Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity. He is the Chosen One. He'll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. — Earl Woods

While Earl Woods’ comments about his son are pretty funny in retrospect, they did stem from an understandable impulse. Tiger was a worldwide celebrity who transcended the sport of golf. Most athletes are famous enough that people want things (mainly money) from them; Tiger, at the time, was on the level of a Bono or a Bill Gates or a Bill Clinton, where society began to want things in return for all the money, fame and adulation they had received.

This summer, LeBron James reached that level. The infamous tattoo on his back isn’t pure hubris; he is, in many ways, “The Chosen One”. Michael Jordan was the first basketball player to transcend the sport, and ever since he proved it was possible, the basketball industry has been consumed with the search for the “next MJ”. The entire AAU infrastructure, which has revolutionized the game both on and off the court, was essentially created to find a 15-year-old LeBron James in Akron, Ohio. Many thought the search was fruitless, that no one would ever be able to lift Excalibur from the ground, that no player could ever be as great as Jordan.

By carrying the Heat to the NBA title and leading Team USA to Olympic gold, LeBron proved himself worthy of the crown. It’s impossible to deny the talent of a 6’9 270 point-center, but until it was validated by a team championship, there would always be lingering doubts about his game. He may or may not match Jordan’s number of titles or Kareem's scoring records, but you can no longer argue that he doesn’t at least belong in the discussion for greatest ever.

Now, as a 27-year-old at the very top of one of the most high-profile professions in the world, people are going to start asking him the same questions they asked Tiger a decade ago. For many observers, the great tragedy of Jordan’s career was that he never picked a cause, never became associated with anything bigger than himself. Where Muhammad Ali was stripped of his boxing title for refusing to enter the Vietnam draft, Jordan’s most famous political stance was that “Republicans buy shoes too.”

As Ray Allen said in an interesting interview in 2011, entering the political arena would be one way for LeBron to differentiate himself from Jordan and possibly even surpass him in the public eye. However, becoming an activist isn’t nearly as simple as it sounds. Much of the backlash to Jordan’s refusal to weigh in during the 1990 U.S. Senate Race came from journalists, a group with generally liberal politics. But, given Jordan’s income, as well as the way he conducted himself during the lockout, whose to say he wouldn’t have supported the Republican candidate, even if he didn’t appreciate his campaign tactics? Personally, I’d be surprised if a savvy businessman like Jordan didn’t want his marginal tax rates lowered.

As Jordan understood, weighing in on something as polarizing as electoral politics would damage his ability to sell shoes. In that sense, protecting his personal brand was a fairly self-serving decision, but he was far from the only person who benefitted from it. When Jordan spoke, he wasn’t just speaking for himself or Nike or even the Chicago Bulls, he was speaking for the entire NBA and the game of basketball as a whole.

Unlike baseball, which once was America’s pastime, or football, which now is, popular perception of basketball is far more tied to the reputation of its star players. When Peyton Manning and Tom Brady retire, football fans will mourn, but it won’t have nearly the same impact of Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s departures. When Derek Jeter retires, it won’t send ratings for the World Series plummeting.

Basketball is more popular than ever around the world, but it's still fighting to be the #2 sport in its home country. The sport will always attract elite 6’8+ athletes, but the battle for the hearts and minds of most other amateur athletes is far from settled. More than even Kevin Durant or Dwight Howard, the two players who will stand in his way for the next 5-6 years, LeBron has an entire sport on his back.

Obviously, as someone who primarily covers basketball for a living, I would prefer if it became the biggest sport in the US. In my mind, it has more entertainment value than football, baseball, hockey or soccer, but that’s an inherently subjective debate with no right or wrong answers. However, even if we ignore aesthetic value, there’s a strong argument to be made that it should overtake the other major team sports.

Of all my friends from high school, the ones who played basketball are generally in better shape now. There isn’t much hockey played in Texas and soccer, as Hank Hill once put it: “was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking.” Of the three biggest team sports in the US, basketball is by far the easiest sport to continue playing once you leave school. Of course, flag football and slow-pitch softball leagues exist, but they hardly come close to pick-up basketball in terms of replicating the game experience.

