Medal Round Predictions: Olympics Basketball

Quarter Finals: Spain beat Croatia modestly Lithuania beats China fairly easily USA beats Australia easily Greece beats Argentina barely

Semi-Finals

Spain beats Lithuania modestly USA gets crushed by Greece (just kidding, the US should win this, but you know who I will be rooting for)

Final USA beats Spain

Now these are all fairly conventional predictions except for Greece-Argentina where Argentina is favored so at least one will be wrong.

So far there have been few surprises. With the possible question of Australia, these are the best 8 teams in the world.

Greek Basketball

Background I am camped out on my couch at 8am watching the Greece-USA Olympic basketball game on USA Networks. This has potential to be a great game.

Team USA is, well, Team USA.

Greece is the third best basketball team in the world and, more interestingly, is the only team that beat the USA in their 21 international matches since the 2004 Olympics. Greece beat a very strong US team in the semi-finals of World Championship in 2006.

While I am watching I will give some background on how Greece, a nation of 10 million short stocky guys, has created a national team capable of hanging with the US and has a local league that is starting to pick off serious NBA players.

My prediction for the game. The US should win. It is still group play, the US has a loss to avenge, this team is a better team than the 2006 team (though that was the best US team in years).

Greece will be defensively strong as always; to win they also have to be hitting their threes. When they beat the US in 2006, they shot 62.5% from the floor. As usual, Greece only has a chance if everything goes right.

Current Score: Ok, we won't know the final score because I have to go to work, but the US will win easily. EDIT: Final Score 92-69 USA

First and third quarters were fairly even and the USA crushed the 2nd quarter and everyone is playing subs in the 4th. Greece turned the ball over a lot and couldn't hit threes and there is no way they will be competitive against the US doing that.

Greece needs to close out Angola and China and hopefully will be seeing the US again in the knockout round!

Good game summary at the SF Chronicle:

For nearly two years, it had been the burr under their saddle, the stick in their craw. If not a hot, searing memory that kept them awake at night, it at least burned their pride when the topic was brought up.

So Team USA took the floor Thursday night and served up a reminder of their own with a 92-69 thumping of Greece to run their record to 3-0 in the Olympics.

Their ultimate goal is to reclaim the gold medal. But there was the matter of taking care of business first against Greece.

It was Sept. 1, 2006, when Vassilis Spanoulis and his buddies stuck it to the U.S. at the World Championship in Japan. That game forced the Americans to settle for the bronze medal, but it also gave them the fire that has burned in their bellies on the long road to China.

Greece took the U.S. to the woodshed that night by running 42 pick-and-roll plays that Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s team was unable to stop.

The six players (LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony) who were on the court that night at the Super Arena in Saitama had spent more than 23 months thinking about payback.

The U.S. had won 13 consecutive international games since then, but this was the one that really mattered.

Full Article here

Now, on to our Greek basketball history lesson!

Greece Basketball, the Ghali Era

Before the mid 1980s, Greece was not a factor in international basketball. Their rise to prominence can be directly traced to the decision by one man, Nikos Galis to come back to Greece after he was injured after he was drafted by the Celtics and was cut.

Galis was probably the best pure scorer in European basketball history.

He is only 6'1 and had a style of play that I have not seen before or since. He was not particularly a 3 point shooter and he did not have any other superstars on his team so Greek national games were basically Galis driving into the lane against guys 2x his size, double and triple pumping, and somehow getting it in. I have not seen that type of thing consistently from a guy his size.

Some stats:

Galis was the leading scorer in every major European and world international competition that he participated in from 1983 onwards, the Eurobasket 1983, the 1986 FIBA World Championship, the Eurobasket 1987, the Eurobasket 1989, and the Eurobasket 1991.

He averaged 33.0 points per game at the Eurobasket 1983, 33.7 points per game at the 1986 FIBA World Championship, 37.0 points per game at the Eurobasket 1987, 35.6 points per game at the Eurobasket 1989, and 32.4 points per game at the Eurobasket 1991.

