"God saved me for a reason."

Quite a few NBA fans know that Team USA's only true center, Dwight Howard, was raised in a religious household. Fewer are aware exactly why both he - and his parents - feel so blessed.
After watching a NBA TV biography on Howard, I have learned that the man who now stands 6-11 and weighs 265 lbs. started life as a 21-inch, 2-month pre-mature infant.

More stunningly, his mother miscarried 7 times before his birth.
He was their only (man) child.

Yes, with an upward-looking career, D-Howard has a lot to be thankful for. But, for all his famed quickness and agility, he's still got a ways to go before catching a certain Big Cat on the dance floor.

Dream Team vs. Redeem Team

It may be the most entertaining water-cooler talk two basketball fans could imagine. What would happen if what most consider the greatest basketball team ever constructed - the 1992 Dream Team - took the hardwood against the most impressive international basketball team the world has seen in the last 12 years - years in which the caliber of play abroad has skyrocketed and blowing out a squad as good as the 2008 National Spanish team by more than 30 points (as the Redeem Team did) did not seem possible?

The question has been debated online over the days following the USA's 118-107 gold-medal victory. Per my friend's request (that's right, Sean), I've decided to chime in.

The following italicized passages are reasons that Jack McCullum believes the Dream Team would beat the Redeem Team and my counterarguments in

The best all-around player on the '08 team was LeBron James, with Kobe a close second. (During the NBA season, I reverse that order.) The best all-around player on the '92 team was Jordan. And Jordan, at that time, was a better player than either James or Bryant, offensively and defensively. To a large extent, teams draw their identity and their strength from their best player.

But I feel that James and Bryant could beat any two players that the Dream Team could have put together, like Jordan and Pippen, Jordan and Magic or Jordan and Bird (especially the older, hobbled '92 version of Bird). Cumulatively, the top two players from this year's team are better than the top two players from the Dream Team.

The '08 team could not begin to match the Dreamers on the interior. Not only did the '92-ers have two classic centers in Patrick Ewing and David Robinson -- that's two more classic centers than the '08 team had -- but Barkley and Karl Malone could also supply post-ups and rebounding. Dwight Howard was a force at times in Beijing, but against the Dream Team, he'd have three fouls before Coach K could look around for a replacement. Chris Bosh and Carlos Boozer would play their tails off, but they would get pounded inside.

This was the same supposed downfall that pundits felt would afflict the Redeem Teamers. Yet Boozer hardly played and the team still won gold undefeated with only Bosh and Howard as center-types. What happened?

Thick-as-hell small forwards in the NBA who made the conversion to FIBA power forwards happened.

For the Redeem Team, James and Caremlo, who weigh in the 240-260 range, were athletic , powerful and versatile enough to man both the wings and interior for the Redeem Team. Against the '92ers, LeBron would be strong enough to guard Karl Malone - both are 6-8ish and 260 pounds - and cause all types of problems for the more slow-footed man on the offensive side. Carmelo has the bulk to guard Barkley. True, Robinson and Ewing are together bigger than Howard and Bosh and would give the Dream Teamers a slight advantage at center, but I don't believe the '08er are deficient in the paint as pundits make them out to be, given Carmelo and James' ability to contribute there. '92 wings Mullin and Pippen were physically no where near as ready to bang inside.

The '08 team is deeper at the point with a combination of Jason Kidd, Chris Paul and Deron Williams, particularly since John Stockton was limited by a leg injury in Barcelona and could provide only minor backup help for Magic. But that's irrelevant. Any number of players besides Johnson (Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Chris Mullin and Clyde Drexler) could initiate the U.S. offense, which was more versatile than the Beijing team's.

Stockton's injury would have given the Redeem Teamers the decisive edge on the perimeter, primarily because of'08ers' superior defensive versatility. Players in 2008 tend to be stronger and more athletic than players in 1992 because of more effective training regimes.

Who would guarded Paul/Deron Williams from the '92 team? An older Magic would not have looked very spry running after the two speed-demons. So Jordan or Pippen would have been put on them. So Magic has to switch off to guarding a Wade - who is just as quick - or Kobe or LeBron, all of whom would have spelled trouble. Meanwhile, Jordan/Pippen would be using valuable energy running around trying to keep up with Paul/Williams that they could have allocated to the offensive end.

