[Basketball Thursday] World Olympic Qualifiers group phase wrap-up

So far, so predictable.

There wasn't a single surprise in the entire group phase of the tournament, with Korea almost providing the exception with their near upset over Canada. However, after leading with sixteen points, they completely chocked and didn't score for almost two minutes. Otherwise, all other games had the expected results, with the favorites getting easy victories.

The teams that have played the best so far are Greece, Germany, Croatia and Slovenia. They're probably going to make it to the semifinals too, and three of them will make it to the Olympics. My money is on Germany, Croatia and of course Greece, but I'm hardly impartial.

That being said, I was really impressed by the way we played last night. A far cry from last year's snooze-fest, the Greek team offered the same type of aggressive defense that became its trademark and gave the team the second place in the World Cup of '06. If we keep this up, I like our chances at an Olympic medal. After all, the team played the absolute worst way possible last year, and still managed to come in fourth.

Beyond that, now that they've managed to get Chris Kaman, Germany has become a much better team, it seems. Rather than expecting everything from Dirk, now they have someone else to depend on, on both sides of the field. Should help the team a lot.

I was kind of bummed yesterday as I arrived a few minutes late at the game, and missed the New Zealanders' patented Haka war dance. I always wanted to see that live, and I'll miss it again tomorrow as I'll be watching The Dark Knight, finally. It's a fair trade, plus I was able to see Dirk kick so much ass yesterday, with 35 points in 32 minutes. That guy could have easily been the best player in the world right now, had he been born an American.

TL;DR version:

Dirk Nowitzki rules you.