NO DREAM-Y RECEPTION IN SYDNEY: USA TODAY's David
DuPree writes the Dream Team "has become the team everyone
loves to hate. ... This can-do-no-right team is playing its
NBA-style game ... [and] their in-your-face style is often
misinterpreted as arrogance or disrespectful in the
international game" (USA TODAY, 9/29). In Chicago, Fred
Mitchell writes U.S. men's basketball team member Vince
Carter "is booed and jeered during virtually every game"
(CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 9/29). In N.Y., Richard Wilner writes the
team is "certain" to leave Sydney with the Gold, but
"they'll also leave with the reputation of being the most
overpaid, under-achieving disinterested Olympians ever."
Wilner: "It's not just Australians in the stands who hope to
see the United States get beat. A great many U.S. reporters
following the team want to see it happen, too." Wilner
blames the loss of support on both the team's "half-hearted
playing" and the fact that the "players' attitudes are a
problem" (N.Y. POST, 9/29). ESPN.com's David Aldridge wrote
to the Dream Team critics: "You know, shut up, already. ...
You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a rotten guy in the
whole bunch that's down in Sydney. ... I cannot help but
notice that the only time the attitudes of American athletes
come up, it's in discussion of sports where African-American
males are the predominant group" (ESPN.com, 9/28).
NOTES: In Sydney, Michael Evans writes that Olympic
organizers "face being left with" $6.6M in unsold tickets to
the closing ceremony, with up to 9,000 seats still unsold
"just days before the event." Evans: "Despite booming sales
during the Games, organizers have been forced to launch an
advertising blitz to sell the tickets, which have been among
the slowest moving of the Games" (SYDNEY MORNING HERALD,
9/28)....Some speculate that Bejing's chances to host the
2008 Games "have been hurt because poor ratings for NBC ...
will make the network push for a host that shares the same"
time zone as the U.S. But TO 2008 bid leader John Bitove
said, "The NBC angle is overplayed" (TORONTO SUN, 9/29).
