BASKETBALL

This year’s Olympic Dream Team got under way in a Vegas summer league game against The Dominicans.  It was, of course, a complete route, but the interesting news came out before the game.  Kobe Bryant said that he thought this year’s Olympic team could beat the original 1992 Olympics Dream Team.  Kobe said that a lot of those players were older and playing towards the end of their career.  Michael Jordan, upon hearing this, said he literally laughed out loud.  Jordan basically said that the original Dream Team boasted 11 Hall of Famers and, assuming that they played in their prime, the 92 team would run the floor with them.  Charles Barkley even went so far as to say that only 3 players on this year’s team (LeBron, Durant, Kobe) would even make the original Dream Team.  The other guys would have no chance.  Essentially, Kobe awoke a sleeping giant.

And in some more Olympics basketball news, it looks like Team USA will be without even more of their stars.  After already losing Dwayne Wade, Lamar Odom, Dwight Howard, and Derrick Rose to injuries, Team USA will now be without Blake Griffin.  Griffin woke up Thursday morning complaining of pain in his knee.  It turns out, according to QC Kinetix that this pain was a torn meniscus — forcing him off the team.  Plus, there’s no way the Los Angeles Clippers, after spending $95MM on Griffin, were going to let him try and play through that injury.  So it’ll be interesting to see whom they choose as his replacement.  There are a lot of guys who would love Griffin’s spot.

FOOTBALL

And finally, the major news of the day, was the latest in the Penn State Scandal.  A 267-page report, known as the Freeh report, detailed the entire situation surrounding Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky.  But this report was primarily focused on how the university responded to the situation that broke in 1998.  Sandusky was pronounced ‘guilty’ by a jury, so now the interesting thing becomes how much did Penn State officials know and ‘not know’.  And it appears that they knew quite a lot, and decided to play cover up — fearing losing their jobs, their salaries, and not exposing themselves to the bad press it would bring.  This cover up included then head coach Joe Paterno — they all pretty much turned a blind eye to Sandusky’s reported behavior.  Because of this, Sandusky’s abuse went on for 10 years — with many more boys being victimized in the process.  It’s a very sad and shameful situation at Penn State.