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The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.



The newest incarnation of Team USA was to be tested by the rich Venezeulan basketball tradition last night in their opening game in the FIBA Tournament of the Americas. And if you're like the people in Las Vegas, and uninterested enough to leave the arena half-empty last night ... don't worry, I've got you covered. Here's how things went down.

• We're about to tip things off here, and I'm gonna go ahead and judge the Venezeulan team's book by its cover ... these guys suck. I'm pretty sure that any of the teams in last year's NCAA Final Four would beat Team Venezuela.

• The play-by-play guy notes that LeBron James has "two bronze medals to his credit." "Credit" is an interesting word to use there. That's kind of like saying, "In two innings last night, Paul Shuey had 9 earned runs to his credit," or, "This off-season, Carson Palmer has one homoerotic hot dog advertisement to his credit."

• On their first possession, the Venezuelans run a series of screens at the top of the key, we go under every single one of them, and they get an open look. Good, I was hoping this would look like every other international game we've played over the last 10 years. They did miss, though, which was not unsuspected ... since they suck and all.

(Also at the bottom: ... 30-3 ... Yeah, that really happened ... Jonathan Papelbon would like to share a slutter with you ... Don't miss your chance to own a lethal piece of sports history ... and there must be some pretty bad football players at Sul Ross State University ... and it's a pretty good August evening for sports on TV ... )

• Venezeualan head coach Nestor Salazar looks less like a basketball coach than any other basketball coach on the planet. If Stan Van Gundy and Rick Majerus had a baby, and that baby was Venezuelan and clinically depressed, it would have grown up to be Nestor Salazar.

• Kobe Bryant is sweating Greivis Vasquez on D. He's all over this man. Vasquez is lucky to keep his dribble alive for more than 4 seconds at a time. Bruce Bowen is sitting at home, watching this and thinking, "Damn, Kobe, let the man breathe a little bit."

• An obvious goaltend against the Venezuelans isn't called. Who's reffing this game, Andrés Galarraga? These FIBA games are officiated extremely eratically ... I don't want to say they're officiated poorly, but the calls aren't good or consistent in any way. If David Stern wants us to forget about Tim Donaghy for a while, he should have these FIBA refs do the first two weeks of NBA games next season. We'll beg for Donaghy back.

• Hey, you know who isn't very good at basketball? Venezuelans.

• Kobe Bryant is in the floor with LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwight Howard, three of the ten most physically gifted basketball players on the planet ... and Kobe's standing out head and shoulders above them. He's setting the tone on defense, not allowing his man to keep the basketball, see the basket, dribble, or even breathe ... and he's orchestrating things on offense, just setting up Dwight Howard for an easy 2 on a pick-and-roll. I'm falling in love with Kobe Bryant. He wouldn't have to worry about "no means no" with me, because I'd never say it.

• I vote for Kobe saying, "Screw the Lakers," quitting the NBA all together, and playing full-time for Team USA. He could beat 80% of the nations in the world, 1-on-5.

• Granted, I don't get to see a lot of Milwaukee Bucks games, but Michael Redd's bald spot ... that thing is growing exponentially. Respect to Redd for not just shaving his head, though. So many others would have.

• Meanwhile, Redd, having just checked into the game, is wide open for a three-ball. The Venezuelan scouts have not been doing their job.

• Mike Miller's checked in along with him, and he still has the hair of a high school girls volleyball player with very low self-esteem. He clanks a couple of threes.

• Since Jason Kidd and Kobe Bryant checked out, the offense is struggling ... without those two, this looks a lot like any other version of Team USA over the last decade. Offensively, I'm not thrilled about things ... it's somewhat hard to tell how good we are tactically when we're physically superior to the Venezuelans at every single position, but without Kidd and Kobe ... Chauncey Billups is the only one on the floor right now who knows what he's doing.

• At the end of the first quarter, it's USA 21, and Venezuela 10 ... actually, wait, that's 10 turnovers. They have 8 points. It's 21-8. And I stand by my statement that any team in last year's NCAA Final Four would've beaten the Venezuelans.

