Picking the U.S. to win the Olympic men's basketball tournament is like picking Google to beat out Yahoo or choosing the iPod over the Zune.
This is a team with A-list stars such as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade and Chris Paul. We expect the U.S. to win. They expect to win. If you pick the U.S. and you're right, everyone says 'No kidding.' But if you're wrong, then ho-boy, are you a myopic fool. Or so the thinking goes.
Heading into a last-chance venture like the Olympic qualifier tournament in Greece this week, Canada Basketball was in a Catch-22.
If the organization was realistic about their chances, they'd have to admit they were long-shots to get by a host of European powers, particularly Greece, Germany and Croatia, for the last three spots in the Olympics. But going into a tournament expecting to lose is no way to compete and a sure-fire way to guarantee no press.
On the other hand, talking like Canada has a good a shot as any team sets nationalistic fans up for disappointment - a disappointment Croatia finally delivered today in emphatic fashion with an 83-62 drubbing.
The result shouldn't have been surprising to all but the most rosy-eyed booster.
Tonight’s NBA draft just got a lot less interesting for fans of the Toronto Raptors, as it appears Canada's only team in the league has cashed its chips and will be sitting this one out.
The Raptors appear poised to trade their first-round pick, along with point guard TJ Ford and centre Rasho Nesterovic and someone else (possibly Maceo Baston) to the Indiana Pacers for Jermaine O'Neal and a second-round pick.
In trading for O'Neal, a six-time all-star who has been hobbled by injuries the last four seasons, Toronto appears to be swinging for the fences in a high-risk, high-reward move. But in all likelihood the trade is neither as bad nor as good as it sounds.
It is clear though that the Raptors had the Boston Celtics in mind when they made the deal.
The 17th championship in the storied history of the Boston Celtics was a long time coming, and what an emphatic victory it was.
The Celtics 131-92 crushing of a directionless Los Angeles Lakers in Game 6 also had some side benefits for the Celtics: it gave championship rings to the team's three best players, denied Lakers Phil Jackson a chance to surpass legendary Celtics coach Red Auerbach for the most championships coached and it gave the team a chance to prove all the pundits who picked the Lakers (cough) wrong.
Equally important for the rest of the league was how the Celtics won the title: with defence.
Through four games of the NBA Finals, the play of the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers have followed eerily familiar patterns.
Both teams have had a breakout performance from a bench player at home (Leon Powe for the Celtics in Game 2, Sasha Vujacic for the Lakers in Game 3). Both had a previously dormant star have a sudden wake-up (Ray Allen for the whole series and Lamar Odom for Game 4). And both teams were getting buried in games on the road before roaring back in the final quarter.
But whereas the Lakers fell short in their bid for a comeback in Game 2, the Celtics were able to finish what they started Thursday night, coming back from 24-points down with a second-half throttling of the Lakers.
The last time the LA Lakers and the Boston Celtics met in the NBA Finals, 21 years ago, the Lakers were considered the younger team (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar notwithstanding), the deeper team and the better team. The Celtics were old, heavily reliant on their big three of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish.
The Lakers would win the series and go on to repeat the following season, while the Celtics organization would have to suffer the tragic death of Reggie Lewis, endure the Rick Pitino era of empty promises and watch as Antoine Walker missed 1986 three-point shots in his Boston career, presumably in honour of the last year the team won a championship.
On the surface, similar conditions exist today.
On the surface, the four remaining teams in the NBA playoffs offer up two distinct styles of building a title contender.
For Detroit and San Antonio, the two perennial contenders, winning and spending wisely have gone hand in hand. While other teams lavish second-tier stars like Rashard Lewis (Orlando) and Peja Stojakovic (New Orleans) with the biggest dollar amount allowed, Detroit and San Antonio are relative Scrooges, hesitant to offer the richest deals to all but their best players and totally unafraid to let good players walk if it puts them in a financial bind.
When the season came to close for the Phoenix Suns last year, the team had a problem.
They had a player, small forward Shawn Marion, who by all accounts was unhappy with his role. The rumour was the team was going to trade him in the off-season before that unhappiness infected the team, a team that aspired to win a championship and couldn't afford to have one of its most talented players moping in the corner.
A similar situation now faces Bryan Colangelo, the Toronto Raptors general manager who ran that Phoenix team a few years back. TJ Ford, one half of the team's point guard equation, wants to remain a starter and has chafed at coming off the bench.
The Toronto Raptors convincing win over the Orlando Magic on Thursday quieted a few of the critics and answered a few questions about the team heading into the weekend's pivotal Game 4.
For one game at least, TJ Ford was a destructive force for the opposition, and not his own team chemistry. Andrea Bargnani, though still invisible as a rebounder, proved he can still shoot. Jamario Moon rekindled some of his early season magic, while Jason Kapono has kept his hot-hand smouldering.
Likewise, the Magic now have a few doubts.
The Toronto Raptors and Orlando Magic played three times this season, but you could make the case that each of these games deserves an asterisk next to it.
The first game, a 105 to 96 win for Orlando, was in November, before Orlando traded for Mo Evans and moved him into the starting lineup ahead of Keith Bogans, and before Jamario Moon went from training camp feel-good story to the role of starting small forward.
The second game, a 127-110 victory for Toronto, happened when Raptors point guard TJ Ford was out with an injury and Jose Calderon had full control of the team. Jose's backup, Juan Dixon - Calderon's backup in that game, has also since been traded to the Detroit Pistons for a large man named Primoz who seems very animated but contributes little.
The third game, a 102 to 87 blowout win for Orlando, tells us even less, since Chris Bosh missed the game for Toronto.
Paul Jay has been writing about basketball for seven years, working as a basketball columnist for Rogers Sportsnet and writing for CBC Sports, Raptors Insider, Dose and appearing on air with Sportsnet and Raptors TV. In his 12 years in journalism, Paul has written features for some of the best publications in the country, including the Globe and Mail, the Ottawa Citizen, Saturday Night, Canadian Lawyer and This magazine. He first joined CBC.ca during the 2004 Athens Olympics and currently writes online for CBCNews.ca as a technology and science writer.
