文章基本信息

标题：GUARANTEED - NBA will always dominate Olympic basketball
作者：Doug Smith
期刊名称：The Sporting News
印刷版ISSN：0038-805X
出版年度：2000
卷号：Sept 11, 2000
出版社：American City Business Journals, Inc.

GUARANTEED - NBA will always dominate Olympic basketball

Doug Smith

While there are few absolutes in life (death and taxes, of course), there is one thing you can be pretty sure of--as long as NBA players compete for the United States in the Olympics, the U.S. always will win the gold medal. Always.

IT'S HOT in the Lahaina Civic Center, sticky, stinking, uncomfortably hot and there are about a million other places a gaggle of NBA All-Stars would rather be on this afternoon.

There are two world-class golf courses just up the road on the island paradise of Maui and snorkeling and surfing and suntanning available a stone's throw away.

There are family and friends waiting back at the resort and a long, tiring regular season just a month or so away.

Yet in the middle of the day, with little fanfare considering the collection of talent on the floor, they find themselves working and sweating and getting ready to defend a nation's hoops honor.

As the scrimmage unfolds, the competition gets fierce. Alonzo Mourning and Vin Baker are going at it like this is some May playoff game instead of an August practice session. The ever-talkative Gary Payton is running his mouth constantly, barking out orders and delivering oral jousts to whoever gets near him, and he appears to be in midseason form. Vince Carter is flying--throwing down dunks with such audacity and athleticism that they stop practice as the group marvels at what it has just seen. A missed open shot is a followed by an expletive, a pass gone awry brings a look of disgust to the passer's face.

And as all this transpires, it strikes a visitor that what's unfolding on the tiny court in front of a rather small crowd is exactly why the United States will never lose another Olympic or world championship basketball game as long as NBA players are taking part.

Nothing gets the competitive juices pumping in the world's best athletes more than pride, and there's no one more proud and defiant than an NBA player bent on world domination and showing everyone watching just how the game is played.

"We can definitely get better," Mourning said after a predictably easy victory over the Canadian Olympic team in the American team's debut, "but at the same time, our main objective is to dominate in every game we play."

Dominate. Not simple victory, but domination.

That attitude is what sets these American teams apart from the rest of the world. When they are challenged, by themselves, by the past, by some opposition, they find something deep down inside as a way to answer. The competitiveness that's inherent in an NBA player, who faces tough competition 82 times in the regular season after having faced a startling depth of talent since his teenage years in climbing to the elite.

It's the kind of competitiveness that turns a practice session in Hawaii into something unexpected.

"I expected it, I thought I was ready for it, but it's unbelievable," Carter says, "To watch Alonzo and Vin go at it, it's like Wrestlemania down there."

Wrestlemania. On a Tuesday afternoon. In practice No. 3. In Hawaii. With no TV cameras running. With no real need to go all out at every moment. With nothing on the line. With a gold medal already assured simply because of their superior talent. Wrestlemania.

"Everyone knows what's at stake," Carter says. "It's not Vince Carter and the Toronto Raptors, it's Vince Carter and the United States. This is bigger than the NBA to me. The whole world is going to be watching."

Coach Rudy Tomjanovich's rousing speech on the team's first night together touched on the reason the Americans won't ever lose--at least not as long as you and I are alive. Tomjanovich appealed to patriotism, fighting for country, and he also appealed to their sense of history, hammering home the point that the Olympians weren't just on the court to show how good the NBA game is, but to show just how basketball should be played.

"To me, you can win a championship any year--that's the NBA, that's American basketball," Allan Houston says. "But a gold medal goes down into the history of the world. To be able to do that, you're an Olympian forever.

"The guy who was briefing us said if you're an Olympian, you die an Olympian. So we know what we're representing, and I'm going to soak in every minute of it."

The Americans know they have a huge standard to uphold and that also drives them. The first, and only, Dream Team (the 1992 unsurpassable collection of talent that included Michael, Magic and Larry and will always be remembered as the greatest team ever assembled) set a standard that others will be hard-pressed to match, winning by an average of 43.8 points.

The 1996 team rolled to an expected gold medal before a home-country audience in Atlanta that reveled in the ease with which a gold medal was achieved. The margin of victory fell slightly to 31.8 points per game, and there might not have been as much mystique or hype as there was surrounding The Dream Team. But there was a precedent to uphold and that team wasn't about to be the first with NBA players to be challenged, let alone to lose.

