National Disaster

If the letters across the front of the jerseys spelled "Duke” or "AmEx” instead of "USA,” we wouldn't really care. Full-time shill and part-time basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, along with evil co-signer Jerry Colangelo, could put whoever the hell they wanted on their squad, go to China in '08 and rep their damn selves. But this is the United States men's national team we're talking about, a representation of the best roundball technicians this country has to offer, and the fact that Allen Iverson wasn't even one of the 23 players invited to try out for the squad is nothing less than offensive.

When the squad was announced in March, we listened hard as Coach K and Jerry C offered a meager defense of their selections, rambling on about "distributors” and "role players” and other useless code words. But what we heard, roughly translated, was this: "Surly, undersized, tattoo-laden combo guards with hairdos we don't quite understand? Thanks, but we're good.” We know bullshit when we smell it, fellas. Go shovel somewhere else.