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May 3, 2012Indians 6, White Sox 3: The Bases Loaded Hex, Jackie, and General Cramping
May 3, 2012With the summer Olympics drawing nearer, things are heating up for Team USA’s men’s basketball team. Last week Team USA received their Olympic draw (oh joy, they drew Argentina). Now they are in the process of finalizing their roster.
The current roster includes Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, Kobe Bryant, Tyson Chandler, Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay, Eric Gordon, Blake Griffin, Andre Iguodala, LeBron James, Kevin Love, Lamar Odom, Chris Paul, Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook and Deron Williams. However, with injuries to Derrick Rose, LaMarcus Aldridge, Chauncey Billups, and Dwight Howard, the roster may need some tweaking before it needs to be finalized on June 18th.
With Rose’s torn ACL, he certainly will miss the Olypmics, opening the need for a PG. According to ESPN’s Marc Stein, via Twitter, while the Wizards are lobbying hard for John Wall, he believes Irving may get the nod:
Some Team USA scuttle: Hearing Wiz lobbying hard to get John Wall added to roster, but have to believe Kyrie Irving is the guy IF a PG added
There is a bit of a twist here as Irving has previously said he would consider playing for Australia. Irving, whose father was playing professionally in Australia when Kyrie was born there, holds dual citizenship. After previously hinting at playing for Australia, Kyrie did say later in the season that he would focus instead on playing for Team USA. Originally aiming for the 2016 team, Irving’s Olympic dreams just might be realized sooner than he thought. It will be interesting to see what Team USA GM Jerry Colangelo decides to do with the roster over the next 5 weeks.
[Related: Sporting News names Kyrie Irving Rookie of the Year]
15 Comments
i hope like hell kyrie plays for australia.
we know what can happen when team usa players get together and start liking the idea of playing together.
That doesn’t prevent anything……I can see it now…
Andrew Bogut: “psst….hey Kyrie…let’s join up and dominate the NBA.”
Patty Mills: ” (whisper) yeah Kyrie…we can do this thing”
Kyrie: “psst….Andrew, Patty…you’re Andrew Bogut and Patty Mills…no”
Ok, nevermind….go play for the Aussie team Kyrie.
Patty: Oi! If we get Luc to join in would it change your mind?”
LeBron on the Olympic team didn’t work out so well for the Cavs…
Collusion jokes aside, playing in the for Team USA would be HUGE for Kyrie. Just take a look at what it did for players like Durant, Westbrook, Derrick Rose and especially Aldridge and Gordon.
A couple months of checking Chris Paul every day in practice, finishing around Tyson Chandler, Kobe yelling at him to play harder and some extra 1×1 time with Coach K sounds like a summer program I’d want any player in. Especially if we believe he’s a future all NBA guy.
I’ll be more cautious about the 2016 Olympics when Kyrie’s contract is closer to expiring. Would love to see Kyrie representing doning the USA jersey and playing with/against the best of the best. His game could only benefit from playing with a bunch of these guys. It could also be a good showcase for future FAs to see what they could get with KI.
On another note, hard to believe guys like Lamar Odom and Chauncy Billups will be on the team with Chauncey being out for most of the year and Lamar doing whatever you call that this year. I know neither will really play, but would like to see the spot go to a younger guy who performances this year may be more deserving of the spot.
disagree.
i think he’s a team player. everyone else on team usa is about their touches. i think he enhances his stature as a player and grows more playing for the aussies.
from the dreaded business standpoint, he becomes a greater global icon in the far east. this is good as the american economy is not stellar relative to pac rim economies.
and i actually wasnt joking. first, it’s hard to envision a scenario where some dwade-mephistopheles type doesnt plant seeds about playing together in a sunny beach city versus cold dreary small cleveland. and second, even if he doesn’t bite, he’s only going to learn clearout-iso playing with those ‘stars.’
truly, the less he’s tainted, the better.
Kyrie definitely seems to be a team first guy. The brilliance of Coach K’s work with the Redeem Team was that all of those players sacrificed touches for the team (none of us really knew how big of jerks guys like Howard and Deron were back then). I still think working out with the “best of the best” is a great idea for Kyrie.
As far as the dangers of the Miami Heat incident, that was pretty isolated. Lebron and Wade were great friends before. The CP3, Melo and Amare thing didn’t work out very well. None of the other Olympians have gotten together.
I’m posting links to player profiles for the big success stories of the FIBA championships in Turkey. All these guys went from decent young players to borderline stars the year after their summer in the Team USA programs
http://espn.go.com/nba/player/stats/_/id/3468/russell-westbrook
http://espn.go.com/nba/player/_/id/2983/lamarcus-aldridge
http://espn.go.com/nba/player/stats/_/id/3431/eric-gordon
neither will make the roster of 12. they both were on the original invite list of 20. that is all.
Good to know, that makes me feel much better.
What?!? Not Jason Kidd again this year? He played such important minutes for the team in 2008, I mean, he was a starter!
Oh, stop it. If you are going to make connections like that, then we should have traded out of the number one spot in fear of drafting a superstar who will ultimately hurt us again
Going up against those guys in practice will always be better for him than being ‘the man’ on Australia, iso plays or not. Learning to play better on both sides of the iso will help, because that’s what he’s going to be asked to do in the NBA.
And the far east doesn’t care about Australian players. Either you’re from China or Japan, and have the support of just that country, or you’re a superstar, like Kobe and Lebron, and you are a global icon. Playing for Australia will not make you a global icon.
And he’s talking to these other guys anyway. It’s not going to take a trip to London for him to get close enough to another young superstar to be tempted to move. And if he is tempted to move, he probably was already thinking about getting out of Cleveland anyway.
what exactly did it do for Durant, Westbrook, etc.? Are you insinuating that they would have been lesser players if they wouldn’t have played in the olympics? I’m pretty certain it had a minimal effect at best.
That’s actually exactly what i am insinuating, especially for Westbrook, Aldridge and Gordon. Admittedly Durant’s numbers took a step back after the 2010 games in Turkey, but a lot of that was giving up shots to Westbrook and that team got a lot better.
If you look at the bump in the guys numbers I posted above it speaks for itself. Each of those guys added 5 ppg, on the same or better shooting percentages and got more efficient literally across the board. Trip over seas with Coach K can turn a pretty good player into an absolute stud