This is the idea that John Calipari had in a recent article of the New York Times. The piece discussed the chances of the United States basketball National Team in the upcoming Olympics.
Besides thinking of bringing back College teams,
College players should be put back into the Olympic mix. They were the staple of Olympic competition until 1992, and they bring passion and enthusiasm to the competition. Problem is, college players are no longer strong enough to compete at the Olympic level.
the author is the first one I read in the US press that comes up with changing the rules in the US and adapt them to the European style.
In the United States, it’s time to do the unthinkable: widen the lanes. Widen high school and college lanes to 16 feet, and widen the N.B.A. lane to international dimensions (yes, adopt the trapezoid).
If that changes that much in the playing style of the US teams in the future, I have some doubts. But the fact of bringing up a team that is actually used to play together was one of the changes that USA basketball brought up in the last summer by selecting a group of players that were engaged to compete together with the goal of Beijing 2008.
As this is not possible, John Calipari came up with an ingenious idea.
The answer — for national pride and continuity — is to have some sort of permanent national team. Calipari has an even better idea: send the N.B.A. champion.
His idea would involve identifying a core group of eight or nine players from the championship team, then adding two to three players from the outside.
Well, here I really have some doubts. When I check the roster of the actual NBA champions in their NBA Finals 2007 set, not less than 5 players were Internationals: Tony Parker, Fabricio Oberto, Manu Ginobili, Francisco Elson and Beno Udrih. Realistically, the Spurs without all these players that would be their opponents, would not have a chance of winning it all in my opinion. Maybe I am wrong and Calipari is right, but I have my doubts about this.