Given, the Dream Teamers backcourt would have been taller, but I don't think the points from a few post-up fade-aways could trump the havoc raised by the Redeem Teamers' speed. Johnson, Bird, and Mullin are all significantly slower than Wade, Paul/Williams, Kobe, LeBron and Carmelo and I think that in the end this would spell foul trouble for the '92 perimeter players. It would be a fascinating game of attrition, as Coach Daly would have to judiciously apportion the time that Jordan and Pippen spent chasing down the point guard speedsters.

P.S. ESPN.com interviewed the Dream Team Coach Chuck Daly and Daly, as would be expected, declared Magic would have his way with the smaller guards. When asked how Magic would do defensively, he said Magic would use the same spacing techniques that he had against the Lithuanian guard Sarunas Marciulionis.

Sarunas was quick, yes, but his microwaved maple syrup doesn't compare to Paul's molten lava.

I imagine Drexler would see a lot of Wade, some Kidd and a little Kobe.

I would favor the Redeem Team by 1 point in an actual match-up because of the above reasons and also because you cannot the discount the possibility that the 12th men would play a role in game between two extremely deep teams. Prince/Boozer are much, much better 12th men than the circa '92 inexperienced Laettner, who earned his roster spot by dint of his college performance. Booz, Carmelo, Howard and Bosh would eat poor Christian alive whereas everybody on the Redeem Team could be a contributor in crunch-time and wouldn't embarrass themselves on the defensive end as Christian would do. Redd could guard Mullin and Prince could guard Bird or Magic in a crunch.

Stockton's injury and Mullin's and Laettner's relative slow-footedness give the Redeem Team a quicker, and defensively more versatile, team.

Finally, as Chris Mannix argues, let's not forget that the Redeem Team has practiced and played in tournaments for 3 years under international rules and would understand the nuances much better than the Dream Team, which first practiced together the summer of 1992.

The actual numbers, as taken from Chris Sheridan's article, favor the Dream Team but this is to be expected - their competition was so much inferior.

Dream Team vs. Redeem Team
1992 2008
W-L 8-0 8-0
PPG 117.3 106.3
Opponent PPG 73.5 78.4
PPG differential +43.8 +27.9
FG pct 57.8 55.0
Opponent FG pct 36.5 40.3
3-pt FG pct 40.0 37.7
Opponent 3-pt pct 30.5 29.9
FT pct 72.6 68.0
RPG differential +13.5 +5.6
Assists per game 29.9 18.8
Steals per game 22.1 12.5
Blocks per game 5.9 3.9

Wonder how a best-of-7 series would turn out? Go here to find out from the number-crunchers at whatifsports.com.

Gems from Greece/Spain Wins

The US defeated Spain 119-82 in the most resounding victory over a quality international opponent I have seen in a long, long time. One wonders how much of its gameplan Spain decided not to show against the US in the second half once it was down and how much they were able to learn to their advantage for a likely gold-medal game. The hunch here is that the Americans' athletic dominance and neck-breakingly intense full-court pressure will be something Spain won't be able to overcome, no matter how many tactical adjustments they may make.

To wit: The US forced 28 turnovers and outscored Spain 32-0 in fast-break points. Nearly as downright sick a stat is that such defense enabled the US to go into the second half 16 points ahead despite the Spanish team shooting 58% from the field.

Snooping around, I found some other interesting factoids:

1. The first is from Chris Sheridan's self-interview heading into Olympic play. It is a good, basic description of how FIBA ball is different from the NBA.

Q: What aspects of international play will be most difficult for Team USA to adjust to?

A: The NBA is an outside-in game, meaning you try to move the ball from the outside to the inside for a closer look at the basket. The FIBA game is inside-out, with teams trying to penetrate the middle, draw defenders in, then kick the ball outside to the shorter 3-point line.

The best teams move the ball quickly and make the extra pass to the open man on the perimeter, and the Americans have not been quite as adept at playing that style, which features more catch-and-shoot jump shots than what we see in the NBA.

