SPORTS
Saturday, August 6, 2016
East Oregonian
Page 3B
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Men’s Basketball
Many players to watch outside US team Rio could
prove that
Olympics are
too big to fail
By BRIAN MAHONEY
Associated Press
RIO DE JANEIRO —
From Kyrie to KD, DeMar to
DeMarcus, many players on the
U.S. Olympic men’s basketball
team are so well known to NBA
fans they can simply go by irst
names or nicknames.
The Americans have 12 NBA
players on their roster, headlined
by former MVP Kevin Durant
and featuring multiple All-Stars.
Kyrie Irving, DeMar DeRozan
and DeMarcus Cousins played on
the team that won the gold medal
two years ago in the Basketball
World Cup.
There are plenty more players
in the tournament who either are
familiar faces or could soon be.
There are a record 46 current
NBA players set to play in the
Olympics, the league said, along
with 18 more former players.
“We know that there are great
basketball players all over the
world,” U.S. coach Mike Krzyze-
wski said. “Over 20 percent of the
NBA is international now and so
there’s a deep respect for the game,
for the international game, and we
hope that we’ll be able to show that
respect in the matter in which we
play here in Rio de Janeiro.”
A look at some players to
watch when competition begins
Saturday:
DARIO SARIC , CROATIA.
The “will he or won’t he join the
76ers” questions were as frequent
as the losses last year in Philadel-
phia, but the team got good news
in July when the former lottery
pick signed with the 76ers . The
6-foot-10 forward played the
last two seasons with Turkish
team Anadolu Efes and looked
NBA-ready when he averaged
14 points and 10 rebounds while
winning MVP honors of the
Olympic Qualifying Tournament
that Croatia won to earn its spot
O
AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza, File
In this Sept. 6, 2014, ile photo, Croatia’s Dario Saric, right, drives the ball against France’s Boris
Diaw, center, and Joffrey Lauvergne during the World Cup Round of 16 match between Croatia
and France in Madrid, Spain.
in Brazil.
YI JIANLIAN , CHINA.
Once so highly regarded that he
was the No. 6 pick in the 2007
draft, Yi’s NBA career didn’t
amount to much. But he remains
a solid international player who
was the MVP of the FIBA Asia
championship last summer when
his team clinched its Olympic
berth, and the 7-footer scored 18
points in an exhibition game last
month against the U.S., China’s
opening opponent on Saturday.
GUILLERMO “WILLY”
HERNANGOMEZ , SPAIN.
The New York Knicks noticed
him while scouting Kristaps
Porzingis, who was playing for
the same professional team in
Spain. So they acquired the rights
to the 2015 second-round pick of
Philadelphia and signed him last
month so he could join the team
next season. In the meantime, the
6-10 center gets valuable experi-
ence playing for his country while
Marc Gasol is sidelined while
recovering from a broken foot.
BOGDAN BOGDANOVIC
, SERBIA. Not to be confused
with and not related to the simi-
lar-sounding Bojan Bogdanovic,
a Brooklyn Nets guard who plays
for Croatia. Bogdan Bogdanovic
could someday join him in the
NBA, as the Phoenix Suns own
his rights. He has chosen to
remain in Europe at least for
next season and showed the Suns
what they will be missing when
he had 26 points and eight assists
in the championship game of the
Olympic qualifying tournament
the Serbians won last month.
DOMANTAS SABONIS ,
LITHUANIA. The son of Hall
of Famer Arvydas Sabonis played
for Gonzaga and after being
drafted by Orlando in the irst
round was traded to Oklahoma
City in a deal for Serge Ibaka.
At 6-10, he could give the Lith-
uanians an imposing front line
alongside the 6-11 Jonas Valanci-
unas of the Toronto Raptors.
PATRICIO
GARINO
,
ARGENTINA. The San Antonio
Spurs have done pretty well with
an Argentine on their roster, and
they added another alongside Manu
Ginobili when they signed Garino
last month. The 6-7 swingman
scored 14.1 points per game last
season in helping George Wash-
ington win the NIT championship,
and playing for the Orlando Magic’s
summer league team averaged 12
points in three games.
