Such a great post. It must be recess time for you.

*chuckle*

How do you define greatest athlete???

For Ball NBA titles, MVPs?, Kobe seems to be the only one to tick both catigories off the top of my head followed by Wade with one ring.

I think Michael Phelps mite just take this one champ!!

Dream team stay in hotels because they earn the most money of the olympians, and would want the best of everything.

Sure they are probably the most famous, best athletes? Not quite

Prince has a couple rings 2 now that i think of it.

when other athletes want your autograph and be photographed with you - then you're the greatest athlete

That just means you have a big media profile.

A swimmer that wins 8 gold and breaks a bucket of records in the process might be relatively quiet in the four year break between games.

Is USA a rebranded playa?

EPO with 17 golds just over Nandrolone with 11 and counting .

In terms of great athletes in the Olympics, I think it's important that 'great' athletes embody the Olympic spirit.

With the attitude/arrogance of certain Team USA members, I don't regard them as the greatest.

Michael Phelps is a great athlete because he has performed at an exceptional level, won a record number of gold medals and shown respect to his competitors and fellow athletes.

Natalie du Toit is a great athlete because she has battled adversity and courageously pushed herself to the absolute limit.

There is a difference between most popular and best.

For those that don't know, du Toit is the amputee open water swimmer who was 16 out of 24 at these games. Incredible. Missing a leg and was still very competitive.

Was also impressed by the 49 year old in the women's road race.

I do think that some of the American basketballs are top all-round athletes - strong, fast, can jump, very skilled ball-handlers, etc.

However, to me, there's a distinction between the best athlete and the greatest athlete with the latter having more than just physical skills.

I've mentioned this before, but it's probably appropriate here: I don't think fans see the attitude much on court, but Brett Maher is cocky (and you can't blame him for it - his talent is undeniable). But after the 2002 championship, he bought a TV for each player (especially the rookies) who did not have finals bonuses in their contract. That stands in direct contrast, I think, to something like LeBron ignoring Newbles open letter on Sudan.

On that note, found this quote in an excellent article that every person should read (especially for the quote from Nike where they whinge about Newble!).

"I realized a lot of my teammates were like I had been," said Newble. "They had no clue what was going on in Darfur. So I compiled a packet of information for each of them and, with Coach Mike Brown's permission, I addressed my teammates in the locker room one day after practice. I asked them to read the information and to then come back and discuss it with me if they had any questions."

All the members of the team, except LeBron James and Damon Jones, signed the China protest letter, Newble said.

There's ATHLETE's at the Olympics?

I thought they were just there so we could judge who were the hottest male an female particpants.

Go figure!

Clearly the answer is Patty Mills.

the hottest is LeBron multi millionare - 6.8 ft of muscled manhood .. 100m Bolt is smoking but is too hard to catch ! mills is far too little sorry

Bed length reminds me of a funny story from China. Before I arrived in Ningbo, Oscar and Darren were sharing a room. Darren had a normal-sized bed and Oscar's had been extended by 20-30 centimetres.

That night, I was to share with Oscar, and Darren was going to shift out to the spare "gastro room" (not sure how common this is on basketball tours, but they book an extra room in case a sick player needs to be isolated).

The night before the second game against China, most of the team went to bed after the poker/snooker session at maybe 10 or 11. Darren left too to move his gear into the new room. Oscar and I stayed up at the bar playing a few games of snooker and catching up.

Must've been at least an hour later that we headed back to the room to find Darren sitting there.

"You're still here? It's been at least an hour. Aren't you meant to be in the other room?"
"They're making my bed."
"Still!?"
"No, they're actually making my bed. There's a team of guys in there with hammers and bits of wood, making a bed, bolting the headboard to the wall, etc."

Only in China.

I thought I heard that Team USA were staying in the athletes village this time around as part of thier push to improve their image and avoid the 'I'm too good to put up with what the other elite athletes put up with' crap. I'm not saying I would be surprised (it is consistent with past practice) but I thought they were doing it differently this year.

There was only one Dream Team, all the rest have been trying to catch up.