Olympics: Dream Team? Ha!

The USA men's "dream team" has been caught asleep too many times this time around at the Olympics, and it is truly making a fool of all the players and embarrassing the brilliant head coach, Larry Brown.

There is no good excuse for how they have played, losing important games to Italy and Puerto Rico, and Saturday, when they seemingly played their best basketball throughout the whole Olympics, they lost to Lithuania!

What kind of torture is this?

The USA dominates almost always, but this year it seems that the team is missing something.

If you honestly want to know what's wrong with the team, look at the players.

They are all either: A) very young, or B)playing for the media, not for their country.

Although I cannot accuse all of them of this, most of them are playing to support themselves.

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They do not play as a team, and with players as young as Carmello Anthony, Lebron James, Dwayne Wade and especially Emeka Okafor, you can't expect them to be able to.

They are still interested in their own affairs, not their countries.

Personally, a good example of a team player is China's Yao Ming.

He doesn't want to get more media coverage, he wants to win for his country.

He said that if China doesn't make it to the quarterfinals that "I won't shave for six months as punishment."

Players like that do not represent individuals, they represent their teammates and their country.

If the USA would realize this, they wouldn't be playing so horribly.

Why doesn't the USA team play for their country?

Because they are using NBA players.

If they would pick college players like they did in the past, they would have players that didn't play for money, and that played with passion.

The love of the game is what drives college players, not the greedy lure of the NBA.

Some of those players will go to the NBA, and they will still play for the love of the game.

Take Jameer Nelson and Emeka Okafor for example.

Both love the game and both are great players, but neither are in it just for the money.

Yes, it is perfectly normal to want the money, but to love the greens rather than the hoops means that you shouldn't be playing.

The Olympics need passion driven players, rather than young, money driven players.