Maybe I'm the only one, but I'm loving every minute of Olympic basketball. I don't care if they are a band of mercenaries. Team USA is friggin fun to watch. Every time I see these guys mop the floor with their opponents by 40+, I hear the "Team America" song in my head. (Although I must say, I do feel really, really dirty rooting for Kobe and Lebron.)
I even find myself fascinated by the other games that don't involve Team USA. Pretty much every game that has involved either Russia or Spain has been really intense. Argentina vs. Brazil was a great game too.
Lastly though, I must say my favorite thing about this Olympic tournament though has been the emergence of nut-punching your opponent as an acceptable strategy for players to adapt. First some Argentinian punk cheap-shots Carmelo, and then earlier today Nicolas Batum elevates the art of nut-punching to a whole new level on poor Juan Carlos Navarro. Seriously, this was worthy of "Tosh.0" or "Jackass." Apparently all that blatantly, shamelessly nut-punching your opponent in international basketball amounts to is a flagrant, or "unsportsmanlike", foul. In the NBA that would be a hefty fine and a lengthy suspension. So acceptable is this that I'm now counting the days until the Olympic committee announces that the Nut-Punch has become an official Olympic sport. I would totally watch it. My money would be on Nicolas Batum to win the gold, with Jason Terry taking the silver. Andrew Golota might even come out for that one and take the bronze (I would say gold, but his eyesight is probably going by now.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnZFELgVvu8
Edit: Even better was Batum's explanation. Apparently he was pissed that Spain was flopping so much.
Quote:
After the game, Nic was shockingly candid with Adrian Wojnarowksi about why he delivered his dangerous punch:
Adrian Wojnarowski
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@WojYahooNBA
I asked Nicolas Batum why he hit Juan-Carlos Navarro in the groin. "I wanted to give him a good reason to flop," Batum said.
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