00:00World Cup finalists today, Argentina and Spain, and you're going to have all the luminaries there.
00:05The president is going to be there also watching the final there.
00:09Hey, you know, we had Michelle Kaufman on with us a couple weeks ago, and I asked her if she
00:15thought that President Trump was a distraction to the U.S. men's team with that whole scenario with the president
00:22of FIBA.
00:23Do you believe that that was also an issue, that was a distraction towards the Team USA?
00:30Without a case, I think that beyond where you land in the political spectrum, you should be isolating the national
00:36team from any type of discourse that happened outside of the tournament.
00:39Unfortunately, this became too much of an issue, and with the current state of politics and media in the country,
00:46it was harder for everyone to have an opinion.
00:48It was harder for everyone to chime in, and this is something that unfortunately put a lot of pressure on
00:53the best player for the U.S. national team.
00:55Valadun immediately became like this superhero that if he needed to, you know, have the intervention of the president of
01:03the United States to have him,
01:05because he was going to be a top, you know, difference maker for this game.
01:10Unfortunately, it was not the case. I think this is a player that was thrust into a situation that nobody,
01:15no professional wants to be in.
01:17You know how it is as a player. You know that if you commit a foul and it's a red
01:22card, you're going to have to skip the next game.
01:25It's a rule of the game. And just to be put in that situation, it will also provide an asterisk,
01:30right, to whatever result the U.S. national team was going to have in such an important game.
01:37And just very much like you do with the big guys, you don't poke the bird.
01:41And I think that's exactly what they did. They gave Belgium an incredible source of motivation and belief to prove
01:51that they were going to win no matter what.
01:53No matter what the people outside of the tournament was doing, the lawyers, the president, the media.
01:59And it was sad to see because at the moment, there was so much communion around the U.S. national
02:08team.
02:09So many people were getting behind it. People that I've known for years that rarely support the U.S. national
02:14men's team have been supporting the U.S. national men's team.
02:18And just to see all of that go away with just a statement on TV from the president saying, like,
02:24yes, that was me, I think it was hurting the team much more.
02:28And also, indeed, a lot of the progress that was done in those two weeks that was magical for the
02:35U.S. national team.
Comments
1