A Game That Argentina Has Been Waiting For
THE arcing 3-pointer from the left wing was settling in the net when Manu Ginobili landed awkwardly on his right ankle, then crumpled to the floor and onto his back. Good shot, bad timing. His team, Argentina, was in the second quarter of a dogfight with Germany in the semifinals of the world basketball championships.
A chance for gold and a guaranteed medal -- Argentina's first in these championships in 52 years -- was at stake. As for Ginobili, less than a month away from his first training camp with the San Antonio Spurs, an injury in the final weekend of the 11-day championships would be the last thing he would want to carry from Indianapolis.
'Second-degree sprain, I think,' Pepe Sanchez, the Argentine point guard, would report of his backcourt mate. 'He's gone to the hospital for X-rays. I don't know if he'll play tomorrow. It hurts. I think he'd feel really bad if we'd lost, but we didn't let him down.'
As it turned out, Argentina, this tournament's strongest unit, banded even closer without its best player, rallying to defeat Dirk Nowitzki and Germany, 86-80, yesterday at Conseco Fieldhouse. The final beckons today against Yugoslavia, which overcame a 9-point halftime deficit and defeated the upstart New Zealand, 89-78, creating a showdown with Argentina -- not the gold medal game people here thought they'd see, but clearly the one with the two best teams.
Argentine fans celebrated wildly in the final seconds. Tears streamed down the face of Alejandro Montecchia, a 6-foot-1 point guard who made several big plays down the stretch. Awaiting their country's players in the mixed zone area, Argentine journalists hugged and cried.
'The journalists told us that they are dancing in the streets back home,' Sanchez said, skeptically.
Basketball, to begin with, is not the most popular sport in Argentina, and the country has been plagued with a devastated economy. 'It won't help the economy,' said Fernando Duro, an assistant coach. 'But even for people who don't like basketball, maybe when they hear it will make them feel good.'
Argentina had already scratched out history in these championships, as the first team to upend the N.B.A. professionals from the United States. Much as this was big news for Americans -- maybe the only news, given the apathy this tournament has generated in Indianapolis and around the country -- Argentina Coach Ruben Magnano said, 'Our euphoria lasted only 15 minutes.'
With the American mystique shattered, the gold became the goal. These Argentine players, most of whom play professional ball in Spain, feature a core of nine players who have been together for eight years. Sanchez and Ginobili, both 25, have been playing together since they were 12. 'This team is a family, like brothers,' Sanchez said.
Sometimes brothers have to go their own way. Ginobili's injury so close to the opening of N.B.A. training camps underscores the risks many of the American pros have been increasingly reluctant to take when deciding whether to play for their country. It raises the question -- as well as some hope for the United States after its pro pickup team lost consecutive games and failed to win a medal -- of whether the countries that appear to have caught up to the United States will be able to count on their best players participating as their bank accounts fatten in the N.B.A.
Already, there are signs of how the good life affects one's nationalistic pride. Canada came here without its three best players, all N.B.A. players who begged off. China, of all teams, was without one of its frontline stars here, after Wang Zhi Zhi, who played with Dallas last season, ran afoul of the Chinese basketball delegation for skipping training camp for this tournament. After one disheartening game, Yao Ming, about to become the Houston Rockets' prize rookie center, stormed off the court without his team in tow, not your customary Chinese sporting behavior.
Here, and now, the Argentines and Yugoslavs are psyched and primed to be their countries' first gold medalists in an international competition that included N.B.A. players. Vlade Divac, who had previously retired from his national team, unretired because he correctly believed that the United States was vulnerable and that Yugoslavia could defend the gold medal it won four years ago in Athens, when N.B.A. players boycotted because of a homefront labor dispute.
'It's not something that someone's going to say -- 'I don't want to play,' ' Sanchez said of the Argentine team. 'If you don't want to play, you'd better have an excuse.'
He conceded that possible stardom in the N.B.A. might complicate life for the gifted Ginobili, but if he knows his old friend, that was the last thing on his mind as he rode to the hospital yesterday. 'If there's any way Manu can play, he will,' Sanchez said. 'We have all waited for this next game our whole lives.'
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