wallace, the main big men for the United States, combined for only eight rebounds tonight. For Argentina, Fabricio Oberto and Ruben Wolkowyski combined for 18.
Karl elected to keep the team's top scorer, Paul Pierce, on the bench for a long stretch after the United States drew to 68-60 at the end of the third quarter. Not even a hobbled Reggie Miller, the Indiana Pacers star who has had so many big games in this building, was a factor against a more determined and dangerous team.
The United States will meet Yugoslavia in the quarterfinals Thursday night, while the Argentines will meet Brazil. And though the Americans could still maintain their supremacy by winning the next three games -- and the gold medal on Sunday in the final -- the dike broke tonight.
Pepe Sanchez, the former Temple point guard who spent time with the 76ers and the Hawks, negotiated his way around Baron Davis, finding teammates all evening. He hit 4 of 6 shots and contributed four assists.
A wild faction of fans clad in the country's colors of light blue and white began chanting: 'Vamos, Argentina! Vamos! Vamos!' (Let's go, Argentina! Let's go! Let's go!)
Luis Scola, an Argentine forward who contributed 13 points, gathered his teammates and began jumping up and down as the final seconds wound down.
The United States weathered two close calls in the last two years in international competition. Lithuania came within a missed 3-pointer at the buzzer of toppling the United States in the 2000 Olympic semifinals in Sydney, Australia, before falling, 83-81. And the United States needed overtime to beat Brazil in the 2001 Goodwill Games.
The United States was 5-0 in this tournament before losing tonight.
Some in the Argentine news media were comparing the victory to Argentina's World Cup victory in 1986, when Diego Maradona scored the legendary Hand of God goal. 'I would say this is the Argentinian revolution,' Sanchez said. 'You like that?'
If anything, it underscored the fact that many of the league's best players were simply missing and sorely needed. Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Tracy McGrady and other players chose not to compete. And two of the best players on the American team, Jason Kidd and Ray Allen, begged off with injuries shortly before the competition.
How did a team that includes seven players who have been N.B.A. All-Stars collapse before a little-known group of players? The players had no answers. Pierce finished with 22 points and shot 7 of 16. As a team, the United States shot 37.5 percent. Lost on defense, unable to find cutting Argentine players, the Americans started whining to the officials before finally getting back on track too late.
At the final buzzer, with the Argentinian contingent celebrating and USA Basketball officials shaking their heads in disbelief, some of the American players turned to walk toward the locker room.
But Antonio Davis and Reggie Miller made sure they gave the team from Argentina their proper respect for pulling off the biggest international upset since a team of United States college players was shocked by the Soviet Union at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.
'We didn't want this to happen,' said Raef LaFrentz, a reserve forward for the United States. 'We didn't think this was going to happen. Nobody did.'
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