Chris Bosh Olympics interview
USA Basketball | Aug. 12, 2008
On the morning of August 10, the first day Olympic basketball, Team USA beat China 101-70. Here's what forward Chris Bosh said after the game:
Question: Talk about the game:
Chris Bosh: I think we played well. We came out a little tight. We knew it was going to be a very emotional game for both teams, especially China, playing in front of their home crowd. We withstood the storm, calmed down and played a lot better basketball.”
Question: talk about Yao Ming’s play.
Chris Bosh: Yao played a great game. What we were trying to … we just wanted to wear him down a little bit. We knew that he is just now coming back from an injury and playing a fast paced basketball game was gonna kind of wear him down. So, we just wanted to do that. He’s a big guy in the middle. He did a great job defensively in the beginning of the game on stopping our pick and rolls and just kind of making our guards choose and shoot over him. Eventually, we wore down on him and did a pretty good job. I give credit to all our bigs.”
Question: What was more special, playing in Olympic tournament or your president being here?
Chris Bosh: First to win the game. It’s always a special thing to come and represent your country in the Olympics. Just the pride of wearing the USA on our chest was just a thrill. The leader of our country there. It was pretty patriotic for us and for citizens all across the world who are United States citizens.”
Question: Did we see the new Dream Team being born?
Chris Bosh: Not necessarily. We’re not trying to be the Dream Team. We just want to be a solid USA team. We want to be the best team in this tournament. The Dream Team was back in ’92. We can’t try to compare to those guys because they’ve done so much more as individuals then we have. We just have to prepare for everyone … not underestimate anyone … Just play our basketball … maybe everybody will make up a title after that. But for right now, we still have a long road ahead of us.
Question: Did China have you worried?
Chris Bosh: That’s one thing we’ve worked on as a team. We can’t get worried and get too rattled in the beginning of the game by quick starts. We just have to play solid … like I said before, work on wearing teams down. We just need to keep playing basketball because if we get too worried, we’re not going to play the way we’re capable of playing and that will be to the advantage of the other team. So, we just need to keep that in mind in games from here on out.
Question: Was this the mother of all games?
Chris Bosh: It was definitely and exciting game to play in just with all the media attention. Just kicking it off for ourselves. We were excited just to play but to have all the extra attention is a great environment to be in, and I think this will really propel us into the rest of our competition.”
Question: Are you confident you will win Olympic Games?
Chris Bosh: Yeah, we have confidence in ourselves. That’s the point of competing; that’s the point in having pride as a team. We know that there a lot of teams that are very tough here. It starts with us. We have to mentally prepare ourselves before every game. We have to not underestimate anyone. As long as we prepare and play our basketball and don’t beat ourselves, we are going to be in a great position.
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