With Coach K starring as Bill Murray, American basketball?s best visited Japan.  At least Murray?s journey was given an unexpected jolt by Scarlett Johansson.  For Coach K and his players, the results were as predictable as another Terrell Owens fight with management.

Just as predictable is the coming wave of excuses by the USA team?s defenders. We?ve heard them all before, and now we?re about to hear them again:  The team didn?t have enough time to prepare.  Too few outside shooters were selected by the powers-that-be.  Kobe got hurt.  All we really have to do is learn how to defend the pick-and-roll.  The international referees have it in for us Americans.  The players suffered from Bill Murray-like fatigue from their Far East journeys.  

It?s time to tune out, once and for all, every one of these excuses.  The truth is now staring us all in the face: The type of basketball we play in the United States is simply no longer competitive with the kind of basketball played by the rest of the world.

Now, don?t take this the wrong way.  The NBA -- and, presumably, the NBA?s fans, since David Stern is an acknowledged master of his craft -- prefer a game based on individual greatness, with high-flying feats of power and grace and with little emphasis on teamwork.  There?s nothing wrong with that ? nothing, that is, unless we expect Team U.S.A. to win international basketball competitions.

Let?s face facts: The Greek team that defeated the Americans did not have a single player who would star on an NBA team ? and probably not more than one or two players who could even make an NBA squad.   Yet the Greeks controlled most of the game against the Americans.  This happened because American-style, individual basketball is simply not competitive against international, teamwork-focused players ? even if not one of those international players could ever get a Nike shoe contract (despite the fact Nike is named for the Greek Goddess of Victory).

The harsh reality is that American basketball fans have two choices.  Choice Number One: We can question the entire premise of how basketball is played in the United States and force the NBA to confront the fact that the League?s rules and star system virtually ensure that individualism will triumph consistently over teamwork.   Just the opposite is true internationally, of course.  Everything that is wrong with the U.S.A.?s play internationally is a product of everything that we have rewarded in American domestic play.  

There is a second choice:  We can simply accept that we are no longer competitively superior internationally and continue to enjoy the individual accomplishments of NBA stars.

Either one of these two choices is acceptable because, after all, we?re only talking about basketball games here.  What?s no longer acceptable, though, is for American fans to continue to pretend that somehow our game is superior.   Unless we face reality, the U.S.A., the world?s only remaining military superpower, is going to be the hoops version of what France has become ? a one-time superpower that still thinks of herself as a superpower when in fact those days are long gone.  

And if we refuse to face up to the facts, American basketball will continue to be lost in translation, and our players and coaches will be doomed to wander aimlessly, Bill Murray-like, around the world basketball landscape for years to come.