• Kobe checks back in, and Kobe re-asserts himself as the dominant player on the floor. He's inside his man's jock on defense, forces a turnover, and creates a breakaway dunk for LeBron. The game changes so much when he's out there. It's somewhat ridiculous to watch ... he's on the floor with the best players in the world, and no one else out there comes close to his ability. He just has this presence ... an unspoken leadership that lets even a player like LeBron know that when Kobe's on the floor, LeBron's job is to fall back and be a good soldier. This is not unlike watching him with the Lakers. His running mates here are more capable, but they still know who's in charge.

• Jason Kidd's playing near that level, too, but he's playing a totally different game. The fact that that Kidd/Andrew Bynum trade never happened is an absolute travesty. It's a crime against basketball.

• Inclement weather has forced the satellite signal out for a bit ... stand by.

• We're back with about 3:00 to play in the half, the USA leading 48-26. I wouldn't have guessed that Venezuela would've had 26 points at this point. I'm guessing Kobe's been sitting.

• The USA shows a little zone D for the first time (at least, that I've seen). Venezeula immediately hits a three against it.

• This is already the third note I've made about hair, and I apologize for that, but it looks as if Amare Stoudamire had a mohawk at some point not too long ago, and it's in the process of growing out. This is not a good look unless you're starring in some kind of futuristic time travel movie.

• So, the USA forced 10 turnovers in the first quarter, and just 1 in the 2nd. They outscored the Venezuelans 21-8 in the 1st quarter, and just 33-26 in the 2nd. The USA is dominating the game because Venezuela is Venezuela, but I still think we'd be in trouble against an elite international squad right now. The only difference I see is that we've added Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd, and we're better because those two are so good.

• NBA Cares is running a commercial with Jamie Foxx, who wants me to get tested for HIV. I wasn't going to, but then the commercial ended with Samuel Dalembert dunking, and my junk started to itch. So I'm gonna go get that test. Thank you for caring, NBA.

• Dwight Howard with a ridiculous block. His man beat him cleanly to the basket, but Dwight realized that he could just turn around and block the poor little Venezuelan's shot anyway. I kind of feel bad for the guy. On just sheer athleticism, on a scale of 1-10 ... if Dwight Howard's a 10, the closest Venezuelan big is a 4. That doesn't seem fair.

• Jason Kidd is brilliant. Just brilliant. If the government ever decides to reverse their ban on human cloning, I think Kidd is the best place to start, because when he goes, we're not going to get another one like him. When we play better teams in this tournament, and the score is closer ... we're not going to be able to afford to have Kidd and Kobe not on the floor.

• The play-by-play guy suggests that every team in this tournament, the Virgin Islands included, believes they can win this tournament and qualify for the Olympics, saying that they have "Hallucinogenic optimism." Bill Walton jokes that he doesn't know what that means, but no one's buying it, Bill ... you know damn well what "hallucinogenic" means, better than 99.99% of the people on the planet.

• Team USA forces 8 turnovers in the 3rd quarter ... and we won that quarter 38-17.

• This just keeps happening ... Venezuela will get someone going to the basket, they'll work hard for a good shot, and then Dwight Howard or Amare Stoudamire will just come out of nowhere to erase it. That has to be getting really annoying for them.

• In the 4th quarter, defensively, Team USA is still getting after it. I like that. We force a shot clock violation, which gets Coach K up off his seat and applauding.

• Being that this game has been a blowout since the opening tip, Bill Walton is going off on a tangent about Donaghy, Michael Vick, all the ridiculous things that have happened this summer in sports. He says, "Forty years ago when I was a teenager, we had the summer of love. This is the summer of madness!" And you know, he's right ... Sometimes, I think we'd all be better off if Bill Walton was in charge. Michael Vick makes dogs fight, and instead of outrage and protest and prison sentences, we'd just get like 100 people to show up at his house, each of them hug him, get him high, drop some LSD, explain that dogs are beautiful creatures, and then we'd pet them and give them Snausages, and when they went to sleep, we'd all just take our clothes off and see where the night takes us. It's a better way to do things.



