Ready for the World

Maybe it's because this is the time of year where sports is at it's most boring, when aside from baseball there is nothing else to really follow on a daily basis, but I'm pretty fired up right now about USA Basketball. For some reason I always get pretty excited about Team USA. Maybe partly it's because I actually get to root for the guys who routinely punish the Sixers and make me wish they were on my squad, but I think more than that I just want to see us pee on the rest of the world in a sport that I love to play and watch.

I feel like aside from myself and JP, no one else pays enough attention to Team USA. During the 2004 Olympics in Athens, I felt that we were the only two Americans that were even routing for us to win. I can remember having heated message board battles in our now defunct True Players fantasy baseball league with guys who routed against us because they didn't like the way USA played, or the NBA, or some other petty reason. So I guess all of those quislings were pretty effing happy when we lost to Argentina in the Semi's and had to settle for the bronze, but I was pretty annoyed. (As a side note, I still haven't forgiven Nocioni for his dirty attempt to under Marbury in the 2nd half of that game. Total bitch move).

This year, and 2008 in China will be different though. The squad assembled - even without Iveson which is ridiculous - is filthy. Again - it's filthy. Lebron and Wade are the 2 biggest stars, although everything I'm reading is how nasty Carmelo has been out in Vegas, so it wouldn't surprise me if he's the leading scorer when the team heads to Asia. We've also got Chris Paul, Arenas, Elton Brand, and a recovering Amare Stoudemire. Oh, did I mention Kobe Bryant? Well the Mamba will be in Beijing also, but he's currently recovering from a recent knee surgery operation. Yeah, he averaged 35 ppg last year. Even being an anti-Duke guy, I think Coack K, with the help of Mike D'Antoni, is the perfect coach to get these guys to mesh. So I'm looking forward to putting on NBA TV in a few weeks and watching us punish some of these other countries who think we're vulnerable after our last two international showings.

So as I was reading about the finalized Team USA roster I saw that Shawn Marion had to withdraw because of a knee injury. I'm a Shawn Marion fan so I clicked on his espn.com page and noticed that he is 28 years old just like me and it got me thinking...who else tight is the same age is me? Here's the list that I came up with:

Coolest People My Age

Shawn Marion, Josh Hartnett, Nelly Furtado (28 in Dec), Kobe Bryant (28 in Aug), Kanye West (Just turned 29 last month which means we were both 28 for a few months - I'm counting him), Riquelme, Thierry Henry, Ashton Kutcher, Topher Grace, and Tom Brady. I had trouble finding cool, ridiculously good looking models, actresses, music artists that were 28. They all seemed to be either 23 or 33. If anyone can think of anyone to commemorate the class of 1996 let me know.