Beach Volleyball
Brazil looms large on beach
By JIMMY GOLEN
Associated Press
AP Photo/David Goldman
Beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings, of the
United States, stands in the shade after a practice ses-
sion ahead of the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics
at the beach volleyball venue on Copacabana Beach in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, Aug. 2, 2016.
Friday’s Results
ARCHERY
Men’s Individual Ranking Round
1. Woojin Kim, South Korea, 700 (world record).
2. Brady Ellison, United States, 690.
3. David Pasqualucci, Italy, 685.
4. Sjef Van Den Berg, Netherlands, 684.
5. Atanu Das, India, 683.
6. Bonchan Ku, South Korea, 681.
7. Takaharu Furukawa, Japan, 680.
8. Jean-Charles Valladont, France, 680.
9. Chun-Heng Wei, Taiwan, 679.
10. Juan Ignacio Rodriguez Liebana, Spain, 678.
Also
15. Zach Garrett, United States, 674.
31. Jake Kaminski, United States, 660.
Men’s Team Ranking Round
1. South Korea (Woojin Kim; Bonchan Ku;
Seungyun Lee), 2057.
2. United States (Brady Ellison; Zach
Garrett; Jake Kaminski), 2024.
3. Italy (Mauro Nespoli; David Pasqualuc-
ci; Marco Galiazzo), 2007.
4. Australia (Alec Potts; Ryan Tyack; Taylor
Worth), 2005.
5. France (Jean-Charles Valladont; Pierre
Plihon; Lucas Daniel), 2003.
6. China (Xuesong Gu; Dapeng Wang; Yu
Xing), 1997.
7. Taiwan (Hao-Wen Kao; Chun-Heng Wei;
Guan-Lin Yu), 1995.
8. Spain (Miguel Alvarino Garcia; Antonio
Fernandez; Juan Ignacio Rodriguez Lieba-
na), 1986.
9. Netherlands (Sjef Van Den Berg; Rick
Van Der Ven; Mitch Dielemans), 1981.
10. Indonesia (Riau Ega Agatha; Hendra
Purnama; Muhammad Wijaya), 1962.
11. Brazil (Marcus D’almeida; Bernardo
Oliveira; Daniel Rezende Xavier), 1948.
12. Malaysia (Khairul Anuar Mohamad;
Haziq Kamaruddin; Muhammad Akmal Nor
Hasrin), 1945.
Women’s Individual Ranking Round
1. Misun Choi, South Korea, 669.
2. Hyejin Chang, South Korea, 666.
3. Bobae Ki, South Korea, 663.
4. Ya-Ting Tan, Taiwan, 656.
5. Tuiana Dashidorzhieva, Russia, 654.
6. Jiaxin Wu, China, 653.
7. Lucilla Boari, Italy, 651.
8. Alejandra Valencia, Mexico, 651.
9. Shih-Chia Lin, Taiwan, 651.
10. Kaori Kawanaka, Japan, 650.
Also
19. Mackenzie Brown, United States, 641.
Women’s Team Ranking Round
1. South Korea (Misun Choi; Bobae Ki;
Hyejin Chang), 1998.
2. Russia (Tuiana Dashidorzhieva; Ksenia
Perova; Inna Stepanova), 1938.
3. China (Hui Cao; Yuhong Qi; Jiaxin Wu),
1933.
4. Taiwan (Chien-Ying Le; Shih-Chia Lin;
Ya-Ting Tan), 1932.
5. Mexico (Aida Roman; Alejandra Valen-
cia; Gabriela Bayardo), 1922.
6. Italy (Guendalina Sartori; Claudia Man-
dia; Lucilla Boari), 1911.
7. India (Deepika Kumari; Bombayla Devi
Laishram; Laxmirani Majhi), 1892.
8. Ukraine (Veronika Marchenko; Anasta-
sia Pavlova; Lidiia Sichenikova), 1890.
9. Japan (Kaori Kawanaka; Yuki Hayashi;
Saori Nagamine), 1862.
10. Colombia (Carolina Aguirre; Ana Maria
Rendon; Natalia Sanchez), 1855.
11. Brazil (Sarah Nikitin; Ane Marcelle Dos
Santos; Marina Canetta), 1845.
12. Georgia (Khatuna Narimanidze; Kris-
tine Esebua; Yuliya Lobzhenidze), 1831.
