I am a basketball fan and was so shocked to see the USA team made up of NBA stars lose to Argentina and Jugoslavia and not even reach 4th place. It was curious for a European to see very few spectators following the games in the country where to get an NBA ticket can be a task, how come such patriotic people like Americans are don't follow these great international competitions? Just curious

'cuz it's not a great international competition.

duh

What do you mean its not a great competition ? the winner becomes champion of the world. I think that its time that we stop snobbing certain events, we thought we were invincible, I think we have learnt our lesson!

It was a disgrace to see our multi-millionaire players be beaten that way, yes now we should be less arrogant and have more respect....

I thought the olympic champion passed for the world champion, or do we need yet another advertising vehicle?

No Bob the Olympics are the Olympics and the world championship are the world championship. If you win the Olympics you are not the world champion but the olympic champion. We sent a team with 7 players that had played in at least 1 all star game. We just have to face it the others are stronger than us.

Americans already have so much on their sports plates that it's impossible to get excited about everything that comes along, even if it is important. What with baseball, football, arena football, major league soccer, US Open tennis, golf, ESPN, ESPN2, FoxsportsNet and on and on and on, what are we supposed to do? I agree that we're missing the boat on these international competitions (especially World Cup soccer), but how much sport can one person watch?

No Bob the Olympics are the Olympics and the world championship are the world championship. If you win the Olympics you are not the world champion but the olympic champion. We sent a team with 7 players that had played in at least 1 all star game. We just have to face it the others are stronger than us.

The NBA has morphed from a group of competitive athletes to a group of showmen, more concerned with air time, hang time, slam dunks and contract extensions than winning.

Yes al you are right, but even in Europe people have soccer and formula 1 and basketball and volleball and rugby etc etc. The thing is that it would have been correct as we were organizing the event to publicize it a bit more. Also our players should have honored the shirt that thet were wearing, the US shirt!! Not any old shirt. I just can't get over us losing to Argentina and Jugoslavia with our star NBA pro team!

Americans just don't care about this international competition nonsense. What's with the trapezoidal box? That's not our basketball game. How many people actually knew this was taking place and the fact that it was held in Indianapolis shows just how insignificant the populous feels it is. My answer to the original poster's question is that we don't really show patriotism through sports since the break down of the iron curtain/cold war. We are at war now and have a real problem on our hands. If it was the US Basketball Team vs. the Al-Qaeda fence jumping team, then maybe people would watch but we really don't feel much patriotism in these international events which are either fixed, or just politcal posturing anyway. The bottom line is we simply don't find it all that intriguing.

For Huh, I think you have written a binfull of gargbage, I don't see why we are so patriotic when two NBA teams clash, we sing the anthem and all that and then when we have to face another country we have this superiority complex. Well the result is that the USA team failed to win the world championship. I think that next time we should try harder to honor our nation at a top international competition!

I think its great these overpaid cry babies got their ass handed to them. The "dream team " thing has gotten old. It should go back to college all stars and it would be much more exciting,for both olympics and international competition.

The reason Americans aren't into this competition is because it's obvious that our basketball players don't really care about it. So it's hard for us then to get interested.

I love the World Cup (soccer) because everyone involved in it--player, spectator, whatever--is so passionate about it. You can't help but get excited.

I think it's great the US were knocked out so early. We needed a wake up call--kind of like Portugal, Argentina and co. at the soccer World Cup.