U.S. hoops back to being good as gold

BEIJING – Amidst all the Olympic controversies, here’s an extremely bright piece of news:

The natural order of things has been restored. The U.S. basketball team is treating opponents the way China treats the birth certificates of female gymnasts – as if they’re utterly worthless.

Sorry. It’s just that the ugly American side of me comes out when basketball gets ugly.

That’s what happened here Friday night. In an Olympic semifinal won easily by the Americans 101-82, Argentina tried to get way, way ugly. The biggest culprit was Luis Scola, the Argentina big man who also plays for the Houston Rockets.

Afterward, Scola was forthright. He conceded his team’s game plan was to go out and murder U.S. star Carmelo Anthony.

Well, not literally murder him. But, you know, whack him. And to do the same to any other American who ventured inside.

“It’s what you have to do in order to have a chance against the USA,” Scola said. “If you try to go ‘showtime’ against them, that won’t work. Because that’s what they want to do. And they do it better.”

The strategy, as you no doubt have guessed, was a failure. It helped that Argentina’s best player, point guard Manu Ginobli, went down with an injured ankle in the first quarter and never returned. But his team was already behind by 10. And now, after blitzing Argentina, the United States advances to the gold-medal game against Spain (11:30 tonight PDT).

Guess who is favored? Here s a clue: Six days ago, in a round-robin game, Spain lost to the U.S. team 119-82.

Sola forecast a repeat.

“Nobody is unbeatable,” Sola said. “But it’s a long shot for Spain. I don’t want to say something that will make me look stupid. It’s a basketball game. So anything can happen. But the USA is playing really good.”

Not true. The USA is playing much better than that. In seven games, the team’s average victory margin is 30.3 points. This is a welcome change from what happened four years ago in Athens, when a mostly different roster won only a bronze medal.

Another rout today would make me very happy. See, that’s my ugly American side. In my world view, the Americans should win every international basketball game by 30.3 points or more.

Why? It might be for deep-seated psychological reasons that have to do with the backboard that was hanging above my driveway as a kid. Or it could be that I was just really annoyed with the Argentinean journalist who began banging on our table and shouting as his team rallied to within eight points.

Of course, I never indulge in such unprofessional behavior. On the outside. But on the inside, I’m just the same. The other Olympic sports, I never take personally. If China beats the U.S. team in platform diving, that’s not an issue. Perhaps every grade-school baton twirler in America gets angry about dropped batons by the track team. I don’t.

Basketball is different. I suppose it’s sappy. But when I watch our Olympic team play, I think of all the people who play the game in our country – kids on city playgrounds, adults at the YMCA, high-schoolers in Midwestern gyms with steamed-up windows. And I hope the team realizes how it represents all of them.

So far, that seems to be the case. I knew that if this team took things seriously, especially on defense, that it would dominate. I just wasn’t sure whether that would be the case. I was a little concerned when I learned that muscle man Dwight Howard, the center, had worn a pair of swim goggles to a postgame interview. Oh, no, not more clowning around. But it turned out the goggles had been given him by Michael Phelps, the eight-gold-medal man. Never mind.

This team isn’t perfect. But it is playing great defense and has shown an ability to adjust. Against Argentina, if the outside shots weren’t working, the Americans put Anthony or Howard to work down low, and all was well.

The Argentina coach, Sergio Santos Hernandez, paid the ultimate compliment.

”This USA team,” Hernandez said, “combines technical ability, physicality and discipline, which they did not show in previous tournaments.”

Amen to that. It’s terrific to have the planets back in alignment. Don’t you think?