RIO DE JANEIRO — Kerri Walsh
Jennings beat the Chinese in Beijing,
winning one of her three Olympic
beach volleyball gold medals in 2008
in front of a crowd rooting hard for
the hometown opponents.
That doesn’t come close to what
she can expect when the 2016 tour-
nament begins on Saturday at Rio de
Janeiro’s Copacabana Beach.
“The fact that we’re in one of
the Meccas of beach volleyball —
beach volleyball’s second to football
there — that’s nuts. It’s going to be
awesome,” Walsh Jennings said
recently as she prepared to attend her
ifth Olympic Games. “The whole
tournament’s going to be intense.”
A ive-time Olympian with three
gold medals, Walsh Jennings is rarely
an underdog when she steps on the
sand. But with a new partner, the
remnants of a shoulder injury and an
advancing age — she’s 37 — Walsh
Jennings could be facing her toughest
challenge yet.
Two Brazilian pairs enter the
tournament as the top two seeds,
including Agatha and Barbara, who
are the defending world champions.
The women on Brazil’s other team,
Larissa and Talita, have won Olympic
medals, though not together.
“I want to beat the best. I want to
be in the gold medal match playing
against the best,” said Walsh Jennings,
who is now teamed with April Ross
after Misty May-Treanor retired. “I
don’t care what country they’re from.
But yeah, the dream is to play the
best. The past couple of years Brazil
has certainly been the best, but I’m
prepared mentally to play anybody.”
OPENING: Greece, Refugees lead entry march
Continued from 1B
The show wasn’t all frivolous
and fun. Images showed swirling
clouds of carbon dioxide, a
greenhouse gas, in the Earth’s
atmosphere and images of world
cities and regions — Amsterdam,
Florida, Shanghai, Dubai —
being swamped by rising seas.
The peace symbol, tweaked into
the shape of a tree, was projected
on the loor of the stadium where
Germany won the World Cup in
2014.
“The heat is melting the
icecap,” a voice intoned. “It’s
disappearing very quickly.”
Before the show, in a video
broadcast, U.N. Secretary-Gen-
eral Ban Ki-moon said the
games “celebrate the best of
humanity” and appealed for an
Olympic truce, calling on “all
warring parties to lay down their
weapons” during the two weeks
of sporting achievement.
As well as a showcase for
Brazil’s history, culture, diversity
and hopes, the gala also repre-
sented a triumph, because there
were times after the International
Olympic Committee selected
Rio ahead of Chicago, Tokyo and
Madrid in 2009 when it seemed
that the city of 6.5 million people
might not get its act together
for the world’s greatest sporting
mega-event.
But with more than a dash of
“gambiarra,” the Brazilian art of
quick-ixes and making do, Rio
is ready.
Just.
The honor of declaring the
games open will fall to Michel
Temer,
Brazil’s
unpopular
interim president, standing in
for suspended President Dilma
Rousseff. Her ouster less than
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Former Brazilian tennis player Gustavo Kuerten arrives with
the Olympic lame during the opening ceremony for the 2016
Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday, Aug. 5, 2016.
four months out from the games
for alleged budget violations was
one of the many complications
that roiled Brazil’s Olympic
preparations and impacted the
opening ceremony itself. Fewer
than 25 foreign heads of state
were expected, with others
seemingly staying away to avoid
giving the impression of taking
sides amid Brazil’s leadership
uncertainty.
As Brazilian oficials took
their seats in the stadium, there
were shouts of “out with Temer”
from sections of the crowd.
Greece, the historical and
spiritual home of the games, led
the march by athletes from 205
nations and territories into the
stadium. They were being joined
by a irst-ever Refugee Olympic
Team of 10 athletes, displaced
from Syria, South Sudan, Congo
and Ethiopia. Their lag-bearer,
Rose Nathike Lokonyen, led
war in South Sudan and ran her
irst race in a refugee camp in
northern Kenya.
The athletes were being given
tree seeds, plus cartridge of soil.
When they sprout, they will be
planted in a Rio park.
Michael Phelps will lead the
U.S. team, the largest with 549
competitors. History’s greatest
Olympian will be looking to add
to his record haul of 22 medals,
in three individual swims plus
relays, before the Aug. 21 closing
ceremony.
