Written by: Andy Lee 8/5/2008 1:56 PM
The WNBA's Becky Hammon has come under fire for playing point guard for the Russian national team in the upcoming Bejing Olympics. Becky has had a ten year career in the WNBA playing for the New York Liberty and San Antonio Silver Stars. In the WNBA off-season she supplements her income playing for the CSKA team in Moscow, Russia. She has mostly flown under the radar until her controversial decision to play for the Russians in the Bejing games. Hammon has made it no secret that she has always wanted to play in the Olympics. When it became apparent she wouldn't make the 2008 US national team, she became a Russian citizen. Russian coach Igor Grudin, also a sports director for Hammon's club team, gave Hammon a slot on the roster when national team player Olga Arteshina quit the team. US coach Anne Donovan said of Hammon's decision, "If you play in this country, live in this country and you grow up in the heartland- and you put on a Russian uniform- you are not a patriotic person, in my mind." Hammon was born and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota (hardly Soviet Russia). I think Hammon's decision illustrates a generation gap. Everyone I have spoken to under 30 doesn't think it's a very big deal, and everyone old enough to remember the cold war thinks it's despicable. This begs the question, where do I stand. My only taste of the Cold War is Rocky vs. Drago in Rocky IV. I am not old enough to remember fall out shelters, Kruschev banging his shoe on a desk at the U.N., or the Cuban missle crisis. Am I unpatriotic, or a traitor to my country if I don't think it is the end of the world that a young woman wants to play for the Russian national team after her own team cut her? The little girl from Rapid City, South Dakota, always dreamed she'd play in the Olympics, and now she is living out her dream.