2. In recent game recap by David Friedman, we find out that improvement of big man D-Howard's perimeter defense has been contributing factor towards the US's drive for gold. Interestingly, Coach Krzyzewski, in his CEO capacity, is sometimes so busy that he must outsource his instruction to the squad's more senior players...
sideline reporter Craig Sager mentioned that Coach Krzyzewski had asked Tayshaun Prince to explain to Howard what he was doing wrong in help defense situations because he (Krzyzewski) did not have time to do this during the game. Bryant also talked with Howard during a stoppage of play. While great defense starts with pressure by the guards it is critically important that all five players are "on a string" defensively and that everyone rotates properly.

3. Chris Sheridan wrote another interesting article about one strategic difference between FIBA and NBA coaches (even if his speculation of a close US-Spain title game looks woefully off right now). Essentially, in close late-game situations in which a team is up by 1 or 2, Americans like to "man-up" and play defense to preserve their win. Europeans would rather foul, make the other team hit free throws and then win the game with offense. This may help explain why European players have traditionally had a reputation of being more offensive-oriented than American (especially before Ginobili, Kirelenko, Nocioni).


4. I finally saw the 17-year old phenom Ricky Rubio play for the Spanish squad. He appeared preternaturally poised for his age and I look forward to monitoring this immensely talent point guard's progress over the next few years. If you don't know about him, here are his biographical highlights from a recent Alexander Wolff piece:

The story thus far: At 14, Rubio actually played in Spain's ACB, the top European pro league, for DKV Joventut Badalona near his Catalan hometown of El Masnou.

At 15, he led Spain to FIBA's Under 16 European title, along the way registering a quadruple-double and, in a double-overtime win over Russia in the final, 51 points, 24 rebounds, 12 assists, seven steals and one half-court buzzer-beater to force the first OT.

At 16, he led the Euroleague (a man's league) in steals (a man's stat).

Turkey Takes a Tumble

Tonight, the US defeated Turkey 114-82, a solid victory, though not nearly as diamond-like as the beating they gave Canada.

This game was of special interest to me because I'm half-Turkish and lived in Istanbul last year. I saw many of the Turkish players play live and it was fun to see them match up with some of my favorite NBA superstars, even if they outcome was, well, expected.

A few observations before I call it a night -

1. Bless Rick Kamla, the play-by-play announcer for ESPN. First off all - I have mad respect for the man. He gets PAID to write and talk about Fantasy NBA basketball. He has to have one of the coolest jobs on this terrestial orb.

BUT the guy couldn't pronounce Turkish correctly to save his fantasy squad. He repeatedly called Kerem Gönlüm, Kerem GONE-lume. It should have been more like "Gewm-leum". The ö and ü are hard for Americans to pronounce, granted, but still, maybe they could have gotten somebody to have shown him. Also, Ersan Ilyasova become "Arson." Such a mistake won't burn down the house, but it was annoying to those who knew better.

2.Fran Frashilla , the color commentator, was definitely more on target with pronunciation but some of his talent evaluation struck me as errant. Take his analysis of Semih Erden, one of Turkey's tallest and most athletic players. On the surface, Semih looks fine. Until you realize he's only half-way there. I remember watching him play with my Turkish friends and being awed by his inconsistency - he could turn in a highlight dunk one moment and churn out a dunce-headed blunder the next. My friends told me he wasn't the brightest lighthouse on the coast.

Yet Fran maintained that had Semih gone to an American college he would have been drafted in the top 20 of the most recent NBA Draft, instead of at the bottom of the 2nd round. The reason: "Because he's a young man with a lot of international experience." So if a 22-year plays four years with a Euroleague-caliber team but can never produce more than 7.1 points and 5.4 rebounds a game he is considered a potential top-20 pick. I don't think so.

He should have either a) produced more (and consistently) when he had the chance or
b) accomplished what he did as a much younger player.

3) Dwight Howard is the fearsomeist, slamjamminist, most awesome, glorified Garbage Man ever. His hands are hoover vacs and I swear his legs have rocket propellant in them.