Olympics
Hoops' best hope: NBA-stocked U.S. lineup no Dream Team

By Percy Allen
Seattle Times staff reporter

AP Team USA, celebrating a last-second exhibition win against Germany on Aug. 4, will look to maintain its Olympic basketball dominance in Athens.

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So much has been made about patriotism and broken promises.

Who's going to the Athens Olympics to represent the United States in men's basketball and who's not?

After more than two years of disappointments, defections and detours, the team chosen to restore America's dominance as the best basketball-playing nation in the world is a less-than-stellar group than the one that was originally supposed to bring back the gold medal.

This team, according to Sonics guard Ray Allen, who helped the United States win a gold medal at the Sydney Games in 2000, also faces the added burden that the three previous NBA-assisted Olympic teams never encountered.

"Before when they had Michael Jordan, Larry Bird and (Charles) Barkley, there wasn't a serious threat from the other countries," Allen said. "We still have the best basketball players in the world here in the United States, but that doesn't guarantee we'll win anything. Those other countries are 10 times better than the teams we faced in 2000."

Two years ago, Team USA was beaten three times, losing to Argentina, Yugoslavia (which is now Serbia and Montenegro) and Spain, and plummeted to a stunning sixth-place finish in the World Championships in Indianapolis.

Coach George Karl assumed the blame for that debacle. Now Larry Brown, another North Carolina graduate with a reverence for Dean Smith, former Tar Heels coach, has been tapped to rectify Karl's mistakes.

The 63-year-old Brown, who recently attained his first NBA championship after leading the Detroit Pistons to an upset over the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals, is seemingly the right man for the job.

AP Coach Larry Brown will try to bring together a squad of mostly younger NBA players

He has Olympic experience (he won a gold medal as a player in 1964 and was an assistant in 2000) and impeccable credentials as the only man to win an NCAA and NBA championship. Adding a gold medal would only bolster his Hall of Fame career.

Still there is much at risk for Brown if he were to join the unglamorous pairing of John Thompson and Henry Iba as the only U.S. men's team coaches to lose an Olympic basketball game.

It was Thompson's defeat during the 1988 Summer Olympics that drove the U.S. basketball selection committee toward the NBA. Team USA is 109-2 all-time in Olympic men's basketball play and 24-0 with the professionals.

But unlike Chuck Daly, Lenny Wilkens and Rudy Tomjanovich, the three previous coaches, Brown won't have the best NBA players at his disposal.

He won't have a Dream Team or Dream Team II.

He won't even have most of the players who guided Team USA to a 10-0 record in the Olympic qualifying tournament in Puerto Rico last summer. Only Tim Duncan, Allen Iverson and Richard Jefferson remain from that squad, while Jefferson was a late addition (for Kobe Bryant).

The other original members of the 2004 Olympic roster decided to remain at home for reasons that range from injuries, court proceedings, wedding engagements and security concerns.

	AP At 19, LeBron James will lead a very young squad of Olympic basketball hopefuls.

"I'm a little disappointed that some things have come up, where we've lost some players who really sacrificed last summer and gave us the opportunity to play in the Olympics," Brown told reporters in Florida last month. "But I understand the circumstances. I'm proud we have a new group of guys who are excited about playing ... I think we have enough quality players in our league who want to go — that's the way I'm going to approach it."

Allen, Jason Kidd, Mike Bibby, Tracy McGrady, Karl Malone, Jermaine O'Neal and Kenyon Martin bailed out. Bryant withdrew from consideration, and Kevin Garnett, Shaquille O'Neal, Vince Carter, Elton Brand, Ben Wallace and Richard Hamilton declined invitations.

In their place is youthful exuberance and bold optimism.

Iverson, at age 29, is the elder statesman for the USA squad, which features LeBron James (19), Carmelo Anthony (20), Amare Stoudemire (21), Dwyane Wade (22), Carlos Boozer (22) and rookie-to-be Emeka Okafor (21).

The average age of the 12-man squad is 23.6 years old with 3.6 seasons of NBA experience.

"We have to go from being an all-star team to being a real team in a short period of time," Brown said. "And I'm excited about the chance, because we have a lot of great young kids that really love to play.

"We've got to keep it simple, and we have to go from making guys understand that the roles they had on their particular teams are going to have to change dramatically for us to really, truly be a team in a short period of time. But I am confident we can do that."

Percy Allen: 206-464-2278 or pallen@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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