Well, it had to happen. In the wake of the shocking (not!) defeat handed to Spain by the boys from Brazil yesterday, you knew allegations of tanking in order to avoid an earlier date with Team USA would be forthcoming; heck, Sergio Scariolo did. Los Rojos’ coach was quoted in a wire story as saying, “I don’t want to be disrespectful but this is not an intelligent issue to talk about.”
Amid the rather baseless speculation much is sadly forgotten: For example, Leandro Barbosa’s wonderful performance. Brazil showing halfcourt mastery in beating Spain at its own game and the South American side’s nicely energetic and up-tempo style. More sad, slow play from the Spanish guards and sharpshooters (BiE’s looking at you, Juan Carlos) absolutely typical in these Olympics. The fact that the overall 6-of-23, 23-point performance by those not named Gasol or Ibaka was merely a slight exaggeration of the pool play games in general, as Spain minus the big three went for 37.8% overall shooting.
Tanking? Nah. Playing possum? Hardly necessary. As Pau Gasol said, “The way we are playing either [Argentina or France] can beat us. Right now, it’s not happening for us.”
No, it really isn’t.
Tags: 2012 Olympic Games, Juan Carlos Navarro, Leandro Barbosa, Marc Gasol, Pau Gasol, Serge Ibaka, Sergio Scariolo, Team Argentina, Team Brazil, Team France, Team Spain
In 2010, after Greece lost to Russia on purpose in order to avoid USA, they were punished by FIBA.
In that elimination game against Spain, the refs did absolutely everything in their power to eliminate Greece, and made horrific calls at the end of the game.
Greece had the game stolen from them by the refs as punishment, and rumors are that the Greek federation was even sent a letter explaining to them that the refs were instructed to make sure they lost because they tanked the Russia game, so they needed to be punished.
So, let’s see now if FIBA is fair and does the same to Spain and has the refs make sure that they lost to France.
Nice to see the America’s doing well. Too bad we get the superclassico in the quarters instead of later.
Go France!! And it pains me to no end to say that since, as an Italian, we are not exactly in love with French people