https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27709588/lakers-lose-kuzma-indefinitely-due-foot-injury
It's the injury he suffered while playing for Team USA. So glad our 4 guys didn't get any serious injuries from playing in that ridiculous tournament.
What a weird take. A World Championship is the most prestigious international tournament (besides the Olympics) in sports, basketball included. How can you not take it seriously? And even condemn that some Celtics players participated? It should be a great honour for them.
What's higher in sports than getting the opportunity to represent your country at the biggest international stage?
It's a uniquely American take, Rody. It's just a cultural difference. I posted this on the World Cup thread - when it comes to "our" sports, like basketball, baseball, (American) football and hockey, the firm belief is that the best competitions are our domestic ones and that we don't need to "prove" to the world we're better just by beating them internationally. Now obviously we're the only ones that play American football, so clearly the NFL is the best competition.
Baseball is played by a handful of countries in South America as well as in Korea and Japan, but all the best players come to play in Major League, so most Americans consider the World Series to be the pinnacle of that sport, as opposed to what Americans consider "Mickey Mouse International Competitions" like the World Baseball Classic that I think probably half of us Americans haven't even heard of.
Hockey is played by a fair number of countries other than the US, and the historically best team has been Canada, so the Winter Olympics are seen as pretty important for hockey, probably at the same level as the Stanley Cup. As for basketball, America has been dominant for a number of years, and the best players all play in the NBA, so many Americans consider an NBA Championship to be the pinnacle, followed by an Olympic Gold, and everything else after that is Mickey Mouse.
Having lived overseas in London and Sydney, it became apparent to me how serious other countries take international representation, particularly in sports that large parts of the world play. In Australia and the UK they consider international representations in games like cricket and rugby to be the ultimate, in fact the English are so proud of their own country they represent England in the rugby World Cup, as opposed to Great Britain, and Scotland represents Scotland, etc. In Europe, Latin America and Asia playing for one's country in soccer is considered to be the greatest honor in the sport, because everyone wants to win the World Cup, which rates far above winning any domestic competition trophy or even the Champions League. If you ask an Englishman what they would prefer, a Premier League win for their club or a second World Cup for England I'd say probably 9 out of 10 would pick the latter. Americans probably look at the FIFA World Cup the same way - we're clearly not the best team, the MLS is far from the best professional league so we know that the World Cup is our opportunity to show the world what American soccer is all about. The Olympic soccer competition on the other hand is the lower tier one, since technically they only allow 3 mature age professional players to play in each team.
Sometimes in the US we're a little bit insular about these international competitions, other than maybe the Olympics where we have a history of participation or the Soccer World Cup. As Charles Barkley said we're probably the least patriotic country in the world when it comes to representing our country in basketball at least
Particularly the World Cup which, even as Moranis said is a more competitive competition than the Olympics, is seen here as being in the Mickey Mouse Tournament category. Then to Nick's point you start considering the fact that these players are employed by teams that pay them millions to play for them to win an NBA Title, and fans are so invested in the team's success that when they get injured not playing for the team paying their salary there's a lot of recrimination. If they get injured playing a pickup game of their own volition like Kyrie or IT did, then it's their own fault, but if they get injured playing for Team USA then there's a more obvious target to blame.
Everyone has their own opinion on international representation and rightly so but personally I love seeing our Celtics players playing for their country. I cheer for Team USA as loudly as I do for the Celtics - even when players like LeBum play for it, which is really the only opportunity I get to cheer for someone like him and not feel bad about it
Topic: Kuzma out indefinitely with stress fracture (Read 3587 times)