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The
Daily Gyro August 13, 2008 Beijing 2008 Olympics -- US Men's Basketball vs. Greece Gives Greek Fans in US Rare Viewing Opportunity Unlike Athens four years ago, catching Greek athletes on NBC’s Olympic broadcasts will be a rarity. Outside of a rather exciting near comeback from Greece’s B-squad in Women’s Beach Volleyball against the 4th ranked Chinese team, which was riveting television on Sunday afternoon, there hasn’t been much to cheer about or even see Greek-wise. After a flat start against Spain early on Sunday morning (2:30 AM Eastern) which thankfully went by much quicker thanks to fast-forwarding the DVR later than afternoon, the Greek Men’s Basketball team did come back to destroy Germany early on Tuesday morning. (Even if they did reshow the game, it was probably at a time when we were all at work.) Probably the potential highlight of the entire Olympics will be the rematch between the Greek Men’s team and the U.S. Men’s Basketball Team, which will actually be shown live on Thursday morning at 8:00 A.M. Eastern Time. Obviously Greece needs the win to ensure they advance to the knockout round and hopefully stay out of the last seed coming out of the group. The U.S. wants to avenge their loss against Greece in 2006’s World Championship, where the Greek pick-and-roll made the U.S. half-court defense look silly. Baltimore’s own Carmelo Anthony, a member of that U.S. squad in 2006, has come out and said that this game has been circled on his calendar for the last two years. We’ve talked in the past about the rules about routing for against Greece when
playing the United States in anything. In this case, a Greek victory is a
win-win for both teams. For Greece, it likely gets them into the later stages
of the tournament with a better chance of advancing to a medal game. For the
U.S. it will provide them a much needed wake-up call before playing Spain, but
probably won’t hurt their ultimate medal chances, as they are a heavy Gold
medal favorite for the first time in years. For those of us watching from home,
it means either getting into work super early for those of us on the East Coast
or rolling into work late, or getting up earlier in the Central, Mountain and
Pacific time zones. So long as it’s not a U.S. blow-out win by the so-called
Redeem Team, it should be worth watching.
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