Olympic basketball team hoping Kidd will help avoid gold

CHICAGO, IL — Late Tuesday Olympic basketball head coach Mike Krzyzewski announced that aging point guard Jason Kidd, last seen being roasted alive by Chris Paul in the NBA playoffs, has been added to the roster for the Beijing games in August.

“We feel that with Jason on the team, we have a much better chance of not winning the gold medal,” Krzyzewski told reporters. “And that’s what it’s all about, really, here at USA basketball. There was a time, in the 90’s, when we wanted to win gold medals, and we would never have made a move like this – but obviously things have changed a lot since then.”

Krzyzewski went on to cite not only Kidd’s advancing age, but also his “total lack of defensive ability; particularly against small, athletic guards,” as reasons for his inclusion.

The final twelve-man roster will be announced on Monday. Krzyzewski said he has been working almost non-stop with USA basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo to find “the most selfish, stats-obsessed group of egomaniacs we can get,” but the job hasn’t been easy.

“If we could find twelve Jason Kidds, that would be great. Sure, I traded him away when I worked for the Suns, but that was when we were trying to win,” Colangelo told SSNN. “The problem is, there’s all these kids like Chris Paul getting in the way. If you actually want to be on the team, then you probably don’t need to be on this team. And being able to play defense is an automatic out.”

According to Colangelo and Coach K, the key for any player is to get behind a philosophy that embraces the individual over the team.

“This isn’t about winning – it’s about selling cereal and soft drinks,” Krzyzewski said. “How’s it gonna look if we have a bunch of nobodies on boxes of Wheaties? It doesn’t matter if guards from France and Argentina will blow by Jason Kidd like he’s sitting in a rocker; this is about selling as much G2 as we can. The Olympics only come along every four years, after all.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!