HW #11, Due Friday September 19th!

For Friday, read the article below about the USA men's basketball team and explain if you think it is a "good article" in 5-7 sentences. Remember to consider all of the elements of journalism we have discussed.

See you in class!

-Mr. Donohue

U.S. Men’s Basketball Team Shows How Far It Has Come

BEIJING — If there was a bellwether game to determine just how much the United States men’s basketball team had progressed since the 2004 Athens Olympics, none in these Games offered a better opportunity than Thursday’s matchup against Greece.

Since its meltdown in Athens, the team has gone 21-1. That loss came to Greece in the semifinals of the 2006 world championship in Japan and forced the United States to settle for a bronze.

The American players were giddy when Greece ended up in their pool for the Olympics, and they backed up their talk with a 92-69 flogging that clinched a spot in the medal round.

“We’re 10 times better,” LeBron James said when asked to compare this team to 2006.
Kobe Bryant and Chris Bosh each scored 18 points to lead the United States, with Dwyane Wade adding 17 points, 6 steals and 5 assists in another show-stealing performance.

The United States made Greece look like just another overmatched opponent, hammering transition dunks seemingly at will and toying with Greece to the point where Jason Kidd attempted to throw an alley-oop off the backboard midway through the third quarter.

The performance rekindled memories of some of the dominant American Olympic teams of yesteryear. While the Greeks and other countries caught up to the United States in the last decade through better Olympic systems and more cohesive teams, this victory reminded the world that superior talent and athleticism can disrupt the best organizations.

The United States forced 25 turnovers and outscored Greece by 28-4 off the turnovers. The Americans’ best moments in this tournament have been with Wade and Bosh, who both come off the bench, on the floor.

Greece ran 42 of its trademark pick-and-rolls in the teams’ 2006 matchup. On Thursday, it did not get half of that number, with the activity of Wade on the perimeter and Bosh inside keying a disruptive defense.

“That’s our identity, no doubt,” Wade said of the United States’ suffocating defense. “We’re not going to win if we don’t play defense the way we did tonight.”

For all the changes, both in structure and attitude, that USA Basketball has made in reinventing itself since the last Olympics, the most glaring can be seen by glancing at the box score. Consider that the dysfunctional duo of Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury started at guard in the 2004 Olympics and the starting backcourt for the Greece loss in 2006 was Kirk Hinrich and Joe Johnson.

Kidd and Bryant started at guard Thursday. And while Kidd’s starting has become something of a ceremonial gesture in these Olympics, that is still a gargantuan backcourt upgrade.

After looking sloppy and uninspired at times in its first two games, the United States played its best game of these Olympics. The United States led by 19 at halftime and rendered the second half a formality.

“They had big motivation,” Nikolaos Zisis of Greece said. “They lost to a small country overseas.”

Bosh blocked Vasileios Spanoulis’s 3-point shot as time expired in the first half and spiked the ball to celebrate as the horn sounded. The scene summed up a half in which the United States dominated the Greeks with overwhelming physical superiority and a well-executed defensive game plan.

The United States ran off a succession of fast-break baskets, many off Greek turnovers. The prettiest came when Wade stripped a Greek player, sprinted to his left to save the loose ball and in the same motion tossed a perfect lob pass to Bryant for a dunk.

“Until you get on the court with us, you can’t understand how fast we are as a team,” James said.

Wade entered the game as the team’s leading scorer and dazzled again. He has been the United States’ best player in these Olympics, a surprise considering how he endured an injury-plagued and unproductive N.B.A. season.

“He trained and trained and trained to get ready for these Olympics,” James said. “And he’s shown how good he is.”

Greece has no current N.B.A. players, but the team is considered the Hoosiers of the Adriatic for how well it plays together. Still, it is difficult to run a succinct offense that starts 30 feet from the basket, and that is what the American defense forced Greece to do. The United States harassed and hounded the Greeks so relentlessly that few Greek possessions had the flow that proper execution requires.

“U.S.A. forced us to make a lot of turnovers and got easy baskets,” Coach Panagiotis Giannakis said, summing up the game’s most prominent story line.

The United States plays Spain, the second-most talented team in the Olympics, on Saturday. The Spanish have Pau Gasol at center and a trove of talented and N.B.A.-caliber guards like Juan Carlos Navarro, Rudy Fernández and José Calderón. The game will serve as a bigger challenge and another touchstone in the development of this American team.

“This is a good team we beat tonight,” Wade said. “We had to come out and prove to ourselves we got better. And we did.”