Team USA resumes quest to end its bronze age

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=sheridan_chris&p...=TeamUS

Monday, July 21, 2008
Team USA resumes quest to end its bronze age


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

By Chris Sheridan
ESPN.com

LAS VEGAS -- When we last saw Team USA, Michael Redd was bricking free
throws in a H-O-R-S-E game shortly after LeBron James jumped into the arms
of young Knicks fans, fueling speculation that he's Big Apple-bound sometime
down the road, as Team USA's one-day media blitz brought the players to a
temporary basketball court erected atop the Rockefeller Center ice skating
rink in New York City.

They later took questions at the Plaza Hotel on Central Park South, with
Jason Kidd acting so confident that he even chimed in with a scouting report
on little-known Pablo Prigioni, the starting point guard for Argentina, and
Chris Bosh admitting that the Americans "panicked" against Greece two years
ago in Japan. They were equal parts wary and confident, a split-yet-evolving
personality that showed not only how some of them have matured, but also how
they've come to grips with who they are and where they stand in the global
basketball equation.

Yes, they're the favorites.

No, they don't expect to be crowned Dream Team 2.0 without having earned it.

It's been three weeks since that day in New York, and Team USA is finally
back together for a four-day U.S.-based portion of training camp in Sin City
prior to its first exhibition game, Friday night against Canada (8 p.m. ET,
ESPN, ESPN360.com).

It would be a sin, in the minds of many Americans, for the U.S. Olympic
men's basketball team to return home from Beijing on Aug. 25 with anything
less than the gold medal.

Expectations in the homeland during an eight-year gold-medal drought have
not been totally, truly tempered by American failures at the past three
major international tournaments: the 2006 World Championship (bronze medal),
the 2004 Athens Olympics (bronze medal) and the 2002 World Championship
(sixth place), which will keep the pressure on these guys at a zenith
throughout the Olympics.

The bar is set pretty high when anything other than gold is unacceptable,
but that's the deal for the 2008 version of Team USA -- and the players know
it.

The United States has been installed by many international oddsmakers as a
1-3 favorite to win in Beijing, but as anyone who has followed the evolution
of the sport over the past decade realizes, there are no longer any sure
things in international basketball.

And so while gold is the quest and the expectation, it is not a lock.

That's not a prediction, it's simply reality.

Spain is the defending world champion. The Spanish have size (Pau and Marc
Gasol, Jorge Garbajosa), talent at both backcourt positions (Jose Calderon
and Juan Carlos Navarro), role players who can play inside and outside (Rudy
Fernandez), and a teenage backup point guard (Ricky Rubio) who has already
drawn comparisons to Pistol Pete Maravich.

Argentina is the defending Olympic champion, led by the NBA's reigning sixth
man, Manu Ginobili, and is the only nation to have defeated the United
States twice (2002 Worlds, 2004 Olympics).

Russia is the standing European champion, with a tall and long front line
that includes Andrei Kirilenko and former NBA players Viktor Khryapa and
Nikita Morgunov, not to mention an American point guard (J.R. Holden) and an
American coach (David Blatt).

Lithuania is always tough, and Greece just rolled into the Olympics in the
last-chance qualifier tournament and was then placed with Germany (led by
Dirk Nowitzki and Chris Kaman) in the U.S. team's preliminary-round Olympic
group. (The third team to qualify, Croatia, was drawn into Group A with
Argentina, Lithuania, Russia, Iran and Australia.)

"Well, it's a tough group," Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski said following
the team's inaugural practice Monday. "For us, I think what's really good is
we play China first, which gives us a flavor of the Olympics and what
nationalism's all about, then Angola.

"But after that, through the rest of the tournament, we're going to play
teams that are more conventional, and we don't have any interruptions. There
won't be a lull like there was in the World Championship, where the pool
play I don't think got you ready for medal play. Our pool play will get us
ready for medal play. The more competition we have, the better we'll be. And
again, at the very end, it's what you do in medal play.

"I've learned a lot over the last three years, and one thing is: Let's play
as many good teams as possible to get us ready for medal play."

Chris Sheridan is an ESPN.com Insider. He has covered the U.S. senior
national team since the 1996 Olympics.