When two New York teams played for the baseball championship a few years ago, for example, we still called it a "World Series," as we have been every year since the beginning of professional baseball.

Well, what happened last night in at the real World Basketball Championship in Indianapolis, IN, was a lesson in humility that the Serb players gave the grossly overpaid NBA stars who represented the U.S. They beat them on their own home court. As did Argentina, by the way, the night before. It was the first time a U.S. team using NBA players lost in international competition, snapping a 58-game winning streak.

So much for the NBA "world champions." You can read about it at the ESPN web site.

Notice a lack of coverage of this particular American "success story" in the U.S. media?

Bob Dj.

P.S. Thought they (Washington, New World Order Czars) had changed the name of the country from Yugoslavia to Serbia & Montenegro!? It's an ultimate twist of irony that the self-congratulating omnipotent "world champions" of basketball lost the game to a non-existent country. Which just happens to be the real reigning champion of the basketball world, having won that title in Athens, Greece, in 1998 (see World Championship Past Results - at the ESPN web site

http://espn.go.com/oly/s/2002/0827/1423391.html ). Bet you've never heard that on CNN or NBC or ABC or..., have you?

But to be fair, some of the national print media did cover the story. Here's a New York Times report...

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/06/sports/othersports/06HOOP.html 

-----------

FROM DALLAS, TEXAS

DALLAS, Sep 8 - As a follow-up to the above comment, I thought you may be interested in these two stories I caught while on a business trip to Dallas, TX, about the world basketball championships in Indianapolis.

The Sat. Sep 7 ESPN story about Vlade Divac is particularly funny... including the episode in which a member of the YU national team takes a call on his cell phone during the deciding fourth quarter of the semifinal game with New Zealand. -) Also, the incident in which security guard asking to be taken off the bus transporting the YU national team because he could not take the noise and swearing inside anymore. -)

But by the time all was said and done this afternoon, Yugoslavia successfully defended its world basketball championship title despite all the bickering (see the second AP story). And again, there was no mention of the event on major American TV networks tonight, even though it was held in the U.S.

Bob Dj.

---

STORY 1

Saturday, September 7

http://espn.go.com/nba/news/2002/0907/1428884.html 

---

STORY 2

Sunday, September 8

http://espn.go.com/nba/news/2002/0908/1429096.html