Term Limits for the Olympic team

[hussybulldog]

We put term limit for the politicians for a good season which can’t be applied here. It makes more sense to put term limit on the coaches than the athletes! Now that Geno has been replaced by Dawn, I guess there should not be any complaints on that either ... this term limit on athletes is just too politically correct!

 

[meyers7]

I might add that unlike most I see the Olympics as little more than a marketing event that exploits nationalistic fervor while enriching construction companies while bankrupting many of the nations whose leaders put tens of billions in debt on the backs of their citizens. I'd much rather see the Olympics ban any display of flags on their grounds and return the games to their original purpose which was to identify and honor the best athletes. In my Olympics any group of say, 10, could form a basketball team and try to qualify for the games through qualifying tournaments. Instead of allowing any nation to field a team, no matter how marginal they are, the competition would actually feature the best players in the world and those watching could honor the winners instead of participating in jingoistic chanting.

Rant over.

While I understand you disdain, your solution is silly. At least for team sports. In your Olympics, there would be a tournament between Houston Rockets, Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors, San Antonio Spurs, Minnesota Timberwolves, Milwaukee Bucks, Indiana Pacers, Denver Nuggets, Washington Wizards, and Detroit Pistons. And why bother, when we can just watch the NBA. Same goes for every other sport where leagues exist.

 

[geneticrex]

It should be merit based.

PERIOD!!!

 

[Orangutan]

It should be merit based.

PERIOD!!!

Great, when does that start!?

 

[Alydar]

While I understand you disdain, your solution is silly. At least for team sports. In your Olympics, there would be a tournament between Houston Rockets, Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Cavaliers, Toronto Raptors, San Antonio Spurs, Minnesota Timberwolves, Milwaukee Bucks, Indiana Pacers, Denver Nuggets, Washington Wizards, and Detroit Pistons. And why bother, when we can just watch the NBA. Same goes for every other sport where leagues exist.

Why should the players be limited to their pro teams? Let players form their own teams without the limitation of national borders. Sure, there would be a predominance of US players on the teams but IMO that's the way it should be, a showcase for the best athletes in the world. Instead, what we have a showcase of the best athletes in each country. Hell, why shouldn't Kenyans dominate long distance running. If the best 6 or 10 marathon runners are Kenyans they should all get a shot at medals.
The Olympics didn't emphasis are even include team sports. I'm not an expert in the history. But the best athletes should be in the Olympics, and if they all live in Mongolia then let them all compete. Wouldn't Olympic basketball be more exciting with the 150 best players in the world involved instead of it being a series of blowouts because 70-80 of the best players are excluded just because they happen to live in the same country? Like I said above, the Olympics has replaced it's original purpose, a celebration of the best athletes , and turned it into a orgy of nationalistic loyalties. That might disappear if the starters of a gold medal winning women's basketball team was composed of three US players, a Russian and a Spaniard. I mean, no anthem? And what would would be the chant? What would the T shirts have on them?

 

[ndmb]

This idea only comes about when you’re winning all the time. As soon as the team lost a game, everyone would realize that you needed to have the best players.

The selection committee should consider longevity as one of many factors. If the 12th slot is between a 40 year old and a 20 year old, I would hope they would recognize that selecting the 20 would help down the road.

This

 

[Alydar]

This

I think the committee has done a good job of bringing in young talent.

Let's be honest, the whole issue here is that 1/3 of the players are Huskies. From the Favor article:

Most every team we send to an international tournament ends up whipping opponent behinds by huge margins. The average cushion of victory in Rio last year was somewhere between outrageous and embarrassing. It has been like watching National Champions play community colleges, these last several Games.

Sound familiar? It's the United States ruining women's Olympic basketball, only in this case they really do get most of the best players.

 

[Alydar]

Wasn't Sue Favor one of those who were crying that Parker should have been on the team? And hadn't Parker at that point already won 2 gold medals? So where was Sue with her "take turns" argument then? I don't remember Sue suggesting that Catchings and/or Parker step aside for some younger player(s)

I'm not sure but I think Sue's orange slip is showing.