Galis greatest moment came in the European championships in 1987 held in Athens. At that point, the overwhelming tournament favorite was the Soviet Union (which incorporated Lithuania) and had a monster and very large team. The Soviet Union had won the European Championship 14 (!) times and beat Greece all 12 times they had met.

Greece met them in the final and Galis single-handedly pushed Greece to victory 103-101 in overtime

At the time, this was probably Greece's single largest team sporting achievement and was seared into the minds of every teenager in Greece and made basketball an extremely popular sport.

That performance led former Soviet Union star Sergey Belov to comment:

“I admire him. When he plays one against one there is no way to stop him. I never thought that could be a player who could on his own beat the Soviet Union.”

“I feel that if Galis wants to make a basket, he will do it no matter who his opponent is,” said Lithuanian star Arvydas Sabonis.

Needless to say, he also dominated the Greek club league, both domestically and in international club play.

His personal scoring record in one game was 62 points, achieved in a Greek League game in 1981

He played 13 seasons with Aris, winning eight Greek titles, five Greek Cups, one Korac Cup (1985) and also making three EuroLeague Final Four appearances. Of the eight Greek titles, six were consecutive during which Aris put together a remarkable 80 game winning streak.

For those coaches who he came up against, most strategies to stop him proved futile. Former Nashua Den Bosh coach Rood Harrewain advocated locking Galis in the dressing room before the game, while Wojeck Krajowski of Lech Poznan looked to a higher power: “Before the game we made our plans on how we will stop the four players of Aris,” he said following a European club competition game. “For Galis, we made our prayers…

Greece Basketball, the Current Era

After Galis retired, Greece basketball receded slightly for a few years, but by the mid to late 90s the team was again among the best teams in the world as all the teenagers inspired by Galis came into prominence.

Over the last 15 years, Greece has consistently placed in the top 6 teams of the world and has been especially strong recently.

World Championships: 90 (6th), 94 (4th), 98 (4th), 06 (2nd)

European Championships: 87 (1st), 89 (2nd), 91 (5th), 93 (4th), 95 (4th), 97 (4th), 03 (5th), 05 (1st), 07 (4th)

Olympics: 96 (5th), 04 (5th)

In 2005, they again won the European Championship and in 2006, they had their biggest victory ever when they beat the USA in the semi-finals of the World Championships.

This was a bit of a shock to a US team that has not otherwise lost since the 2004 Olympics. Unlike the 2000 and 2004 teams, Team USA 2006 had real stars (james, wade, etc) and a good coaching philosophy.

Greece beat them with solid defense, non-stop pick and roll and great 3 point shooting.

Video highlights of that Game are here

ESPN on that game

Greece Basketball 2008 and beyond

Going into the Olympics, Greece is probably the 3rd best team after the USA and Spain. Spain has has been a massive thorn in Greece's side recently, beating them for the world title in 2006, the euro championships in 2007 and the Olympic group play.

Good overview of the Olympic teams is here.

All three teams should advance from group play, though it is going be tough going in the knock-out phase since all three top teams are in the same bracket.

The future of Greek basketball should remain solid regardless. Greece recently won the under 18 European championships and at the Club level, Greece has 2 of the best teams in Europe, Olympiakos and Panathiniakos, both of which are NBA-caliber teams.

Olympiakos recently made waves by signing away Josh Childress from the Hawks and rumored to be making a run at Lebron James in 2010.

So this remains to me a great example of how passion for a sport has transformed a country. There is no logical reason why a country of 10 million that is not particularly tall should be consistently a top 6 team against countries with 50,60,200, 300 million, 1.2 billion people. But that is hoop dreams I guess...As the NY Times said:

The Greek basketball team could be considered the Hoosiers of the Adriatic, with no players currently in the N.B.A. The team’s success, including a silver in the 2006 world championship, has been predicated on its ability to play together.

I will close with this very funny quote about the Lebron rumors.