Basketball, in general, is just a much more accessible sport than football and baseball. In our post-industrial society, where obesity is the single biggest health concern, that’s a big deal. Staying physically active isn’t just good for your physical health; it’s an essential ingredient for mental health as well. Basketball doesn’t ask its players to bulk up to weights that are completely unsustainable in civilian life. Anywhere in the country, you can take off your work clothes at the end of the day and play a game of basketball.

Over the last five years, through either work or school, I’ve been lucky enough to live in Dallas, Austin, Jacksonville, New York City and Barcelona. My daily life was fairly different in all five of those places, but the one constant in my routine was playing basketball. No matter where you are, it’s a common language and a way to become connected to a broader community, which is incredibly valuable in our increasingly atomized society.

I’ve made many of my best friends playing basketball. As a kid, playing the sport opened up my eyes into an entirely different world, to people and places in my own city that I never otherwise would have known existed. It’s no exaggeration to say that I would not be the person I am today without this beautiful game. At my gym, there are guys in their 60’s who still play a regular weekly game.  I can’t predict what my life (or the world) will be like in the 2060’s, but the one thing I can say is I’ll be doing everything in my power to play basketball.

I’ve worked in national politics, both on a campaign and as a journalist. It was a very disillusioning experience, to say the least. Which isn’t to say that no good comes from the political realm, but it’s definitely not the only, or even the best, way to make a difference. The only real way to change the world is to make your little corner of it better. In the broad scheme of history, no one man can stem the tide, or even really stand in the way, of the blind social inertia of billions upon billions of people.

LeBron James is an ambassador for the game of basketball, a game that can and does change people’s lives for the better. That’s a tremendous responsibility, and asides from one foolish primetime TV special, he’s handled the blinding media spotlight and the celebrity fishbowl that comes with it about as well as could possibly be expected. No matter what he decides to do with the platform he’s been given, what he’s doing already is more than enough to ask of anyone.

The summer Olympics is a buffet of sports, and it is hard not to gorge yourself. One thing I’ve been wondering lately is why they don’t move some sports from the Summer Olympics to the Winter Olympics. Why does every winter sport have to involve snow or ice? Sure track & field, cycling, and archery make the most sense in the summer, but with so many of the sports in the Summer Olympics held indoors, some of them could be saved for the winter season. Take volleyball for example. Why not keep the beach volleyball in the summer, and stick the indoor team volleyball in the Winter Olympics?

My wife’s choice for a sport to save for the Winter Games would be fencing. My only concern with that is that I love the ridiculous Modern Pentathalon and all five disciplines are currently summer events. In case you’ve missed the jokes, Modern Pentathalon is that odd combination of fencing, swimming, equestrian jumping, shooting, and running. (And it used to include wrestling.) Every sports writer has to include Modern Pentathalon in one of their columns at some point and this now completes my obligation. But no one ever seems to explain why it was created! It was designed to recreate what it was like to be a soldier behind enemy lines in the 19th century. I.e., a soldier might have to fence, shoot, ride an unfamiliar horse, swim, and run to safety. And my foolish desire to watch these type of novelty events meant I didn’t watch nearly as many hours of basketball as I might have wanted.

Top 40

Regardless, let’s take one last look back at some of the top player performances in the Olympic basketball tournament. Today’s column is about worlds colliding. I bridge the gap between the traditional stat Points Per Game (PPG) and the tempo free stat ORtg. For those of you who are new to this, ORtg approximates points produced per 100 possessions, giving credit to teammates for assists and offensive rebounds.

