Mercenaries or just opportunists?

Jot down a couple of dates on your Olympic-watching calendar. Think about leaving work a little early those days to make sure you get home for the telecast.

Order in pizza. Better yet, Chinese food. You won’t want to miss a minute of this.

The first date is Aug. 17. A sure thing.

The second Aug. 21. A really good bet.

On Aug. 17, the United States men’s basketball team will play a Group B game against Germany in Beijing. That will match Kobe and the boys against Dirk Nowitzki, the Dallas Mavericks star from Germany.

Oh yes, and also, against that noted German from Central Michigan and your Los Angeles Clippers, Chris Kaman, who reportedly is becoming well-versed in the language. He got elbowed in the groin the other night and was heard to say, “Um-pa-pa.”

On Aug. 21, the top-seeded women’s basketball team from Group B, probably the United States, will play the No. 2 team from Group A, probably Russia, in the semifinals. Facing Lisa Leslie and the gang will be a Russian team directed by a pony-tailed point guard named Becky Hammon from the Moscow suburb of Rapid City, S.D. You will be able to tell the depth of her Russian when one of her teammates makes a wrong cut and Hammon will say, “Nyet.”

Who said our young people are too shallow to care about international relations?

Your TV viewing experience will be greatly enhanced by the adjoining commentary, as will your reading experience afterward on the Internet and in the papers.

Let’s say Kaman has a big game and beats the U.S. with two free throws as time runs out. Let’s say Hammon drops in the three-pointer that keeps our favored Yankee Doodle Dandies from a gold medal.

Brace yourselves for the avalanche of aftermath, a moving wall of commentary and opinion and weeping and gnashing of teeth the likes of which have not been seen on an Olympic stage since Tonya Harding went shopping for crowbars.

Hammon, a WNBA star from the San Antonio Silver Stars, has already been pilloried from coast to coast. The woman who was slow to put her on a list of tryout prospects for the U.S. team, months ago, U.S. Coach Anne Donovan, characterized Hammon’s decision to play for rival Ruskies as the act of a traitor.

How do you really feel, Anne?

Kaman’s romp along the Rhine has stirred up less angry emotion than Hammon’s, partly because he is a flake and this move somewhat confirms that. It also seems non-threatening to those who follow the NBA and know how unlikely it is that Kobe and Co. would allow themselves to be sidetracked by a guy who was never in the hunt for a spot on the team. Plus, a guy who is a Clipper.

Also, Kaman, himself about as German as Padraig Harrington, actually has a great-grand parent who was born in Germany, so there seems to be some rationale. Hammon’s rationale is financial. She admits that freely. Donovan didn’t seem interested at first, so Hammon took the rubles and ran. There is no Russian lineage leading to Rapid City. Just a quick visa, some paperwork processed faster than you can pass the vodka, and voila! Becky Hammonova.

Much will be said and written about these temporary defectors. Their story will be blogged to death. Already has been. The better they play, and the more it impacts negatively on the country that gave them the opportunity of finding more -- but not the expectation that they would -- the louder the protests will be.

This is not the first time U.S. athletes have donned jerseys of other countries in the Olympics; this is simply the highest-profile situation in some time, mostly because it is the high-profile sport of basketball.

In 1976, Butch Lee of Marquette, who would become an All-American and spend two seasons in the NBA, including some time with the Lakers, didn’t make the U.S. men’s team, then composed of college players. Lee was born in Puerto Rico, so he played for them and nearly beat the U.S. in group play with a 35-point game.

Even had Lee and Puerto Rico won and somehow knocked the U.S. out of a medal, the noise wouldn’t approach what you might hear over Kaman and Hammon. That’s because 1976 was pre-iPod and BlackBerry and ESPN 1, 2, 3, 4 and Charles Barkley and “Around the Horn” and 24-hour sports-talk radio.

There have been many variations of this Olympic eligibility issue. In Athens four years ago, half of the Greek women’s softball team was from the United States. The Greeks didn’t play softball but had the right to field a team as the host country. So lots of Greek grandmas and grandpas were found, and players who never would have had a chance to play in the Olympics, much less foul off a Lisa Fernandez riseball, got a once-in-a-lifetime shot.

Somehow, that felt quaint. Somehow, Kaman and Hammon don’t.

There are endless arguments available on both sides here. There are also some basic conclusions:

The International Olympic Committee deserves whatever agony it gets over eligibility rifts. It allows the rules to be made by federations and countries, and by doing so, fosters inconsistency and unfairness. It preaches high Olympic ideals, then sits high and happy with billions from Dick Ebersol and NBC, while Russia buys off a female point guard from South Dakota.

Our American attitude on athletes, which is to coddle them from crib to grave, has created an assumption of entitlement that may be irreversible. More and more, our athletes think of money and fame and even a spot in the Olympics as a right, rather than an opportunity.

Except for the occasional quirky circumstance, such as the Greek women’s softball team, Olympic participation should be simple: Represent your country, not somebody else’s.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.