• I'm gonna wrap this up ... there's not much more I can tell you about this game, but I'm going to leave you with five things:

1. 1st quarter, Team USA forced 10 turnovers, won quarter 21-8.
2. 2nd quarter, Team USA forced 1 turnover, won quarter 33-26.
3. 3rd quarter, Team USA forced 8 turnovers, won quarter 38-17.
4. 4th quarter, Team USA forced 1 turnover, won quarter 20-18.
5. We're going to be playing teams that handle the ball much better than Venezuela.

It was fun, it was a blowout, and we're probably going to win the tournament because of the weak field, but ... this team is made different from previous versions of Team USA only because of the talents of Jason Kidd and Kobe Bryant. Other than that, I don't know that we've made a ton of progress.





You know, that's gotta be heavy. That guy's probably going to have some serious neck cramps tomorrow.






"We knew we were in trouble two weeks into the season with Tom Walsh. He had been running a bed-and-breakfast place, and he turned our offense into a smorgasbord. Come here for fumbles, picks, sacks or whatever. We lined that thing up and just got beat to death. I mean, my momma turned off Monday Night Football when we were in Seattle and I was having a good night. I called my momma the next day and said, 'I know you saw your boy clowning?'

"She said, 'No, baby. If I wanted to see somebody get killed, I'll watch Law and Order.' My mom never turns the TV off when her baby is on."

- Warren Sapp on last year with the Raiders (via USA Today)



Scottish People. Proving once again that "if it's not Scottish, it's crap," DaMarcus Beasley said yesterday that the only place he's played in Europe where he doesn't hear racist taunts is in Scotland. From the AP:

It's a small minority of fans, "but at the same time you get it everywhere," the 25-year-old Beasley said. "You get still get it in Spain. I got it in Belgrade (Serbia). I got it Montenegro and the Netherlands as well."

But not in Scotland.

"I haven't had it in Scotland," Beasley said. "Hopefully, at some point it will stop in other parts of Europe."

Alright ... way to be, Scotland. I saw a guy in a kilt last week at the supermarket. First time I had ever seen one ... it was totally random. And nothing else about the man suggested Scottish. He had like a Metallica t-shirt, tennis shoes ... and a kilt.

Anyway, I don't know that the man was Scottish, or if they wear kilts anywhere else, or he just felt like getting his boys some room to breathe, but ... if he was Scottish, now I wish I would've given him a big hug for not making monkey noises at DaMarcus Beasley.



Guys Who Got Cut From The Sul Ross State University Football Team. A guy who's almost 60 just beat you out for a roster spot. How's that make you feel, whippersnapper?

He got kicked off the football team before his senior year in his first college go-round ... and as it turns out, he's got a year of eligibility left. He used to play linebacker. Also, the guy is some kind of a superhuman 59-year-old. From the AP:

A longtime strength and conditioning coach at Nebraska, Oregon and Texas A&M, he's spent the last several years selling the Powerbase training system he invented. Clients include school systems and the military. His colorful life story includes being the son of a Battle of the Bulge survivor and having dabbled in gold mines and oil wells -- successfully.

Just a matter of time before he's nailing the head cheerleader.



Deserving Of Your Full Attention ...

It's a damn fine sports night for the middle of August ...

8:00, NFL Network. Football. 2007 IFAF World Championship, Japan vs. United States. If this has been on before, I've missed it ... but yeah, I want to watch the Japanese play football.
9:30, ESPN2. MLS. Chivas USA @ Los Angeles Galaxy. It's Mr. Beckham, live and in HD, and playing an entire game.
11:00, ESPN Classic. FIBA Americas Championship. United States vs. Virgin Islands. Just in case that Venezuela game was too close for you ...

Other Stuff ...

7:30, ESPN. Little League World Series. White Kids from some part of the United States vs. White Kids from some other part of the United States.
7:30, ESPN2. WNBA. Indiana Fever @ Connecticut Sun.
9:00, NBC. The Office. Product Recall.
8:00, FOX. NFL Preseason Football. Jacksonville Jaguars @ Green Bay Packers.