 

[bags27]

This is such an interesting issue: team sports, in which participants are picked by a committee based on what's best for the team, vs. individual sports in which the individuals compete directly against each other and are chosen simply by best performance. (I realize that neither is always the case, but more-or-less).

We don't mind those in individual sports dominating Olympic slots, because they've proved that they are the best. But we wonder whether in team sports, where we could win with a variety of different participants, that we might want to share the wealth.

 

[RSHERMVIKES]

I think it's awesome that the older players still treasure what performing for your flag and country means!
The older players such as Sue Bird and Diana Taurasi, can certainly use the time off to recuperate from the tolls the WNBA and Overseas wars take on their bodies but they are honored and proud to put the USA on their chest tax their bodies more to show the world that Americans can be athletically and patriotically dedicated to their nation!

 

[nwhoopfan]

I think there is a bit of a catch 22--the committee seems to value international/Olympic experience quite a bit, but it's been impossible for many players to gain that experience because a handful of players have dominated the roster for the last 10-15 years.

I'm not quite sure about Bird and Taurasi, but I want Whalen and Augustus out. The current selection process is for 2018 World Cup, correct? But I wonder how much change there will be from the World Cup team to the Olympic team in '20. Seems like '18 would be a good opportunity to bring in some new players and get them some experience before the next Olympics happen.

 

[UConnNick]

There's no math to determine that player A, ranked by humans or computer, is better than player B. This is not science. Given the large pool of very good players, who can demonstrate that taking turns is a deficit?

That's ridiculous. Given that stance, just make up a list of 200 players, put their names on lottery ping pong balls and pick 15 out of a hopper. Do away with the selection process entirely. No tryouts, no practices, no warm up exhibition games. And you think that will always result in putting our best possible team on the court? That's insane.

Yes, there is some subjective thought process that goes into the selection process, but that's true of almost everything. You live with those slight imperfections, but you don't throw away the entire selection process.

 

[MilfordHusky]

Good post! I was really perplexed by the Lebanon reference until...

That Lebanon reference was Bologna.

 

[MilfordHusky]

I think the best should go to the Olympics. Some of the all-time greats are recognized because of longevity: Edwin Moses, Carl Lewis, Alexander Karelin, Paavo Nurmi, et al. Whether it's team sports or individual sports, I don't like the idea of a limit.

 

[psconn]

Great, when does that start!?

 

[SVCBeercats]

There's no math to determine that player A, ranked by humans or computer, is better than player B. This is not science. Given the large pool of very good players, who can demonstrate that taking turns is a deficit?

Coaches such as Geno Auriemma and the USA selection committee. They establish the type of team, players, skill level, chemistry, team system, experience, etc. What USA basketball does is go with tried and true winners and a subset of young players who have had success winning and playing in winning programs that provide a real understanding of basketball. Will they make a mistake or two? Yeah. But goal is to win and so far USA basketball has a very good track record. Sorry only many brass rings to go around.

 

[LadyVols9]

Yes, term limits. I don't care if it's a LV or a UCONN player. we have enough talent for limits. more than a select group of players should be able to represent our country. there is enough talent and gold to go around.

 

[CocoHusky]

That's ridiculous. Given that stance, just make up a list of 200 players, put their names on lottery ping pong balls and pick 15 out of a hopper. Do away with the selection process entirely. No tryouts, no practices, no warm up exhibition games. And you think that will always result in putting our best possible team on the court? That's insane.
Yes, there is some subjective thought process that goes into the selection process, but that's true of almost everything. You live with those slight imperfections, but you don't throw away the entire selection process.

What is ridiculous and insane is how you suddenly jumped right to a pool of 200. The current pool of players for the World Cup is set at 29. 15 random ping pong balls chosen from a pool of 29 would be entirely practical & might remove some of the subjectivity.

