didn't notice that topic before....
i'm from Lithuania and i'm proud of that, and yesterday, it was kinda celebration for all of us, people went to the streets, shouted, sang, many fireworks etc....
we all saw how our little 3 million people country made multimillion USA in basketball.... Lithuania is also an Europe champion too, so don't think about "who are they to win"...
Basketball is one of he best games for lithuanians, yesterday's game was the most watched sports event, even my mom and grandma saw it it meant very much for us.
Those of you who think that USA are gods in basketball are wrong. and you saw games with Puerto Rico and Lithuania, when Puerto Rico won against american stars who thought that world in on its knees.... lithuanians won against american basketball team which used to know that there's basketball in europe and other countries too...
It's foolish to bash your players for their mistakes or that they missed a 3-point shoot or so. A game is not always just a game, it's luck, it's situation. Shaq is not a good too, he misses sometimes too, right?
Last Olympics, USA won against Lithuania and the difference was only 2 points. 4 years ago your coaches should have seen their enemies for the further 4 years, but seems that they missed that....
Americans don't know european or world baskerball from inside. They can only watch TV and tapes. Many Lithuanian players played or play now in NBA, Sabonis (beloved by Boneprone ;)), Marciulionis (as Soul Rebel said), Karnisovas, Ilgauskas (
http://www.nba.com/playerfile/zydrun....html?nav=page) and the same Songaila (
http://www.nba.com/playerfile/darius....html?nav=page and
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/player...e?statsId=3647) and Javtokas (who will play in NBA sometime soon)
Lithuanians know NBA from inside!
All Lithuanian team players mostly don't play in native basketball clubs, they are paid very good (more than 10k$) to play in the best world clubs, as i know, former head coatch of last olympiocs basketball team Kazlauskas (
http://www.athens2004.com/en/Partici...nts?pid=414452) is the coatch if Chinese team, and see what's chinese basketball these days....
Lithuanians will win gold this olympics, we're enough of bronze for the last 3 olympics!
I like american NBA basketball, really, sometimes i even watch finals or all star games, i need to get up very late at night so watch them. But in olympics, i'm with european teams or teams from other world part when they play with NBA....
NBA is more of a show, real athletic sportsmen, too sad that mostly they are afro-americans, but anyways they make what they are paid for. European basketball is harder game, more brainy game with lots of joy or tears.....
this is all i wanted to say before going to bed.... it's late now.
if somebody has something agains what i said here, we can discuss it.....
see ya