Events

Basketball

October 1, 2000

Gold Medal Match: USA vs. France

Despite a fairly lackluster performance, the USA team won the game and the gold medal. I was reasonably unimpressed with their play and their conduct was not terrifically becoming of representatives of my country. On the medal stand, they gave little respect to anyone else, they made jokes and took pictures while they were up there.

The only bright point of the game was during the second half there were a couple of pretty good dunks that riled up the crowd. Other than that, the game was actually kind of boring.

One bright point came after the medal ceremony. I had seen one of the players point to an area of the crowd while on the stand (yet another show of no respect for the ceremony) and it looked like a wives / family section. As they were getting off of the medal stands, I saw two girls run down to be next to the court. I followed suit and went further, getting a position down on the court, in front of this section of the stands. Before I knew what was going on, I was surrounded by the players and quickly by the photographers as well. I wasn't quite sure how that had happened, but I raised my camera and just shot as many pictures as I could.