Comments on: Team USA Cruises to Win Over China

By: WizardsDotCom

WizardsDotCom — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:20:57 +0000

My favorite memory from USA-Angola, ’92:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA778YNWtrY

By: SportzWiz

SportzWiz — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 14:14:43 +0000

All i keep thinkin about when i watch team usa is dwade is back. The good news is his support staff isn't much to write hoome about. Sure they have beasley and marion and udonis haslem but outside of that they really dont have much to work with. Looking at this list I dont see many guys that could make the wizards roster let alone play any sort of role on the team. Also i am still interested to see how those guys mix. Marion has always wanted a bigger offensive role but how much is he goin to see of the ball with wade and beasley. Also those two guys will take time to get to know each others games. However, with a healthy dwade you can add miami to the list of growing teams taht will be fighting for a playoff berth in the east next year.

By: Phemy

Phemy — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:58:18 +0000

yeah, dwade looks very good…and kobe doesn’t ;>

And i have to say, i like the schedule, the game was at ~3pm here in germany

By: gbkdc

gbkdc — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:53:15 +0000

Thanks, SportzWiz.

Dwayne Wade looks AMAZING! Scary for us… does anyone agree? He’s back!

By: SportzWiz

SportzWiz — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 13:19:27 +0000

Hey everyone, i know some people are annoyoed that team USA is playing during working hours, but here is a partial solution to the problem You Can watch the game live from NBCOlympics.com Click here to watch the game live. Currently team USA leads by 19 late in the third.

By: Tom Mandel

Tom Mandel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:52:26 +0000

SportsWiz — I don’t disagree one bit w/ what you say. Above all, if we stay healthy, and if Antonio gets something close to 20 minutes a game, we can hope to have a very effective 2d unit and improve our record.

In a way, the minutes (if not the role) being replaced by Gil this year start with Roger’s minutes. We should be better just because Gil is a better player than Roger. Many of the other minutes Gil would have played were played by Nick — and not very productively either.

So, a lot depends on Nick, since I’m sure they want him to play at least as many minutes this year as last (1150 minutes last year).

By: SportzWiz

SportzWiz — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:22:50 +0000

Thats the problem when the games are over in China . Im pretty sure they are reairing them that night but dont hold me to that comment.

By: gbkdc

gbkdc — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 20:13:13 +0000

Is anyone irritated that Men’s Basketball is on at 10:00 am or whatever ridiculous time it’s on TV tomorrow? How am I supposed to watch it from work?? Does anyone know if they rebroadcast it later? I have tried to find out, but couldn’t.

I still don’t like LeBron, but I’m glad he’s on our team at least.

By: SportzWiz

SportzWiz — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:38:11 +0000

I agree on the daniels stepping in for Gilbert part and how he helped us. But just think how much better your 2nd unit becomes when AD comes in the game. I showed the stat in another thread, but this team struggled mightily without AD in the 10 or so games he missed because they had nobody that could run the team behind him.

Now if AD is out hurt the team will be fine because they’ll still have Gil playing the majority of the minutes.

Last year this team played shorthanded all year, (bite your tongue) that shouldn’t be nearly as big an issue this year.

As for the making changes, when you have two all-stars that are free agents your not goin to make many changes, what your going to do is try to keep your all-stars. It seems like sometimes fans like when they get a 2nd rate player more than keeping their best players.

By: Tom Mandel

Tom Mandel — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:15:01 +0000

Yeah, those were not very good trade ideas — for one thing, there is no such thing in the NBA as “waiving” someone. If you let a player go, you are still responsible for his contract, and it still counts towards the cap and the luxury tax ceiling. For another, you can’t really get someone to take your spare parts in order to give you a player you need.

Secondly, were we able to trade Daniels for Ben Gordon straight up (we can’t for a zillion reasons, but assume for a moment that we were), the result would be about 5 fewer wins for our team in the coming season. There seem to be people who think that all that counts in a basketball player is volume scoring.

SportsWiz — we *did* make significant moves, obviously, by re-signing gil and antawn. But, we didn’t make significant *changes*. People get restless if there are no changes.

If we do better this year, however, I think it’ll be more because of Thomas than Arenas. I.e. Antonio stepped in for Arenas and had a great year. On the other hand, we were pretty unproductive statistically at backup center, so the return of Etan Thomas helps a lot. If he is back to full strength, that is.