 

[drweo]

It's not that the roster is dominated by UConn players. It's that the roster has been dominated by the same players for a long time. Whalen & Augustus would be two non-UConn examples. I wish some of them would retire from international play though they should by no means feel obliged to.

Bird and Taurasi are legitimate living legends but if they are on the team again in 2020...

I feel like we're getting to a point where a whole generation of guards has been completely blocked from the national team. You could say it's up to them to be better and force their way into the team. But Vandersloot has been better (statistically, at least) than Whalen and Bird in recent seasons and eventually saw the writing on the wall and started playing for Hungary. Diggins didn't get picked for 2014 worlds after an all-WNBA season

It's a lot harder to get a spot on the team than to keep it. It seems like favoritism hiding behind the guise of "experience".

Hmmm. Worth contemplating....

 

[UConnNick]

What is ridiculous and insane is how you suddenly jumped right to a pool of 200. The current pool of players for the World Cup is set at 29. 15 random ping pong balls chosen from a pool of 29 would be entirely practical & might remove some of the subjectivity.

Perhaps, but the post I responded to was advocating for random selection with no basis on a selection process because it was argued that metrics are inconsequential. Isn't the pool of players for the World Cup based on some selection process? It seemed to me that the post I responded to advocated throwing out the selection process completely, so you can't have it at one stage but not another, because there would be some bias or subjectivity that went into picking those 29 players. So, whether your total pool is 200, 100 or 29, there's still no way you've selected the best possible team if you just draw numbers out of a hat.

Randomly selecting a different set of 15 players every four years is like handing out participation trophies in non-competitive youth sports leagues.

 

[geneticrex]

Great, when does that start!?

Tuesday.

 

[Wbbfan1]

Best Players that Form the Best Team Should be on the Olympic Team. If the best player is 50 years old he/she should be on the team.

Can you imagine the Media/Fan's Outcry if the USA lost an Olympic Game and didn't win the Gold Medal. The first reaction would be, it wouldn't happen if player(s) were on the team and not excluded because of Term Limits. The Elite Basketball players play in the NBA/WNBA for 12 years, then why shouldn't they be on the Olympic Team if they're still one of the Elite Players.

Yes, Sue Favor Bleeds Orange as she is a Lady Vol fan and doesn't like Geno and UConn.

 

[Intpseeker]

If you are changing things to right this egregious practice of taking the best team players, why decide to arbitrarily allow a player to go to two Olympics?

One and done in every sport, not just WBB, so every man and woman can have a chance to participate.

No gold, silver or bronze medals. Plastic for everyone.

 

[chj001]

But the best athletes should be in the Olympics, and if they all live in Mongolia then let them all compete.

Tell that to Phil Mickelson and dozens of other US golfers ranked in the top 50 in the world who couldn't play in Rio because they limited the US to 4 golfers. Mickelson was, I believe, ranked 19 in the world at the time and had to watch golfers play from Indonesia or some such place ranked 500th or worse.

 

[wire chief]

A) Players are objectively better or worse than each other. If we could do a statistically large sample of games, you could identify the best combination of players.
B) Obviously, in a real life case, there's no way to do that. But, as long as the estimation of the selection committee of what is best for both the short and long term success of the Olympic team is even slightly better than chance, then taking turns will come at a deficit to performance.

Sorry, but I blanch at the "objectivity" label. It's useful, of course for the 100 yard dash et al, but less so for team sports.
Look, I'm as much a homer as the next chap and love to see UConn players in the Olympics.
I have no problem with the article, until the overly large consideration of a ton of college players. They must be used sparingly.

But it is just not accurate to see specific players etched in stone. Now you write of a formula to identify "best players", but then you speak of combos. That's a different dimension. So, e.g, Candace Parker is a "best player', and she contributes for gold medals, Then she doesn't, and the team is successful nonetheless
Decision: CP=Best Player; but not in combo.

Now Dawn comes along to put her stamp on. Who will predict what she sees?