So Tyson Chandler made his national team debut yesterday. Team USA's big and massive 112-69 annihilation of Venezuela (recap | box) was just one of four games to open the FIBA Americas Championship in Vegas.
The Hornets big man failed to score against Venezuela, but busied himself collecting and rejecting during his ten glorious minutes of PT. He finished with 4 boards, 2 blocks and zero shot attempts. Those ten minutes were the fewest of any player on the team, which means head coach Mike Kryzetshjfhskjfds must still be pissed at Tyson for stealing his sandwich Tuesday before last. Let it go, coach. If you let Tyson play all 40 minutes, he's gonna get you 16 boards and 8 blocks. You just multiply by four, see?
Tyson and his less interesting teammates play again this evening, against the Virgin Islands, a team which features just one player of known height. The rest of that team could be giants for all we know.
(By the way, can anyone explain to me why that FIBA Americas site has a muppet at the top of every page? And an iced-out muppet at that. Strange.)
Also competing in this tournament is another Hornet by the name of Marcus Vinicius, although he's listed as Marcus De Souza on the muppet site for some reason. Perhaps he's in witness protection or something.
Anyways, Marcus is of course playing for his native Brazil, alongside former Hornet 12th man Alex Garcia and dudes named Barbosa and Nene. The Bazilians beat the Canadians yesterday, 75-67. Vinicius played only five minutes, which is bewildering because he doesn't even like sandwiches.
Brazil play again tomorrow (Friday), which is nice. It would be great if Brazil and the US meet up in the final of this thing and we could hype it up as this big Tyson vs. Marcus showdown and then neither of them gets to play and we'd be all disappointed and stuff.
Yeah, let's hope that happens.
Update (08/24/2007): The US beat the Virgin Islands last night, 123-59 (recap | box). Close game by all accounts. Once again, Tyson played the least amount of minutes for the US (10), this time finishing with 6 points, 5 boards and a block. He was a fantabulous 3-of-3 from the field.