The next table has been a long time idea of mine, and if I was Ken Pomeroy, you might see this more regularly. After PPG, we have Points Produced Per Game (PPPG) which factors in those assists and offensive rebounds. So for a stat-stuffer like LeBron James, his PPPG is greater than his PPG. (This is true for almost all point guards.) Meanwhile pure shooters tend to see their totals decreased. Players also get credit for offensive rebounding, but as in the case of Kevin Love, when you never get any assists, you actually end up about the same with either measure. Players like Kevin Durant that don’t crash the offensive glass or dish assists, tend to see their PPPG is substantially lower since they are sharing credit with their teammates. In the remaining columns PPPG is separated into shot opportunities and ORtg. The three ways you get shot opportunities are your team’s pace, your percentage of minutes, and the percentage of possessions you use when on the floor.

Pau Gasol’s performance in the third quarter of the gold medal game was epic, but it was not his only strong play in the tournament. Overall Gasol played major minutes, had to be the primary offensive weapon on his team, and still kept his ORtg at 122.1. When Olympic soccer was restricted to players 23 and under, one of the big mysteries to me was why Olympic soccer allowed three exceptions for older players. But with the NBA threatening to keep its veteran players from Olympic competition, I suddenly see the value in the exception rule. Sure, let the young players play, but make sure every international team has access to its biggest stars. Let Spain have Pau Gasol; let Argentina have Manu Ginobili; let France have Tony Parker; let Russia have Andrei Kirilenko; and let the US team have LeBron; and then surround them with college age stars. That would essentially be the Olympic soccer format, and it could still be very entertaining. But banning all players over 23 would clearly cause the casual fans to tune out.

It is tempting to say that Luol Deng’s production is overrated since he needed a ton of possessions to get those points. His 91.9 ORtg is distressing. But when you consider how overmatched many of the British players were, Deng needed to be that aggressive and he needed to play that many minutes. His iron man status while drawing constant defensive attention still deserves some praise. Australia’s Joe Ingles and Russia’s Andrei Kirilenko were also iron men in these games, seeing the court over 84% of the time for their teams.

Patrick Mills was the only rotation player to use over 30% of his team’s possessions in the Olympics. And of course, Kevin Durant and LeBron James’ have the best ORtgs in the first group. Carmelo Anthony’s production might be even more impressive when you see how few minutes he played. Sure, most of Anthony’s production came against Nigeria, but that was one fine game of basketball. Kevin Love has been plenty efficient too, as the next chart shows:

Al-Farouq Aminu and Sarinus Jasikevicius stand out for their particularly disastrous ORtgs. Sure, they were among the top 40 points producers, but both hurt their teams more than they helped with their poor shooting and poor turnover numbers.

I love that Deron Williams and Kobe Bryant essentially had the same production in the US offense, but that Kobe needed more possessions to get his points. Williams didn’t always play well. I thought some of his passing in the gold medal game was sloppy, and his dunk attempt at the end of the third quarter was questionable. But with his great assist totals throughout the tournament and his 41% three-point shooting, he was a more valuable offensive player for the US team. Chris Paul was unbelievably passive in this tournament which explains why he actually produced fewer points than Williams and Bryant. But when the tournament was on the line, Paul came up with a few huge baskets in the gold medal game.

The next table sorts by ORtg instead of PPPG. Not surprisingly, LeBron James was the most efficient player on the court in the Olympics. Was there ever any doubt?

A bigger question might be why Serge Ibaka of Spain and Darius Songalia of Lithuania were buried on the bench. It nearly took Marc Gasol fouling out in the first half of the game for the Spanish coach to finally give Ibaka a chance against the US team.

But these are the Olympics, and you never know what sort of lineup decisions teams will make. On Saturday in the women’s handball bronze medal game, Spain had a back-up goalie who was only used for penalty shots. And her reaction time was outstanding! It makes you wonder why she wasn’t starting. Or rather, it probably makes you wonder why I was watching the women’s handball bronze medal game. Hey, move some of this stuff to the Winter Olympics, the summer smorgasbord was just too good.

In the 2002 World Championships, an up-and-coming Argentina team that featured three future NBA players under the age of 26 (Manu Ginobili, Luis Scola and Andres Nocioni) stunned a complacent Team USA. It was the first defeat of the Americans in a major international tournament since NBA players began participating in 1992.

