Gregg Doyel

How can the Redeem Team beat the Dream Team, as Freeman thinks could happen, if the Redeem Team is inferior at every single position?

PG: Magic over Jason Kidd or Chris Paul. You're not going to argue this, are you?

SG: Michael Jordan over Kobe Bryant. Again ... no argument please.

SF: Larry Bird over LeBron. This is close. But I'm taking Bird.

PF: Charles Barkley over Carmelo Anthony. This is not close.

C: Patrick Ewing over Dwight Howard. Duh.

Sixth man: Drexler and Dwyane Wade ... hmm. I'll give that to Wade. But the rest of the bench is all Dream Team: Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, John Stockton, David Robinson, Scottie Pippen. I might even take that five over the Redeem Team's best five.

Only edge is in coaching. In this setting, with egos to manage, Coach K is the best. Chuck Daly? No thank you.

Which means the Dream Team would win by ... 20.

Remember what I wrote earlier this week? I said I'm not watching the Olympics. This is another example why:

Tonight in prime time, NBC will show the 100-meter sprint finals. Pound-for-pound, second-for-second, it's the greatest -- the most dramatic -- event in sports.

And I already know who won.

All of us do. Usain Bolt won this morning. NBC or USA or whoever's showing these Games could have shown the event live, but instead they had the U.S.-Spain basketball game (good choice), Argentina-Holland soccer (solid choice) and a doubles tennis match (dumbest choice in TV history).

But I'll be sure to watch tonight when NBC shows the 100-meter sprint and asks me and the rest of the world to pretend we don't know who already won.

Jeez ...

Has there ever been a more disappointing finish to a story than this one?

South African double-amputee Oscar Pistorius strikes fear into the hearts of able-bodied athletes (and mentally weak media) everywhere with his allegedly unfair advantage -- the blades he calls legs -- and triggers an international debate about the fairness of his inclusion in the 2008 Olympics.

And then he doesn't make it into the 2008 Olympics.

Pistorius gave it a great shot. This blog entry is no knock on him. He came within less than a second of reaching the Olympic-qualifying time in the 400-meter dash. But he fell short, so short that South Africa didn't put him onto its mile relay team -- even as an alternate -- and so now the story is finished.

Serves all of us right. We get up in arms so easily. What a hoot we are.