The Syracuse basketball head coach is back with another report from Brazil.
In his eighth Syracuse.com report from Rio de Janeiro, Jim Boeheim got the basketball stuff out of the way early. Argentina was a good team the U.S. beat, Spain is a good team the U.S. will beat, blah blah blah. He knows by now this isn’t what we come for. With formalities out of the way, Boeheim went onto the question the country really wants answered: could Brittney Griner beat DeMarcus Cousins one-on-one?
“I saw that Brittney Griner said she could beat DeMarcus Cousins in a game of one-on-one. But I'm not so sure. I think it's hard for any woman to compete with a man, given the physical ramifications. And in this case, there's about a 100-pound differential right at the start. But my guess is that neither one of them is any good one-on-one, anyway. That's not something that's ever going to happen… or ever should happen.”
Yes, Griner (6-8, 205) probably wouldn’t beat Cousins (6-11, 270) in a game of one-on-one, but let’s not get crazy here, Jim... This game definitely should happen.
The jabs didn’t stop there. Boeheim also addressed Charles Barkley’s comments on the way the USA roster is made up.
“His quote was that we have too many guys looking to score and not enough role players. But Charles is saying things, as he always does, without even watching ... Charles says a lot of things. And, listen, I love Charles. But if you look at his record, he's wrong about half the time. And he's definitely wrong this time.”
“Charles is wrong most of the time and has no idea what he’s talking about. But, listen, I love the guy.”
At this point Boeheim had gotten into one of his classic ‘here’s why everyone is wrong’ rants, so the Hall of Famer decided to fall even further off topic and chime in on college teams playing against pros.
“And speaking of wrong, people have got to understand that college players cannot play against pro players. Can not. Not in any way, shape or form. They wouldn't be anywhere near competitive.
If you put any of my teams at Syracuse in this field, it would lose by 30 points every game. Every game. Minimum. Minimum. Minimum. I've had good players in my time. I really have. But we're talking about pros here, and they've all got 10 years of experience on any of my teams.”
There’s only a few more Rio updates for Boeheim to give, so make sure you appreciate them in all of their glory. Oh, and the Olympics too.
