Category: Sports Bar
Team USA traveled halfway around the globe to re-establish its prominence in the basketball community, but wound up merely getting all of the same lessons
hammered home again as Greece rallied from a 12-point deficit and ran away with a 101-95 victory over the Americans in the semifinals of the World Basketball
Championship.
New Rockets signee Vasilis Spanoulis led the way with 22 points in another sparkplug role off the bench. But he had help from a variety of sources among
the reigning European champions.
"We just didn't play hard enough," said U.S. center Dwight Howard.
Mostly, after building a 33-21 lead midway through the second quarter, the Americans did play smart enough or effective enough on defense.
The Greeks simply ran down the U.S. with a basic high pick-and-roll play. It got them easy layups for their big men. It got them slashing drives by their
guards. And it got them wide open jumpshots that they almost never missed.
Greece shot a stunning 35 of 56 (65 percent) in the game, including a sizzling 27 of 38 (71 percent) on two point shots.
"They beat us up all night with that pick and roll," said Dwyane Wade. "They only ran but one play all night and we couldn't do anything to stop it. I just
wish we had maybe changed up our defense, at least tied something different during the game. Maybe a zone or something.
The American team that had been thriving all through the tournament by creating turnovers with its pressure defense, managed only four steals in the game
and Greece coughed the ball up just a dozen times. When the U.S, ran off to a 33-21 lead on a Joe Johnson 3-pointer with 6:27 left in the second quarter,
it looked like they were on their way to another double-digit win.
But Greece simply shrugged it off and got down to playing its game.
"We know what we can do," said Dimitris Diamantidis. "We know they are great players and have a great team. But we think are pretty good too. Maybe it was
like a dream to think that we could beat the Americans. But we knew if we played our game and stayed with our game, anything was possible."
Sofolis Schortsanitis -- a draft pick of the LA Clippers who goes by the nickname Baby Shaq -- ate up the Americans by scoring buckets easily on four straight
possessions and the half ended with Greece in front 45-41.
The Greeks never folded and the Americans, who shot just 9 for- 28 from behind the 3-point line, couldn't chip away at the lead.
The third quarter ended with Wade missing on a 1-on-5 drive to the basket, then Spanoulis getting the rebound and going the length of the court for a layup
just before the horn sounded. That gave Greece a 77-65 lead.
The U.S cut it to 97-93 on a drive by LeBron James with 23 seconds to go and got the ball on a turnover. But Carmelo Anthony hosited up a quick trey that
missed and Greece clinched the win with free throws.
"We're disappointed, no doubt about it," said Wade. "I don't care what anybody at home thinks of this. Nobody respected us when we won by 20 and now they'll
have something to say that we lost. I don't care. This was a three-year committment by us and our goal is to get back and win the gold medal in Beijing
at the Olympics (in 2008)."
…hmmm now, given the amount of time I have as of late spent in communication with one outstanding Greek gentleman, The Nikos, I would like to be the first to say, We sure did our utmost and as much as the Americans shone brightly in their handsome play, well, we did win and against such a strong rival, makes our win all the more brilliant!
Connie
Hey Nikos, you show-off, it sounds like a really good game. I wish I had heard it. I tried to find it on the radio, but no go.
Anyway, thanks for posting this, and congratulations to your country for a well deserved win.
Just teasing about the show off jibe. It's my lousy ugly American attitude.
Congrats again.
Bob
Just to let you know tomorrow is going to be the finnal between Greece and Spain. I they win they are going to get the world cub in basketball.
I will let you know what is going to happen.
Greetings Nikos,
Hello.
Unfortunately Greece today wasn't as good as in the previous games and they lost from spain with the scor 70-47.
But mainly they did well in this worldcup. They lost only this game and they wan 8 i think but i might be wrong.
Sometimes a Team Wins...Sometimes a Team looses...
Yes you are right.
Somebody has to be able to accept the good and the bad moments especially if they are only games. I mean it is not the end of the world if a team looses.
They can win next time.
Greetings Nikos,
Found this News Article that I think may be of interest to you.
Was note certain if I should start a New Board on this Article and yet I think it goes over the character limit so I did not private mail it to you as first thot.
<The Article apparently has been published in ATHENS, Greece as of December 1st, 2006.
Trust it is o.K. that I have enclosed it under this Board of yours previously started.
All good Holiday Blessings to you,
Connie ~ Grace
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Scientists Unravel Mystery of Ancient Machine
By NICHOLAS PAPHITIS, AP
ATHENS, Greece (Dec. 1) - Imagine tossing a top-notch laptop into the sea, leaving scientists from a foreign culture to scratch their heads over its corroded remains centuries later.
A Roman shipmaster inadvertently did something just like that 2,000 years ago off southern Greece, experts said Thursday.
They claim to have identified a handful of puzzling metal scraps found in a ship wreck as the earliest known mechanical computing device, which pinpointed astronomical events.
A team including British, Greek and U.S. scientists used specially developed X-ray scanning and imaging technology to analyze the corroded bronze, revealing hidden machinery and a form of written user's manual.
"We have used the latest technology available to understand this mechanism, yet the technological quality in this mechanism puts us to shame," project leader Mike Edmunds, professor of astronomy at Cardiff University. "If the ancient Greeks made this, what else could they do?"
He spoke at a two-day conference that opened in Athens on Thursday. The team's findings also were published in Nature magazine.
Known as the Antikythera Mechanism - from the island off which the Roman ship sank - the assemblage of cogs and wheels looks like the innards of a very badly maintained grandfather clock. But the first clockwork devices appeared more than a thousand years later in Western Europe.
"It was a pocket calculator of the time," said John Seiradakis, a professor of astronomy at the University of Thessaloniki who served on the international team.
Ever since its discovery a century ago, the complex mechanism has baffled scientists.
Edmunds said the 82 surviving fragments, dated to between 140-100 B.C, contain more than 30 gear wheels, and "are covered with astronomical, mathematical and mechanical inscriptions."
"It was a calendar of the moon and sun, it predicted the possibility of eclipses, it showed the position of the sun and moon in the zodiac, the phase of the moon, and we believe also it may have shown the position of some of the planets, possibly just Venus and Mercury," he said.
The box-shaped mechanism - the size of office paper and operated with a hand-crank - could predict an eclipse to a precise hour on a specific day.
The new study of the ancient device, with the aid of Hewlett Packard and the British X-ray equipment maker X-Tek, more than doubled the amount of the inscriptions readable on the mechanism.
"We will not yet be able to answer the question of what the mechanism was for, although now we know what the mechanism did," Edmunds said.
His fellow team member, Xenophon Moussas, an associate professor of space physics at Athens University, speculated that the device could have been used for navigation at sea or for mapmaking.
The first comparable devices known in the West were clockwork clocks developed during the Middle Ages.
Nature magazine suggested that the know-how for these mediaeval clocks may have reached Europe from the east after the fall of Baghdad - capital of a highly cultured, prosperous Islamic state - to the Mongols in the 13th century.
The Antikythera device was probably made on the island of Rhodes, which had a long tradition in astronomy and applied mechanics.
The ship, which sank in the first century B.C. and is thought to have been carrying plunder from Roman-conquered Greece to Rome, is believed to have sailed from Rhodes.
The wreck was found in 1900 by Greek sponge-divers 164 feet deep and just off the small island of Antikythera, on what is still a busy trade route between southern mainland Greece and Crete.
12/01/06 18:24 EST
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.
Thanks Connie. Interesting article.
I think it would be better as a new topick under news and views. I understand that this article speaks about a Greek success from the past but it has got nothing to do with sports. But thanks for posting. I enjoyed reading to it.