Sports Watch
The basketball "competition" figures to be one of 40-point romps and Charles Barkley elbows by the time the U.S. team finishes its march through Atlanta. Angolans beware.
We'll all feel smug and superior when the pros from the National Basketball Association hold up their gold medals after accomplishing a hardly Mission Impossible task. It's not that I'm cynical. I just don't enjoy one-sided contests, whatever the sport. Well, maybe it's OK if it's against BYU. But how can you call it a sport if it's not very sporting?
Sure, other countries used professionals to win gold medals. So why shouldn't we? Look at Cuba's baseball team, which is favored to defend its Olympic championship. Why some guys look practically ancient. And the Soviet Union - back then anyway - had pros in the lineup in beating us, in our sport, basketball.
That, of course, is how it got to be that NBA pros started representing America in the Olympics. It's our game, damn it, and we're supposed to be the best in the world.
THAT'S why I have this dream.
I'd like to see the U.S. Basketball Association and the U.S. Olympic Committee go back to selecting collegiate players again - perhaps even a few outstanding high school seniors - to compete in the Olympic Games.
NBA pros have their own agendas and endorsement interests in mind when competing in the Olympics. What greater commercial exposure could there be world-wide?
Hardly an Olympian ideal.
It's said that just being at the Olympics and enjoying the experience should be the ultimate reward, not a gold medal. So it's unfortunate that so many talented - and truly deserving - youngsters are deprived of that thrill under the current selection process in basketball.
Obviously, the NBA is elated that its players are representing America. The league has its own agenda, too. But it must start to consider its own image, especially its relationship with the NCAA, because of the recent trend of so many collegians leaving early for the draft.
THE NBA may need to appease the NCAA with some conciliatory moves in a basketball-talent war that is developing. Perhaps it could adopt a rule similar to that of baseball regarding undergraduate players. If a prospect isn't signed right out of high school, he must play three years before he is eligible to be drafted.
Such a rule would be also self-serving for the NBA since it has already begun depleting the college pool to the point where junior and senior classes are getting less talented because of early departures. Especially when freshmen and sophomores are getting drafted.
Perhaps then college basketball would again be more than good enough so that its players can capably represent America in the Olympics. It's a goal they now don't have.
Staying in school with the idea of playing in the Olympics might be too distant a goal for many collegians, anxious to turn pro. But it's a reachable carrot. Grant Hill, who completed his eligibility at Duke, remembered being "bummed out" that only pros were to be among the chosen few in 1992. Fortunately, Hill will get a chance this time in Atlanta.
So at the very least, it would be a move in the right direction if the next national basketball team - whether for the Olympics or the World Championships - be a mix of collegians and pros.
After all, there can be really only one Dream Team - the original group that represented America in Barcelona. The Original Dreamers proved their point and the novelty's over.
It's time again to give basketball collegians the opportunity to dream the Olympic dream.