When the 2008 men's basketball team traveled to wherever it was they had the last Summer Olympics, they adopted the moniker "Redeem Team" to reflect their view that they had performed poorly in their last go-around. The rest, as they say, is history: The team won gold, demons were exorcised, and the Minnesota Timberwolves were indirectly doomed to waste a Top 5 draft pick on an overrated Spanish point guard, largely due to the effusive and hyperbolic praise lobbed in his direction by many members of Team USA. It's become clear in the interim that these tactics were all part of a diabolical plan laid out by American players to con some inept GM into picking said point guard at an insanely elevated draft position, thus poisioning the common wisdom against European players and stemming their influx into the league.
But that's a topic for another time (likely 2-3 years from now) and I only bring all of this up to suggest that for me personally, the Redeem Team did not play two years ago in Beijing, in fact they don't even play basketball. For my money, the true Redeem Team played hockey in Vancouver last night, upsetting Team Canada 5-3 and throwing a nation of puckheads into turmoil. This was less about atoning for failures and more about giving me a reason to care that the Olympics in the first place. I'm just not an Olympics guy, never really have been, most of the sports are boring nonsense that I would never think twice about following. The fact that they change the venue and air it on NBC does not magically transform these uninteresting activities into interesting ones, at least in my mind, judging by the level of interest among the general public, most of you feel differently.
So I say like what you like, and will avoid an anti-Olympic screed here. But I will say that I had begun to chafe at the constant coverage slamming me over the head, an the incredulous questions from friends and co-workers when I admitted my dislike for the Games. That all changed last night, as I witnessed a hockey game that was so historic and well-played, it caused me to completely withdraw all of my prior objections to relentless beat of Olympic activities over the past 10 days. I'm not saying that I'm ready to start breaking down figure skating and the two-man luge here, but for someone who loves the game of hockey, it is difficult to deny that this is as good as the game gets, and that all the nonsense leading up to it was rendered moot.
The idea of All-Star games has always fascinated us, even though many of the participants phone in their effort so transparently, things can border on the ridiculous. This was an All-Star game with playoff intensity, a very rare opportunity to watch the best players in the world play to win at all costs. The World Cup might be the only parallel here, Olympic basketball could be argued, but the competitiveness of the teams is far too limited to match up with the 6-7 hockey teams having a legitimate shot to win gold.
At any rate, the unique opportunity to watch the best the world has to offer in one of my favorite sports and trumped my Olympic hate fully, at least for this biennium. I'm not sure what the Summer Olympics has to offer that could make me detest it less, but I pledge to remember the excellence of the hockey, and tolerate the smarmy nonsense that accompanies it. Unless of course, they pull NHL players from competing, as has been mentioned as a possibility 4 years from now, but we'll jump off that bridge when we come to it.
No comments:
Post a Comment