{"id":298,"date":"2006-09-04T07:50:26","date_gmt":"2006-09-04T12:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=298"},"modified":"2022-01-02T07:39:27","modified_gmt":"2022-01-02T12:39:27","slug":"sometimes-other-teams-are-good-too","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/?p=298","title":{"rendered":"Sometimes Other Teams Are Good Too"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" align=\"left\" title=\"060901_sn_worldbasketballtn.jpg\" id=\"image299\" alt=\"060901_sn_worldbasketballtn.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/09\/060901_sn_worldbasketballtn.jpg\" \/>As disappointing as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fiba.com\/pages\/eng\/fe\/06_wcm\/news\/lateNews\/FE_news_lateNews_arti.asp?newsID=16206&#038;eventID=3507&#038;roundID=3507&#038;playerNumber=&#038;teamNumber=&#038;zone=&#038;langID=1&#038;competitionCode=&#038;season=\">Team USA&#8217;s loss to Greece <\/a>was in the semifinals of the World Basketball Championships, it should be noted that in the bronze medal game, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fiba.com\/pages\/eng\/fe\/06_wcm\/scheResu\/fe_scheStat_gameRepo.asp?roundID=5154&#038;groupName=79&#038;gameName=A&#038;lid_7568_langLC=en&#038;eventID=3507&#038;selNodeID=627&#038;competitionCode=&#038;season=\">Red, White and Blue thrashed pre-tournament favorite Argentina 96-81.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Slate<\/em>&#8216;s Robert Weintraub offers up this and other perspective-lending points in his article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2148903\/?nav=tap3\">&#8220;How Soccer Explains the World Basketball Championships.&#8221;<\/a> His views are a breath of fresh air amid all the recriminations resulting from this most recent international sports loss and the USA&#8217;s subpar performance in the most recent soccer World Cup.<\/p>\n<p>Having been an athlete, coach and spectator, I concur with his sentiments. Sometimes the tournament format works against you. At other times it&#8217;s an unlucky bounce, a stray puff of wind, a referee with blurry (or limited) vision or an &#8220;attitude,&#8221; or just plain &#8220;bad luck.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes (and more often than not) it&#8217;s simply that other teams are good too.\n<\/p>\n<p><!--62e368570a8dd6dc6fd370a0c90b319b--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As disappointing as Team USA&#8217;s loss to Greece was in the semifinals of the World Basketball Championships, it should be noted that in the bronze medal game, the Red, White and Blue thrashed pre-tournament favorite Argentina&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-soccer","category-sports","comments-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9929,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/9929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ocularfusion.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}