I imagine that most of you out there doubt that the club is ready to pony up the sort of paper necessary to tempt LBJ. If my time living in Greece taught me anything, however, it’s that wealthy Hellenes are, almost without exception, passionate to the point of eccentricity. Consequently, I wouldn’t put anything past the Aggelopoulos (an-ghell-op-oo-loss) brothers, the billionaire owners of Olympiakos and two of the biggest hoopheads in Greece, a country where basketball is the national sport and "friendly" discussions thereof regularly lead to felony assaults.

Talking of which, it’s difficult to convey the place hoops holds in Greek culture with mere words, but a brief anecdote should give you some idea. Last week, I stayed in the Piraias suburb of Athens at my aunt’s place, a small, square house about five minutes from the “Peace and Friendship Stadium” in which Olympiakos play. Seeing the spotless interior of the house, I asked my aunt why they hadn’t painted over the numerous graffiti that scarred the front of the building. She pointed out that some of the scribblings had, in fact, been covered with whitewash, although the largest one was left untouched. I again asked why that was.

She explained that fans of Panathinaikos, a rival club, had painted their motto on the house, but before they could get rid of it an Olympiakos group had covered it with their own. Being Olympiakos die-hards themselves, they decided to leave the façade as it was. Not only was my fifty-five-year-old aunt fan enough to leave her home adorned with a crudely-drawn Olympiakos logo and several curse-filled exhortations, but she was also able to name Scoonie Penn, Qyntel Woods and Roy Tarpley as former players. Before I could retrieve my jaw from the lemon-scented floor of the cramped kitchen, she went on to detail the various reasons Josh Childress would have difficulties adapting to Euroleague defences. Then she cooked calamari. With six million more like her in the city, it’s no wonder Greek club owners are willing to dig deep to bring big names on board, even knowing that they’ll likely never recoup their investment.

Articles referenced are here: wikipedia, FIBA, Hopesvibe

Day in the Countryside in Pissouri

Warning: this post is way off-topic, will only make sense if you played H-O-R-S-E as a kid, and, yes, I am making fun of myself. Last Sunday, my father, Elena and I took a drive around the Limassol and Pissouri area. After losing about 11 gallons of water from walking around in the sun, we stop in at the vacation home of a family friend to rehydrate before going home. This was a classic nice Cypriot second home – the small vineyard, the vegetable garden, the swimming pool and the olive-trees and hills in the background.

And also a basketball hoop. And a basketball.

I am 33 years old, I am out of shape, I apparently have patellar tendinitis and am expressly banned from basketball right now, it is 175 degrees outside in the shade, and I am supposed to chit-chat with the adults. So of course, 10 minutes later I am challenging the grandson, Leonidas, to a game of H-O-R-S-E. What can I say?

Leo is 16 and plays in the German First Division. I have no idea what that means, but the kid was automatic at mid-range – I don’t think I saw him miss all day from 12 feet or less – and pretty damn good everywhere else. His friend and sister also want to play.

So, to recap, I am about to play H-O-R-S-E against two 16 year old boys and a 12 year old girl.

Game 1 is won by Leo, though there is a bit of confusion about the rules which leads to me and Leo shooting the same bank shot about 15 times in row until I missed it. Game 2, I am stuck behind Leo in the rotation which means I am wiped out of the game before he even has a letter.

My father has wandered off to car because he is ready to leave. B-ball friends of mine already know what comes next: “hey, Leo, how about one more game”.

This time I avoid Leo in the rotation so he quickly clears out his friend and sister and it is down to Leo and me, both with no letters. We trade “H”s after a few minutes, but I am in trouble. If we stick to mid-range jumpers, Leo is going to crush me. I am shooting my brains out and just holding even.

So I start encouraging Leo to do funkier stuff under the theory that I am at least as good at the funky stuff as he will be.

BAD IDEA.

Over the next 5 minutes I rack up an “O”, “R” and “S” as Leo throws down a ‘lefty’ jumper, a Kareem free-throw line hook shot and a 3 feet behind the backboard all net.