That's the kind of history that these players face, which is another reason they are going to take every measure possible to insure victory. In their Olympic history, American Olympic teams have a 100-2 record, the only blemishes being losses to Russia in the controversial gold-medal game in 1972 and in 1988 in Seoul.

The United States has won 11-of-14 Olympic gold medals since the sport was introduced at the 1936 Olympics and compiled 62 straight wins from that debut until the '72 loss. And when FIBA, the world governing body of basketball, relented in 1989 to allow "open" competition, it paved the way for NBA players to take part and there has been no looking back.

Having seen a handful of world championship games--including a ferocious 1998 final in Athens in which Yugoslavia edged Russia before 20,000 crazed fans who lit flares in the stands and drew on a patriotic fervor that was almost incomprehensible--one knows other countries play with some of the same emotion as the Americans.

But when the whole world is watching, including teammates and family and friends back home, NBA players can find a depth of intensity that no one can match. It's the kind of intensity that starts in those practices in tiny gyms in Hawaii and is carried over into games that matter.

Couple that with their incredible athleticism, which is unmatched anywhere in the world, and it's impossible to imagine an American team losing. There is such depth of talent in the NBA, shooters, post-up players, ballhandlers, ballhawking defenders, quickness and length and skill, that if one player's suffering through a tough game, there's someone of equal ability more than ready to step up.

Oh, sure, some people think the day will arrive when some team pulls off what will be considered the greatest upset in basketball history and beat an American team full of NBA stars. There is always the chance of some wacky officiating turning a game on its head, there is always the chance some team might simply shoot the lights out. But these NBA players are so good, at both ends of the floor and from the starting five to the 12th man, they will be able to overcome even those two unlikely scenarios.

They are good because it's just part of their makeup, the characteristics that turn afternoon practices in hot Hawaiian gyms into all-out battles. They are driven. And that is the difference.

"We're not just out here for our teams. We're out here for our country," Carter says. "And that's pretty important."

Important enough to ensure every basketball goldmedal ceremony in the future will conclude with the playing of "The Star-Spangled Banner."

Olympic basketball roster

Pos. Player             Ht.    Age   NBA team

F Shareef Abdur-Rahim   6-9    23    Grizzlies
G Ray Allen             6-5    25    Bucks
F Vin Baker             6-11   28    SuperSonics
G/F Vince Carter        6-6    23    Raptors
F Kevin Garnett         6-11   24    Timberwolves
G Tim Hardaway          6-0    34    Heat
G Allan Houston         6-6    29    Knicks
G Jason Kidd            6-4    27    Suns
F Antonio McDyess       6-9    26    Nuggets
C Alonzo Mourning       6-10   30    Heat
G Gary Payton           6-4    32    SuperSonics
G Steve Smith           6-8    31    Trail Blazers

Pos. Player             Comment

F Shareef Abdur-Rahim   Multidimensional threat; boasts top-notch
                        skills and the squad's best name.

G Ray Allen             Averaged 15.6 points at '95 World
                        University Games, where U.S. won gold.

F Vin Baker             Two straight subpar seasons, Baker has
                        something to prove.

G/F Vince Carter        Highlight-reel moves will impress
                        Aussie crowd.

F Kevin Garnett         NBA's best forward this side of
                        Tim Duncan.

G Tim Hardaway          Team's elder statesman may use Olympics
                        to show he still has game.

G Allan Houston         He'll drain the jumpers (while you drain
                        a Foster's or two or three).

G Jason Kidd            Kidd will be middleman for potent
                        fast-break crew.

F Antonio McDyess       Duncan's fill-in ranked in NBA's top 25
                        for points, rebounds, FG percentage,
                        blocks.

C Alonzo Mourning       Preparing for Heat's training camp and
                        more new teammates.

G Gary Payton           Trash talking and stellar defense will
                        annoy and frustrate opponents, but who
                        cares?

G Steve Smith           Looking to add fourth gold medal to
                        collection of international hoops honors.

Head coach: Rudy Tomjanovich, Rockets. Assistant coaches: Larry Brown, 76ers; Gene Keady, Purdue; Tubby Smith, Kentucky.