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The
Daily Gyro September 4, 2006 No Greek Miracle at World Basketball Championships Greece’s win over the United States was a great accomplishment, but not deserving of the hasaposerviko at center court and the premature reaction of Greeks everywhere in thinking they had just won the Gold Medal. Greece’s 70-47 loss to Spain in the Gold Medal game of the FIBA World Basketball Championships, while disappointing and saddening Greeks back in Greece, should anger Greek-Americans, particularly those who woke up at 6:30 A.M. or earlier on Sunday to watch the worst Greek performance ever. (The U.S. would have probably beaten Spain on Sunday giving us Greek-Americans a chance to share a Gold-Bronze instead of a Silver-Bronze that we’re now left with. Thanks a lot, Team Greece.) Pinning this loss on what happened in those 40 minutes between Greece, who had just come off what they considered their biggest win ever in beating the U.S.A. on Friday, and Spain, who was missing their best player in Pau Gasol, would be naïve. This game boiled down to one thing – Greece’s rampant anti-American sentiment and inferiority complex – that made winning Friday’s game their “Gold Medal game” and simply not showing up to play Spain. Greece’s win against the U.S.A. was probably for many Greeks the “Miracle on Ice” that the United States posted against the U.S.S.R. in hockey back at the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid in 1980. Despite the U.S.’s decline in international basketball over the last several years, Greece had never beaten them in the handful of games they had played over the years, most recently at the Athens Olympics. The U.S. had won all of its games in this tournament so far, some quite handily. So when the Greeks played the game of their lives to come back from a first quarter deficit on Friday shooting lights out across the second and third quarters only to hold off a U.S. comeback chance in the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, they celebrated like the Americans did back at Lake Placid 26 years ago. But this wasn’t Lake Placid, not even close. The reason that the “Miracle on Ice” was such a memorable event was because it more than about hockey. The United States was suffering from lack of national self-confidence with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the gas shortage, and Iran hostage crisis leaving one of the world’s Superpowers feeling less than super. The U.S.S.R., our Cold War rival, sported the greatest hockey team in the world, a team that had destroyed the U.S. in an exhibition game two weeks earlier by the score of 10-3. No one had given the U.S. a chance in this game. Greece’s win on Friday was a great accomplishment, but not deserving of the hasaposerviko at center court and the premature reaction of Greeks everywhere in thinking they had just won the Gold Medal. “This is the biggest thing we’ve ever done,” former Greek star Panayiotis Fasoulas said. “The Americans are the most talented players but we have a better team. Right now we’re the best in the world. ... Beating the U.S. is more important than the final.” Sports Minister George Orfanos told Greek television, “Nobody could believe this. The Greek team made the Americans kneel to them.” Fasoulas’ remarks are coming from the first generation of great Greek basketball teams in the late 80s/early 90s, who while winning the European Championship against the U.S.S.R. still got thumped by Dream Team II back when the Americans truly did have the most talented players in the world. Orfanos’ remarks comes from a much more disturbing place – a place where Greeks wrongly still believe that they are inferior to the U.S., in not just basketball, but in everything. Greece is the reigning European Champions in basketball (and in soccer, despite not making this year’s World Cup.) Greek basketball has been in the Top 10 in the World in the last several years. They should not have treated the U.S. as this invincible Goliath in world basketball that they used to be. The U.S.’s bronze medal in Athens and a 6th place finish at the last World Championships in Indianapolis was proof enough that while a Greek win was great, it wasn’t the win to end all wins at the expense of the World Championship. Greece should have easily beaten Spain without their best player Pau Gasol in the line up. They didn’t need to play the perfect game they played against the U.S. to have won on Sunday. They just needed to show up minus the national hangover of having beaten the U.S.A. 48 hours earlier. One thing that most people don’t realize or forget about the “Miracle on Ice” was that the U.S.A. beat the U.S.S.R. and then went on to get the job done by beating Finland and securing the Gold Medal. Greece and the collective Greek nation needs to realize that they belong in the conversation amongst the great nations of the world, in sports and in life, and that they need to stop thinking of victories against the U.S.A. as such a big deal. Other Servings of The Daily Gyro
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