Argentines Beat US in Basketball

In an amazing result, the Argentines beat the United States in a basketball game.

I watched the game tonight. I read in the paper this morning that if any team could beat the United States, it was Argentina, with their superior passing and well-distributed shooting ability. I snorted in contempt. Going into this game, the United States have won the previous 58 international matches. (Of course, we started sending professionals since 1992.)

The present US team is no dream team: No Shaquille. No Kobe. No Kidd. But we had NBA players. Reggie Miller. Ben Wallace. Paul Pierce. And it's standard thinking to believe that any US team is better than any other country's team in basketball. It's a given!

Tonight's game was marvelously played. By Argentina. Crisp passing. Great execution. And truly superior shooting. The US never lead. We were down by as many as twenty points. As a Celtic fan, I thrilled at every 3-pointer by Pierce, but the five individual talents on the US squad was no match for the five Argentines who played team basketball.

It's a slightly different world now: Sure, the best basketball players are American. Sure, the NBA is the best league in the world. But tonight, in a basketball game that counted, the US lost, and Argentina is celebrating surely their best sports victory in quite some time.