My last chance for redemption is not going well at all. it is H-O-R-S vs. H, I am one miss from elimination and Leo is channeling Steve Alford. I consider trashtalking but given the cheering section of his grandmother, his father, his mother and his baby sister, that seems out of bounds. So I gamble that I can lure him out of his range where my 60 extra pounds, some of which could be muscle, might help.

What follows is 30 minutes of some of the finest H-O-R-S-E Pissouri has seen this summer.

I am en fuego which I need to be to hold the line on the edge of survival against the Cypriot-German shooting robot. At one point, he makes me hit 3 in a row from the top of the key to stay alive. I claw back with instant vacation home classics - 18 footer baseline jumper angled behind the backboard on the side of the swimming pool, 16 footer on your toes with your heels hanging over the edge of the pool, 23 footer across the corner of pool.

Eventually we are tied at H-O-R-S, I am drenched with sweat, my father is tired of waiting and is clipping grapes from the vineyard and Leo hits a “toss the ball ahead of you and pick it up into a MJ fadeaway jumper.”

This is a problem. This shot involves actual jumping and the last time I did that in June my knee exploded in pain. So when faced with setting back my recovery 6 weeks or conceding H-O-R-S-E to a 16 year-old, I clearly make the smart choice. I toss the ball, jump and fade away, fall off-balance, crush and break the lightpost on the driveway and look up to see the shot go in. As I apologize to his grandmother, it crosses my mind that I ought to be past the phase in my life where I break peoples' property during sports.

But my knee feels good and I still haven’t lost and so the high-stakes shooting goes on.

Finally, I hit the 24 foot off center jumper from outside the court on the stone walkway that I had been trying and missing all day. Leo rims it out and that’s it. (In fairness, that he nails that exact shot seconds later.)

So I thank Leo for the most fun hour of sports I've had in a while and for being totally unflappable and gracious. And his grandmother for not making me feel badly about breaking her house and for giving me ice cream. And his father for giving me a dry shirt to wear afterward.

And there is no way I am playing Leo when he is 17 and has another 2 feet of range because he will destroy me.

Field Report - First Take: Canon Elph 950 IS

Background: Last week, I finally replaced my beat-up 3 year old digital Canon Elph. This camera has been around the world to beaches and bars, crushed in my pocket, my laptop bag and god knows where else and was starting to get quite flaky.

I have historically used the Canon Elphs as my "fun" cameras - they fit in a jacket pocket or, in a pinch, in jeans and therefore can more or less always be kept around for casual photos - parties, going out, business trips - on occasions when I am just simply not going to pull out the full set of SLR gear which encompasses a bag of stuff and is generally unwieldy.

To bring myself up a generation, I purchased the top-of-the-line Elph, the 950 IS ($329 at Amazon) and 2 x 8 GB each of fast Sandisk Extreme III secure digital cards ($53 each at Amazon). These cards are both large and have a high transfer speed, speeding you up between shots, which you will want with this camera.

Key specs

A couple of things to point out with the camera and then to the field report:

a) 12.1 MB DIGIC III sensor. To me this is the most remarkable thing about the camera. A 12.1MB sensor was the top of the pro-line, $8,000 camera sensor until a couple of years ago with Canon. 10 years ago, it probably would have cost $50,000 and only existed in very specialized commercial cameras. Now it is sitting in my point and shoot. (Yes, it is not exactly the same sensor that was in the SLRs; it is smaller, but it is still remarkable)

The Digic III refers to the third generation of Canon sensors which is the current class and is superior to the prior classes on topics like color rendition, dynamic range, etc. They are currently rolling it through their camera line and not even all their SLRs have it. The 950 is the only Elph to have it as of the time of this post I believe.

b) ability to record unlimited (except by your SD card) 640x480 video at 30 frames per second or 1024 x 768 video at 15 frames per second (this is close to 720p resolution, the lower end of HD; the frame rate at this resolution is below TV standard however)

c) Canon's image stabilization (IS), another feature derived from its SLR line, that allows you to handhold the camera in lower light conditions without a flash (it adds 2 to 3 stops for the technical geeks).

d) "Auto-ISO" - A feature I have never used before. Digital cameras can adjust the ISO (light sensitivity) of the sensor to allow you to shoot in less light without a flash at the cost of some graininess. Auto-ISO does this automatically on a shot-by-shot basis to give you the lowest ISO that will allow you to handhold. Great feature.

