I'm just sayin'

I am so tired of hearing about how the USA basketball team won the gold in the London Olympics.  Of course they won the gold.  They are professionals!  They get paid to play basketball.  That's all they do!  A friend of mine's brother plays for the Nigerian team and guess when they play?  That's right at the Olympics!  Every four years, not every day for seven months.  Oh and they don't get paid to play.  They play for their country.  And we were lucky to squeeze by them by only like 35 points!  Whew!  That was a close one. 

The Olympics is supposed to be the greatest "amateur" sporting contest on the planet.  The key word there being, "amateur".  But since we are such an arrogant nation that we can never lose at a sport that we invented, we send our best pro players to compete against countries like Nigeria and Angola, etc. 

This all began some years ago when the college, aka, amateur players we used to send did not win the gold medal.  Oh the horror, the humanity of it all!  The USA lost in basketball.  How will we ever be able to show ourselves at the Olympic games again.  Enter the NBA to save the day and our honor.  Really? 

Is sending a bunch of millionaires to the greatest non-millionaire sporting event the answer?  No it is not.  Of course the goal for any Olympic athlete or team is to win the gold but to send pros in against amateurs is like sending the Duke team in to play against my kid's middle school team. 

It is wrong for any nation to send professsional players to the Olympics, whether it is us or Spain with the Gasol brothers.  If you get paid to play a sport, you are not eligible to compete in the Olympics, period!  And by the way, how great is it to have players like the Gasol's come here and make millions of dollars to play ball and then go to Spain to play against us in the Olympics! 

It is time for the US and every other country and especially the Olympic committee to say enough and take the games back to their true nature of amateur competition.  Maybe they need to go back and re-read the Olympic Creed:

"The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part, just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle. The essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well."  

Wow what a concept!  Not to win but to have fought well or in other words to try your best and win or lose know that you gave it your best shot.  But that's not good enough for us.  We need to win at all costs, even if it means to tarnish the very essence of the Oympics themselves.  I know most will not agree with me but you only need to go back to the original Dream Team and the game against Angola where Sir Charles Barkley was nice enough to elbow one of the Angolan players, even though we were up by like 30 points, to see how ridiculous this really is. 

We have the best professional basketball players and league in the world and no one is disputing that.  But the Olympic Games is not the place to send NBA players.  How much goodwill, and that is a huge part of what the Olympics are supposed to be about, does this generate?  I am guessing that the Nigerians and Angolans can't wait to see us there again in four years.  Maybe Sir Charles can come out of retirement and give em one more elbow just for good measure.  What do you say Chuck? 

"The most important thing it not to win but just to take part."  Let's give the Olympics back to the people it means the most to, the amateur athletes.  If the NBA players care so much about us winning gold in basketball maybe they can sponsor some of the college players so that they can get there and compete for their country. 

I'm just sayin'.