After the grandeur of Beijing’s
opening ceremony in 2008 and
the high-tech, cheeky inventive-
ness of London’s in 2012, Rio’s
was earthier, less swish and
still inventive. Creative director
Fernando Meirelles said their
budget was slashed by half as
Brazil’s economic recession bit
ever harder.
He said he hoped that the
ceremony would still be “a drug
for depression in Brazil.”
n a corner outside the athlete’s
village, a soldier carrying an
automatic weapon tried his best
to keep from smiling as he posed for
a cameraman trying to put a face on
security at the Olympics.
All is not quite fun and games just yet
in Rio, though beleaguered organizers
are hoping that changes soon. Most
competitions begin
Saturday and, barring
a potential disaster, the
discussion may actually
turn from the problems
of Rio to sports from
badminton to basketball
in an extravaganza that
only the world’s biggest
Tim
sporting event can bring.
Dahlberg
It will happen in
AP Sports
a city of astonishing
beauty and incredible
poverty. It will happen despite worries
about everything from virus-carrying
mosquitoes to gun-toting criminals.
And it will happen with some athletes
eyeing each other carefully, not knowing
if the playing ield is truly level.
The Rio Olympics open with a lot
more at stake than gold medals and
national pride. Not since Los Angeles
rescued the troubled movement with a
stripped-down version of the games in
1984 has there been more trepidation
about the future of the massive sporting
event.
Some issues, like the Zika mosquitoes,
were out of the control of the Interna-
tional Olympic Committee. Others were
things they simply failed to control, like
the rampant dopers who have made a
mockery of the Olympic movement
itself.
Bowing down to Vladimir Putin and
allowing Russian athletes to remain in the
games may have prevented a full-blown
Cold War from breaking out among
Olympic nations. But it also highlighted
a schism between Olympic oficials and
those running the World Anti-Doping
Agency, bringing into question their
commitment to clean sport.
It also exposed the IOC as a spineless
organization more bent on self-preser-
vation than on ensuring cheaters are not
allowed in any Olympic sport.
Disappointing, but hardly surprising.
These are the same people, you might
remember, who awarded the irst Olym-
pics in South America to Rio in 2009,
buying without question the promise that
in seven years Rio would somehow clean
up waters long polluted by raw sewage
and build mass transportation systems to
whisk people around town.
Instead, the city’s highways are a
logjam and on Saturday athletes will
row their way through the slimy and
dangerous waters of Rodrigo de Freitas
lagoon, where hastily erected barricades
and garbage collection boats will be
on duty so that television viewers from
around the world won’t have to see just
how ilthy the water really is.
It’s enough to make some of the
stuffed shirts at the IOC a bit unsettled.
“How worried should we be?” Prince
Albert of Monaco asked his fellow IOC
members this week.
Plenty worried, though about seven
years too late. Every Olympics has its
issues — few thought Athens would
ever be able to pull off the 2004 Games
— but there are so many facing Rio that
there will be a collective sigh of relief
if everything has gone off mostly as
planned when the Olympics end in just
over two weeks.
Indeed, IOC President Thomas Bach
envisions clear sailing for the Olympic
movement if that happens.
“If this model stands such a stress test
like it had to here in Brazil, then you can
see that this model is more than robust,”
Bach said.
NBC for one isn’t worried. The
Olympics have long been little more
than a long-running prime-time summer
TV show and the network that paid $1.2
billion for the games says it will make
money on this edition.
Rather than cutting into ad sales, the
stories about crime, Zika and Brazil’s
economic and political woes have actu-
ally increased them. And the backdrop for
these games will be a director’s dream,
with stunning views from venues around
the city, including beach volleyball on the
famed Copacabana Beach.
The billions in TV revenue have
padded the IOC coffers and increased its
appetite for adding sports to an already
bloated program that for some incompre-
hensible reason now includes golf. The
newest for Tokyo will be sport climbing,
suring and skateboarding, efforts to lure
younger viewers into the games while
traditional track and ield and other sports
are in decline.
It may turn out that Bach is right.
Barring a terrorist attack or mass illness
of rowers and sailors, Rio — for all its
myriad of problems — may be remem-
bered as a success.
Proof that no matter how incompe-
tently they’re managed, the Olympics are
simply too big to fail.