Guest poster Mitch is back by popular my demand to give Paranoia’s final recap of the XXX Olympiad in London. Try not to be too hard on him.
The last day of the Olympics featured an abridged competition schedule, so that viewers could really focus on the events that matter, such as the early-morning men’s marathon, men’s handball finals, and rhythmic gymnastics. One of those is reported on below (which one, I won’t yet reveal), along with other highlights from the final 24 hours of the London Games:
Not a Dream, but still Golden
The U.S. men’s Olympic basketball team won the gold no one doubted they could get today, defeating Spain 107-100 in a game that shouldn’t have been that close in the first place. Spain implemented a game plan that involved fouling American ball handlers in transition to prevent fast breaks and pounding the ball to Pau Gasol down low, in an attempt to take away the Americans’ greatest strength and exploit their greatest weakness. The slow pace, aided by the overzealous officiating that saw 22 fouls being called in the second quarter alone, allowed Spain to go into the locker room down only 1 at the half.
In the second half the Americans applied ball pressure, made shots, and that was that. Then, in one of the Olympics’ most awkward moments, Craig Sager spent his postgame interview with LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and Kobe Bryant — probably the three greatest NBA players of the last decade — more or less trying to start a fight with questions such as “Kevin, Lebron stopped you from winning the NBA championship and now you’re on a team with him, how does that feel?”
