U.S. men's basketball team expects different results this time
The Euro is worth more than the American dollar these days. Geez, what timing. One of the more pressing questions leading up to the Beijing Olympics might be this: What will recover more quickly, the U.S. currency or a national basketball program that continues to experience hard lessons, suffer humbling losses and only recently acknowledged a need for dramatic change?
For a number of reasons -- foremost among them the restructuring of the national program and a more balanced 2008 roster featuring Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade -- the smart money's on Team USA. Mike Krzyzewski's squad projects more favorably right now than, say, Wall Street.
"We understand that there are improvements to be made, and that's what makes the process more enjoyable," Bryant said during the team's recent training sessions in Las Vegas. "You have something to strive for. I think these Olympics will be special because of the hype, the anticipation other countries have, to see if we can dethrone Argentina. But they (2004 holdovers) say this team is much more cohesive, more united."
Still, this is a game. These are the Olympics. There are no guarantees.
There was no gold medal for the USA last time, either.
An opening loss to Puerto Rico at the 2004 Athens Games continued a slump that began two years earlier with a sixth-place finish at the world championships in Indianapolis. The combination of poor showings prompted an overhaul of the system, including a three-year commitment to USA Basketball and the hiring of an experienced basketball czar.
Jerry Colangelo once delivered the Phoenix Suns to the sports-deprived desert. An original executive and one-time owner of the organization, he also helped lure additional pro franchises to Phoenix, though in a global sense, nothing compares with the pressure inherent in his current endeavor. His tenure as managing director of the men's national team will be judged solely by the squad's performance in Beijing, which is what he says he wanted all along.
"We learned that you can't just pick an All-Star team, get together for a few weeks and be good enough to win," Colangelo said. "As the gap with the rest of the world closed, you couldn't do that anymore. When I took the job, I insisted on certain things, including the (power) to put it together the way I thought best.
"In the past, there were too many people involved in making the decisions, and as saw, it wasn't very successful. We've changed that culture, and I'm very proud of that."
So do you revise a system that succeeded in the 1990s, beginning with the 1992 Olympic team that consisted primarily of legendary NBA stars for the first time, and led to a 10-year, 58-game winning streak and total domination for the better part of a decade?
The original Dream Team established ridiculously high standards. The performances were almost too perfect. Bird. Magic. Michael. Charles. Scottie. Stockton and Malone. Fast breaks consisted of pass-pass-pass-pass, the ball almost never dribbled. Play was intuitive, intelligent and often spectacular because of its sheer simplicity.
"Majestic" is how coach Chuck Daly characterized his Barcelona group, later marveling at the fact that every game was one-sided and he never called a timeout.
"That team we had in 1992," suggests Golden State executive vice president and Dream Team reserve Chris Mullin, shaking his head, "that wasn't going to happen again. That was a one-time thing, the highlight of my career. You can't repeat that. You just move on."
Yet even while the rout was on, the pros having permanently replaced the collegians, there were indications as early as 1994 that the concept of hastily assembling clusters of All-Stars for major international competitions needed to be re-examined. Don Nelson's '94 Worlds team a forgettable squad with Larry Johnson, Derrick Coleman and Shawn Kemp distinguished itself more for its displays of poor sportsmanship than its daily dominance.
Players on Lenny Wilkens' squad at the 1996 Atlanta Games bitterly complained about minutes.
At the 1998 Worlds in Athens, Rudy Tomjanovich's collection of Continental Basketball Association players and undrafted center Brad Miller claimed a surprising bronze, performing admirably as substitutes for the NBA stars who boycotted the tournament because of a collective bargaining impasse.
The higher-profile 2000 Olympic team claimed the gold, but only after narrowly escaping a last-second loss to Lithuania.
Two years later, the Lost Decade of American hoops began in earnest. A sixth-place finish at the 2002 Worlds. The dispirited bronze-medal display at the 2004 Olympics. The stunning loss to slick-shooting Greece and third-place finish at the 2006 Worlds in Japan.
"A real sense of entitlement had developed," said John Thompson, the 1988 Olympic coach whose collegians were shocked by a Soviet Union unit that included Sarunas Marciulionis and Arvydas Sabonis. "But we aren't entitled to anything anymore. I was part of the movement that brought the pros in even before the breakup of Russia and Yugoslavia because you could see things changing. You couldn't keep sending boys out there to play the pros.
"The game has evolved to the point (internationally), with our players going there and their players coming here, that you can't get together for a few weeks and walk away with the gold medal. No one is in awe of us anymore."
After consulting with Thompson and several other USAB officials, Colangelo produced the paradigm that requires a three-year commitment and, with a few notable exceptions, offers no assurances of a berth on the Olympic team. The longtime NBA executive also proved to be too stubborn to beg. The players wanted in or they were out and quickly.
Colangelo's most controversial move clearly was the selection of Duke head coach Krzyzewski over Gregg Popovich, the San Antonio Spurs' head coach and an assistant on the 2002, '03 and '04 national teams. Though Colangelo only hints at residual damage, Popovich clearly appears stigmatized by the sixth-place and bronze-medal finishes in 2002 and '03, respectively, justifiably or otherwise.
Critics of Larry Brown's stewardship (2003 and '04) conveniently forget that his national team, led by Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson, Ray Allen, Jason Kidd and Mike Bibby, among others, annihilated the competition at the '03 Olympic qualifying tournament in Puerto Rico. However, that team was decimated by defections. In the months and even weeks preceding the scheduled training sessions for Athens, virtually every player except Duncan and Iverson withdrew from the competition, most citing terrorism concerns.
Brown was left with an ill-defined, inexperienced group that had barely been together long enough for a few breakfasts.
"There was no commitment," acknowledged Wade, a member of the 2004 squad. "We weren't rooting for each other. We were fighting against each other because everybody wanted to play. I loved all the guys on the team, but it just wasn't the right combination for an Olympic team. Now I look at the team, and we've got the right mix. It's going to be 12 guys who are going to get this done."
It's probably time. The drought has persisted long enough.
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