In the game vs. Crawford Palmer's French Olympic team last night, Vince
Carter dunked over that 7-2 stiff Frederic Weiss the Knicks drafted a couple of
years ago, and there's a picture
to prove it.
Lost in the hubbub, though, is the fact that the French only lost by
12. Palmer cut it down to 10 with four minutes to go.
Jason Kidd said that that was the greatest play he had ever seen, and
that Michael Jordan had never done it, no one had done it, which is probably
true, but for our money, we'll take David Thompson's aerial in the 74 tourney:
Billy Knight was coming down the floor for who, Pitt? Anyway, 6-7 Phil Spence
was closing, and 6-3 /12 DT came running up behind him and tried to jump over
him to block Knight's shot. He caught his feet in his armpits, spun in mid-air,
and landed on his neck. Everyone thought he was a dead man. His feet
must have been six feet off the floor. Keep in mind that all 3 players
were running full speed, and that Weiss, while 7-2, was standing still pretty
much.
There's no question that Carter is a freak, but there's also no question that
this team is riding for a fall. It's one thing for the Lithuanians to push them,
another entirely for the French to do so. The French? Since when
did they stay on a court with NBA players?
What happens in the medal round when Lithuania, Australia, or whoever pushes
this team and the crowd swings and the pressure mounts? There's absolutely
no guarantee that this group has the stones to stand up to it. They're winning,
but they're hardly dominant, and the other teams have no reason to be scared of
anything other than ending up on a poster. They're still the favorites, but the
difference between this group and say Jordan's is that Jordan would never, ever
allow another team to even entertain the thought that they could win. Go
into the last 2 minutes with a 1-2 point game, and who knows? Who would you turn
to in this group in that case?