Team USA’s top scorers (Paul Pierce, Michael Finley, Jermaine O’Neal, Elton Brand) were more comfortable in a slow paced, isolation-heavy offense. In contrast, the way Argentina moved in unison and shared the basketball was a revelation. Everyone, even their big men, could pass and shoot, so the ball never stuck in anyone’s hands.

They all seemed to be between 6’6 and 6’10, which gave them versatility on both sides of the ball. While the USA produces an excess of NBA-caliber guards every year, Argentina’s elite athletes almost always play soccer, unless they have a compelling reason (i.e. excess height) to try something different.

They had two players (Juan “Pepe” Sanchez, Ruben Wolkyowski) who had cups of coffee in the NBA, but Ginobili was the real trailblazer. The MVP of the Euroleague Finals in 2001, Ginobili didn’t have anything left to prove at the international level. He joined the San Antonio Spurs right after the World Championships, quickly establishing himself as a star-caliber player.

At 6’6, 205, Ginobili is a complete shooting guard, with the ability to score, shoot, pass, rebound and defend at a high-level. He’s been a top-3 shooting guard in the NBA for the last decade, but his willingness to come off the bench as well as a series of injury issues have partially obscured his dominance. Ginobili's career per-36 minute average of 19.6 points, 5.1 rebounds and 5.1 assists on 45% shooting and PER of 21.6 are Hall of Fame worthy.

Nor has his impact on the game been limited to Argentina: Ginobili helped popularize the Euro step to an entire generation of guards, foreign and American. He brought the mentality of a soccer player to the basketball court, creating passing angles and driving lanes the NBA had never really seen before. Even at the age of 36, he’s maintained his level of play in London, averaging 19.3 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.5 assists on 51% shooting.

His countrymen followed him in the NBA: Nocioni and Carlos Delfino (2004), Fabricio Oberto (2005), Walter Hermann (2006) Scola (2007) and Pablo Prigioni (2012). But without another Ginobili, their youth basketball program has steadily slipped over the last decade. Delfino is Argentina’s only key player under the age of 30 and there aren’t many young players coming up the pipeline.

As a result, while Team USA was turning over its entire roster every two years, the same core of Argentine players finished second in 2002, first in 2004, fourth in 2006, third in 2008 and fifth in 2010. Now, in Friday’s Olympic semifinal, the “Golden Generation” has one final chance to defeat the Americans. It will be a much harder task in 2012: Team USA has been built in their image -- except faster, stronger and more athletic.

Instead of viewing competing internationally as a burden, the top American players are now eager to play on the world stage. They’re faster and more skilled than a decade ago, even if they aren’t always as big. And while they were once known for an excess of 1-on-1 play, Team USA has been putting on scintillating displays of free-flowing basketball for the last two weeks.

They start one conventional big man and often play a front-line of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant. Their floor spacing issues, traditionally a nightmare for Team USA, have been more or less resolved with four perimeter players players on the floor at all times. Not only do they have the best athletes in the world, they play a more international style than ever before.

That’s the conundrum facing Argentina, one that became apparent in the second half of their 126-97 loss to the Americans in group play: they want to a fast-paced game where brute power is deemphasized, but that’s exactly what Team USA wants too. Unlike in 2002, the Americans don’t lack for three-point shooting, so packing the paint on defense is a much more dangerous gamble.

In the end, it’s one Argentina will have to make. With very little depth upfront and no shot-blocking, they have no way of slowing down Team USA outside of playing a de-facto zone and hoping they go cold from the perimeter. In their best-case scenario, the Americans misfire from deep, they use Lithuania’s game plan to keep it close than hope Ginobili can steal the game in the final minutes.

An upset on Friday would give them more success in Olympic basketball than the USA in the last eight years. To grasp what an accomplishment that would be, it’s helpful to imagine the situation in reverse: the USA not just consistently outperforming Brazil in a generation’s worth of World Cups, but doing so while playing a more aesthetically pleasing style of soccer that the Brazilians wanted to emulate.