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How China saved Olympic women’s basketball, 84-81

Posted May 2, 2008 at 10:00 AM by Os Davis

Section: Events, Basketball, Featured Writers, Os Davis

olympic logo basketball Thank you, Dan, Fan, Feifei, Hanlan, Jiacen, Nan, Xiaoli, Xiaoni, Xiaoyun, Xu and especially Lijie – the dandy dozen who upended Team USA’s ladies in the championship match of the 2008 Good Luck Beijing tournament – rarely is it so OK to be proven wrong, particularly in the sportswriting world.

On the other hand, geeks of the games should never lament such breakthroughs as Team China’s, these Great Leaps made by a professional or national team are the necessary punctuation in the long book of history; think the mid-1970s Denver Broncos or when Italy forced the powers-that-be to make rugby’s Five Nations Championship the Six Nations as of 2000.

Though SummerOlympian.com is hardly at liberty to pronounce a turning of the tide atop the women’s basketball table, but the official press release (and aren’t all press releases emanating from China official, really?) is not greatly exaggerating when pronouncing China’s lady b-b-ballers had “made a historic breakthrough by defeating the USA with the score 84-81.”

And, if possible, the team achieved more, too. After taking out a haggard, slow-moving Team USA in game 1, Australia then lost to China and saw a number of injuries effectively remove them from competitiveness.

The skill gap in international women’s hoops appeared to widen with the Opals by the wayside, and this writer had a column proclaiming Team USA prohibitive for the Beijing Games after the Americans, um, womenhandled China on the last day of round-robin play, 86-61.

How prohibitively favored? Like 1:50,000 to take the gold. “There are no dark horses,” proclaimed the now-deleted words promising little more than red, white and blue Olympic demolition in the original file.

And behind Miao Lijie’s ridiculous 26 points scored from all over the floor, the Chinese could allow the USA its inevitable “victory” on the boards (in this final match, it was 42-26 in favor of the Americans) and still pull out the win.

Sure, Team USA has got to be considered the favorites in Beijing come August; heck, the aforementioned official press release notes that “with many core players absent from the tournament, the US team is still favored to grab its fifth Olympic gold medal for women’s basketball in the upcoming Olympic Games.”

To some extent, though, Good Luck Beijing may have dinged up the near-invincible veneer of America’s other Dream Team like the 2002 FIBA worlds did for the boys – though admittedly, no international tournament loss could be quite that devastating, historically speaking.

And best of all, in the win China has brought back the essence that makes sport – and especially Olympic sport – what it is: suspense. At least for a little while, anyway…

Gong xi, Team China, on the well-earned gold!