12 NBA Olympian's.......No Celtics!!!!

Originally Posted by dalakhani

I have to throw in my two cents about Carmello Anthony. PGarden, I disagree with your assessment of his abilities.

This is going to sound crazy but to me Carmello is a throwback type of player. I defy you to name a swing man in the league that takes the ball to the cup as strong as Carmello Anthony. I remember that there was a stat out there not too long ago that Carmello led the league in getting his shot blocked. Now is that a good thing? I think it says a lot-you arent going to get your shot blocked shooting jumpers!

You discount him as not being a "winner" but you fail to look at all of the circumstances objectively. It would be one thing if his teams were FAVORED every year and getting bounced in the first round. Rather, they are running up against better teams and losing like they should be. Name me one team in the playoffs that they SHOULD have beaten but didnt.

You discount his college success but look at all the one and done man children that were NOT able to take their respective teams to the final four let alone a championship. Would you pin them with the loser label? Look at the Rose kid this year. He had the equivalent of the nike all american dream team around him at Memphis this year but yet still failed to win the championship. Or how about Beasley? Or Durant the year before? Or Oden?

Carmelo will WIN as soon as he has players around him that fit.

I could win on this team.
I could score on this team.
The Olympic games are not the right situation to use the "put good players around him". What the hell was Iverson and Camby supposed to do for Denver?

My problem with him is he is bad, really bad, defensively. And he is very easily frustrated. He is super talented. He really showed his stripes in the playoffs against L.A. They totally frustrated him on offense, he has no answer but to bull rush to the basket, and then his defense which is already bad, gets worse.

He obviously gets along well with the other players on this team though and works hard or he would not be on the team.

This current Olympic team does not even need an offense. They are putting so much pressure on D its leading to open court situations so often. We totally excel in the open court. We are athletically superior to all these teams at EVERY position. We run have run very few offensive sets, no need.

Now the really impressive thing that I was not counting on is we are getting on the boards big time offensively. The 3 point shot... or lack thereof, that we displayed early really is not hurting us at all when we play this type of D. If we had to run 5 on 5 offensive sets the entire game we could lose.
The defense is setting up everything and it is beautiful. We are not only playing superior man to man, we are helping surprisingly well.

My abbreviatedtake.