Is USA Basketball Team good enough to defend its title in 2012 London Olympics?
Wait is about to over as 2012 London Olympics Men’s basketball tournament is going to start next month where 12 teams will participate and compete against each other to achieve the ultimate glory, the gold medal. USA team is defending champion, but how well they are prepared for the London Olympics, is the big question. Are they good enough to win the title again, back to back?
Earlier in January, the official list of 20 finalists was released by the USA basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo. The list was featuring 8 players from 2008 Beijing Olympics and 10 from the 2010 world champion gold medal winning team. That preliminary roster was appearing to be as solid as one could get for making a champion side but severe injuries to multiple major players have jolted the hopes slightly. Dwight Howard, Chauncey Billups , Derrick Rose and LaMarcus Aldridge all suffered serious injuries and there is no sign of their recovery yet. They are likely to be out of selection contention. No doubt, many more skilled players are still in the list but losing players like Dwight Howard and Derrick Rose can prove a huge blow for the team as Howard played a key role for USA in preceding Olympics while Derrick Rose was expected to play a prominent role in upcoming Olympics, similar to what he was doing for his team Chicago.
Because of injury issues and as a precaution to the threat of losing few players, USA basketball has added two more players Oklahoma’s James Harden and Kentucky forward Anthony Davis in preliminary roster. They also submitted a request to extend the deadline of announcing the final 12-man Olympic basketball team to see if any further chopping and changing is required or not. Olympic Committee accepted that request and extended the selection process to July 7.
Other then injuries, odds are in the favor of the team. Team USA is dominating the world of basketball right now and one can expect something big from a team that has got skilled players like Dwayne Wade, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant in it. Moreover, the team is coached by Duke Krzyzewski, who led the team to a gold medal in 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 FIBA World Championship.
The USA team has got all the ingredients for making a perfect dish, a bunch of talented players, skills, potential and experience. They are the defending champions. They had done it before; they can do it again, if things work well for them at the time when it really matters.
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