Men win Gold……..Wow, what a tournament!

The 2008 Olympic basketball tournament has just concluded and quite frankly,  I am not quite sure how I can survive until London 2012. This was my first Olympics that I have covered live as the basketball commentator and I had an absolute blast. The games were fantastic; we had close games that were spirited and  and we had blowouts that came as the result of near basketball perfection the stories were compelling andNBCOlympics.com allowed me to be able to be a part of something revolutionary and record breaking. I am just starting to get a grip on just what an impact this new online technology has been able to accomplish.

Here is a portion of a note sent from our executives at NBC Sports and NBCOlympics.Com:

1.3 billion pageviews
50+ million unique visitors
70 million streams
10 million hours of video watched
35 million mobile page views
5,000+ clips viewed every day last week
Hundreds of highlights produced every day, delivered to every possible platform

The numbers are astounding. In a mere 17 days, you have crushed every U.S. digital record for a major event. Nothing even comes close. Your work establishes a new technological and creative benchmark for digital production–and it captivated and fascinated tens of millions of users across the U.S. You delivered the Olympics where the audience wanted it, how they wanted it–for the first time in history.

So I got that going for me….which is nice. It was fun to be a part of something so unique and so well received, but my true joy came in simply covering the games and sitting in a studio watching game after game after game of basketball being played at the absolute highest level.

The Men’s Medal Games were fantastic, starting with the Bronze Medal Game. Argentina, despite being without superstar Manu Ginobili, was able to defeat Lithuania 87-75. Luis Scola was fantastic over the last couple of games for Argentina, picking up the slack for an injured Ginobili. The Argentines have played very good  basketball over the last 4 years and constitute the most experienced and cohesive top 5 of any International team in the world. Lithuania has been the model of International basketball consistency, having made the semifinals in 5 straight Olympics. Lithuania was full of a group of players largely unknown to American fans, but they were a deep and talented squad that played very well throughout the tournament.

Spain has a team that features many players familiar to American hoop fans, (Calderon, Gasol, Garbojosa, etc) and a few players that everyone now knows after their wonderful play in this tournament. Rudy Fernandez had a ridiculously good game in the Gold Medal Game and I am sure that my buddy Kevin Pritchard in Portland often times fell out of his chair while Fernandez was alternating between hitting guarded, step-back rainbow 3’s with putting it on the floor for tomahawk jams over a paint full of defenders. Everyone now knows of the teen sensation Ricky Rubio, a.k.a. “The Spanish Pistol Pete”

(…by the way, we will know International Basketball has truly arrived when a U.S.player someday is known as “The American _____”). In this tournament we have had “The Spanish Pistol Pete” and “The Baltic Pippen” amongst others.

But I digress….getting back to Rubio….I am having a little trouble evaluating Rubio and his potential right now. On the one hand, I love his poise and his fearlessness and his pass first/true point guard mentality. He also is a pesky defender As a 17 year old kid playing against the best of the best of the world, he performed remarkably well, especially being thrown into a starring role because of Calderon’s injury. However, there are a few things that I have questions about. I don’t like his shot at all…it is flat and he doesn’t use his legs properly. It is mostly a set shot and I don’t see his ability to get his own shot very well. As a smaller point guard he will need to be able to come hard off of screens or into seams and be able to stop on a dime and explode up for jumpers over bigger defenders. I don’t see that as part of his game right now. I am also a little concerned about his quickness, or lack thereof. Against slower players he is crafty and nifty enough that he can get shots off and passes through without any problems. But going against NBA players on a night in and night out basis, I don’t know yet if he is quick enough. With all of that being written, he is only 17-freakin’ years old! I may be totally nit picking and most likely he will continue to develop. He very well someday soon known as “La Pistola”, El primer escogimiento del giro de la Asociación Nacional del Baloncesto de 2010″ roughly translated to mean, ” The Pistol, the #1 NBA draft pick in 2010.

Getting back to the Gold Medal Game….Spain played their heart out and never gave up. There were moments when I felt that the game was slipping away for them and that this would be another blowout, and every single time this was about to happen Spain would come up huge and make a run…usually led by Fernandez or Gasol, who had 22 and 21 points respectively. Spain was down only 2 very late in the game and I don’t think anyone expected that to happen. The U.S. had their poorest defensive game of the tournament. They allowed Spain to score 107 pts on 51% shooting from the field and 47% from three point range. Their interior defense was not good,  turning both Pau and Marc Gasol loose time after time on basket dives and offensive rebound efforts. They were slow to get to their spots on weakside rotation assignments.  On the perimeter, they lost their men at times giving Spain wide open 3 point shots. Often I have seen teams that are so athletic and so good at pressuring teams into turnovers that they get too anxious to cause immediate turnovers and end up being less than solid defensively. No doubt that this happened with the U.S. against Spain. They wanted to put this game away so badly that they started gambling and reaching and leaving their men to double and Spain did a fantastic job of handling the front line of pressure and exposing the secondary line.

All in all it was a fantastic game. It was an offensive display by both teams that Paul Westhead would have been proud of. The U.S. team handled themselves well all tournament and showed that they are capable of acting like normal human beings. I think Dwayne Wade was the most valuable player for the U.S. throughout the tourament. I think LeBron is, and will be for quite some time, the most ridiculous combination of size and speed and athletic ability that we have ever seen. He doesn’t always play for 48 minutes (or 40 minutes) and he hasn’t had the teammates over his career that Wade and Kobe, etc have had. But Lord Almighty is he a scary, scary athlete to go up against. Kobe remains the best all around player in the game in my opinion. If you combine scoring ability with defense and with the assasin mentality, he is still the guy.

I am happy for the U.S. Men’s and Women’s teams, for their accomplishments on and off the court.  The entire Olympic tournament, for both men and women was something that made me happy as someone who makes a living in the sport but mostly as someone who is first and foremost just a fan of basketball.

Thanks to all of you who have been reading the blog and watching our online coverage on NBCOlympics.com. I have had a blast providing commentary for you and I can’t wait until the next International Event.

Please check back regularly to this blog as I will be posting throughout the basketball season. I now look even more forward to my job as television analyst for Fox Sport Net as I cover the Minnesota Timberwolves for FSN North and the Milwaukee Bucks for FSN Wisconsin. The game is healthy right now!

Cheers!