The Double Standard for 'Team USA'

With basketball, both amateur and professional, at full throttle, this sports fan can't find a second to spare for the World Baseball Classic. (Get Lincecum out there and I'll tune in.) Naturally, as a red-, white- and blue-blooded American, the mercy rule loss to Puerto Rico Saturday still has my blood boiling. How dare you bums degrade our colors with poor performance on the global stage! A national disgrace!

Isn't that what we heard in 2002, when the Americans finished sixth in the basketball World Championships? Or the bronze in Athens 2004? Or third in FIBA 2006? I remember loads of righteous columnists and talking heads blaming "hip hop culture" -- that somehow the Iversonization of the league had destroyed the fundamentals among American players and left the United States in the dust of Argentina and Spain.

I fully expect the opposite reaction should the United States from the World Baseball Classic be eliminated Sunday night. Instead of ripping the failure of Americans to bring home the gold in one of our sports, scribes will celebrate the growth of the sport elsewhere. And that's what we should be talking about. And what we should have been talking about in 2002, 2004 and 2006 when it came to basketball. Sadly, I don't think the different results come from our internal mental growth. It's all about the painful double standard much of the country holds between basketball and other sports. And that ties back to established discomfort with the fact that NBA players (cornrows, tats and all) look different than ball players. It's sad, really.

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.