What has happened to the critics and the talk heard around the world that basketball in the United States is turning into garbage and that foreign basketball is played the right way, and has caught up with U.S. ball players? I’m starting to believe that the media has a love affair with hating on the NBA and it’s players. The talk is that the Olympics Mens Basketball tourney is boring and not worth watching because the U.S. team is making it look to easy. I didn’t hear any of this rhetoric when Michael Phelps was smashing his opponents and world records on his way to winning 8 gold medals. No single Olympian has ever made it look as easy as Micheal Phelps, but yet were hearing that the U.S. mens basketball competitions are not worth watching. Why can’t we watch these blowout games with pride. Pride that we have the best basketball players in the world. Pride that those NBA players put there million dollar lifestyles to the side for a summer and live in the Olympic village with all the other Olympians, represent the United States and bring home Gold Medals in there competitive sport like every other Olympian that has traveled to Beijing. We’ve been hearing for eight years how bad we have become in a sport that we introduced to the world. But yet this team has been proving all of that talk wrong.

The Question that I ask is why can’t NBA players win. If these games were close the media would be killing this team made up of mostly all the top young players that represent the NBA. Instead they are doing what they should be doing, and the country that they represent could care less. The media could care less. A negative story cannot be produced from the success of this young brilliant team so the media can say nothing more but that the games are boring. I remember the games that the original Dream Team played in and cannot remember one close game. I also remember seeing the original Dream Team players posted on Big Mac wrappers and Coke cups, Wheaties Boxes and U.S.A. Jerseys all over the place. But this team is not producing that kind of attention. Because I believe it’s deeper.

At some time between those 92 games and these games, the media, and the country has had a falling off with NBA players. Is it the money they make? Is it there lifestyles? Is it because there mostly young, rich and black? maybe. I just thought that when you went to the Olympics, you represented more then your hood. You represent more than your individual race. You represent that farmer in Western Pennsylvania, that hunter in West Virginia. You represent those struggling young kids in New York City that look up to you. That big State of Texas, and that flashy state we call California. You represent the United States. The mightiest country in the world. So it’s time that we give this team it’s due. What they are accomplishing over there is history, and all of those guys over there representing us will be Gold Medal Olympians for the rest of there lives. Something that no critic will ever be able to take away from them. Hate on that.