So now in the $450 total spending range we are rolling with what is, for today's standard, a full tricked out compact digital point and shoot.

Field Test Conclusions:

On my way to Cyprus, I had a layover in Warsaw for 8 hours and an old friend of mine was kind enough to show me around the Old Town and let me amuse myself. These comments are the results from this test. I shot how the average reader will (or at least should) shoot a camera like this: full auto-mode, with auto-ISO mode on, digital zoom and flash turned off for the outdoor shots.

So how did it do?

Overall, I was completely blown away by the camera.

Autofocus, exposure metering and resolution are, quite frankly, SLR caliber. Color rendition and dynamic range are very good, not quite SLR quality, but incredible for a point and shoot. The fact that this camera is $300-something is a testament to the ferocious effect computing is having on photography. Many of these capabilities were high-end pro-level just a few years ago.

At this stage, the main thing that will hold a camera like this back from SLRs is optics (the lenses) and that is a hard hurdle to pass, given that there is only so much light you can capture from a lens the size of a fingernail.

But unless you plan to pick up photography as a hobby and actually study and practice, go buy this camera, read a book on composition and leave the rest of the heavy lifting to the camera. It will do a better job on focusing and metering than you will.

Details and photo gallery follow.

Detailed Camera Conclusions:

Pros:

• Superb auto-exposure metering, better than my film SLR. I think this has something to do with it - I actually thought it felt "neural" in its decision-making.

  iSAPS Technology is an entirely original scene-recognition technology developed for digital cameras by Canon. Using an internal database of thousands of different photos, iSAPS works with the fast DIGIC III Image Processor to improve focus speed and accuracy, as well as exposure and white balance.

• Awesome detail with the 12 MB sensor. This will be a subject of a different post, but a lot of commentators are doing readers a disservice by saying pixels don't matter. The difference between 7MB and 8MB is in fact irrelevant, but the difference between 5MB or 6MB and 12MB is highly noticable
• Very good color balance and saturation. Not quite SLR standards but blows away anything I have seen from a camera that fits in my pocket
• Auto-ISO is one of the coolest features I have seen in a while. That plus image stabilization allowed me to shoot flash-free, outside well into dusk. Auto-ISO + IS was a bit over-optimistic about what it could accomplish in scenes with motion but this is a quibble
• Shoots great video for web / online video. It is not remotely comparable to a $1,000 HD prosumer video camera that can shoot really nice 1080 HD but given that this is a "side feature" of a camera a 1/3rd the price of the aforementioned video camera, still very cool

"Cons":

These are not cons in a conventional sense for a digital point and shoot. This is me now just comparing it to an unfair standard - a digital SLR - that is a different class of camera (and that can't fit in your pocket!)

• Lack of ability to change lenses and get great telephoto or wide angles
• While much faster than my old Elph, still much slower between shots than a digital SLR. It is not the best for action shots
• You still won't get the color pop and 3-dimensionality you will get with an SLR nor the equivalent smoothness that a $3,000 12MP SLR has. Realistically, most users won't notice, but a fine arts photographer will

Gallery:

Go here: http://pix.polemitis.com/gallery/5354521_tbx7u to see actual images and video with commentary.

Conclusion:

Buy this camera now if you need a point and shoot, whether you are a serious or non-serious photographer. It is a break-through camera in point and shoots.

Unless you get into serious SLR photography you won't need another camera until it breaks. And there is no technical excuse why everyone can't take at least a decent looking photo with this camera.

Next field test will come after I have had a chance to play with my friend's newish Rebel (the entry level Canon digital SLR). I look forward to seeing how that does.