Kent Brockman
Years ago
Team USA stats
lifted this from nba.com seems that Goorj is not the only one to make weird choices.
For those of you still suffering from a bronze-medal hangover, here's another stat to infuriate you:
Seventeen of the top 20 shooters in the league last season, based on three-point percentage, were born in the USA.
None of those 17 players was invited to play for his country.
The only foreigners to crack the top 20, with at least 98 attempts from long distance, were No. 7 Peja Stojakovic (.433), No. 9 Hedo Turkoglu (.419) and No. 13 Steve Nash (.405). The top six percentage shooters during the regular season were Anthony Peeler (.482), Rasual Butler (.463), Brent Barry (.452), Brian Cardinal (.444), Fred Hoiberg (.442) and Aaron McKie (.436).
Perimeter shooting, mind you, is only one of our problems. Jerry West laments Americans' penchant for overdribbling ... and the limited practice time youngsters get to work on fundamentals in this country ... and the progressive evaporation of patriotism in the basketball community since the days West and Oscar Robertson co-captained the United States to Olympic gold in 1960 with a daily allowance of -- no joke -- one dollar.
"If you go into my house, my (Olympic) uniform and my gold medal are the only things that will even tell you I had a career," West said.
He also pinpointed one of the rarely discussed factors causing Team USA's recent struggles. Which is: Backcourt players in foreign countries are significantly more athletic, and more adept handling the ball, than they were when the original Dream Team went to Barcelona in 1992.
