The Olympics

Technically it's still summer vacation for me, so when I found myself awake at 8:30 this morning, I didn't really know what to do. It was one of those wake-ups where you are suddenly fully awake and even if you wanted to fall back asleep, you just can't. I like to sleep in... Way in... Like noon. Why the hell did my body tell me to wake up so early. Then I remembered a little thought I had while listening to Jason Smith on ESPN Radio, and it went a little something like this...

The matter in question was if the second week of the Olympics could live up to the first week. I tried to think about what had happened during the first week, and a few things came to mind. OBVIOUSLY Michael Phelps and his record 8 gold medals, Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson in an amazing display of gymnastics, and probably the greatest opening ceremonies ever. Jason Smith said that the second week was going to be kinda dull, strictly because all the Americans have to look forward to is "The Redeem Team", and even that will not be very exciting because, the way he looks at it, if we win the gold, we do what we expected to do. And if we don't win the gold, it will be a disappointment. Now here was my thought. I believe that Phelps made as much noise as he did because of the timing of his events being in semi-primetime time-slots. Now don't get me wrong, I don't want to rain on his parade, what Michael Phelps did was just amazing. My point is that the Redeem Team is playing in the mornings, thus not getting nearly as much exposure as Phelps and the gymnasts did.

Now that brings me back to 8:30 am this morning. The USA basketball team has been blowing out every team they come into contact with, average margin of win being 30 points. The smallest margin was 21 against Angola, and the biggest was a complete crushing of Dirk Nowitzki and Germany winning by 39.

So I was intrigued when we needed to play Australia, the only team who gave us a hard time during the preliminary games. To add to the fire, reports of Australia shooting their mouths off about how they were going to beat us started popping up. Could this be our true test? Have the Redeem Team met their match? The game was set for early this morning. I was interested, but not interested enough to wake up... Or so I thought.

I actually laughed when I finally realized that the game was on, ans when I found it on the TV, I laughed even harder. I started watching at the end of the third quarter, when the score read 84-61 I believe. Thats when I thought that what the basketball team was doing was just as special as Phelps. How can you be so much better than everyone? None can touch you, and you're just out there having fun throwing alley-oops to each other and dunking one ball after another. Why is there no love out there for the Redeem Team? I personally am not an NBA fan, but for some reason I got up at 8:30 in the morning to see if we were actually that good. And guess what? We are.