Well, we've made it to Friday. We'll get a poll up later this afternoon. In the meantime, please send us more articles.

Your final option this week comes from a good friend of this site. In the entry below, he expounds upon joy, cohesion, and military strategy. To spare those of you who don't like surprises, we'll give you a little advance warning: It's Chuck Klosterman, and he's talking about basketball. Proceed at your own risk.


Chuck starts the piece by saying "I have a plan that will save USA Basketball." Hopefully, his other plan is a lot better, since this one is a bizarre, meandering suggestion that we sequester fifteen "at-risk" youths with basketball ability to improve our Olympic chances. (And not just any fifteen kids, "15 players who would rather die in an Iraqi dungeon than lose to the likes of Puerto Rico.") Your nominated moment, though, is here:

When Greece beat the U.S. in the semifinals, it was the greatest day in the history of Greek basketball; in fact, I assume it was the greatest day every member of that Greek squad will ever experience. When Mihalis Kakiouzis is lying on his Athenian deathbed five decades from this summer, he will still be thinking of the day he beat LeBron James in 2006. Who can compete with that kind of emotive intensity? How do you defeat an enemy who's playing for his self-identity? These are the same reasons America won the Revolutionary War but lost in Vietnam — motivation matters.

We're predisposed to see meaning in things that might seem meaningless, but come the fuck on.

A new game plan for Team USA [ESPN]