![]() Look we’re Team USA we are going to be able to beat everybody.”Ĭraig Miller (USA Basketball Chief Media/Communications Officer, 1990-present): Literally a couple days before training camp we were still adding people. It was more of a “Let’s just pick the 12 best players we can and put them out there. ![]() There wasn’t a program in which guys had come up through the select team or maybe through the U-16 or the U-18 team, which is what USA Basketball has now. There wasn’t what you have now, a desire to play for the national team that was really overwhelming. Everybody was hearing that the Greeks don’t have their act together and it was going to be dangerous. There was real heightened tension there about the possibility of something happening.Ĭhris Sheridan (ESPN basketball reporter): This was the first Olympics after 9/11. Mike Breen (NBC Olympics play-by-play announcer): I brought my family, my wife and children, with me on all the Olympic Games but I did not bring them to Athens. Russ Granik (USA Basketball President, 1990-2000 NBA Deputy Commissioner 1990-2006): What happened was the fear of terrorism. Here are a few highlights of the 2004 run, when the USA won bronze. I end up going (to college) for one year, then I end up playing on the select team that I’m playing against today (the NBA rookies and young stars that the USA scrimmages against).”What was different back in 2000 - when the USA almost lost in the semifinals to Lithuania and looked vulnerable - and then in 2004 when the USA won bronze? Bill Leopold and Ben Teitelbaum of put together a rich oral history of that time in a story you should read. “I myself played when I was 17 years old going into Duke. “Every generation that is coming up has to come through USA Basketball if you’re, quote/unquote, a top player in the country. “It was a prestige honor before, but once they came in and built up a culture, it totally changed into a different dynamic,” Kyrie Irving told in Las Vegas. Not just that Team USA has lost only once since Mike Krzyzewski and Jerry Colangelo took over USA Basketball back in 2006 (and have won gold medals and two world championships), but there is now a real program, a culture where the “you must play for USA Basketball” mentality starts young.
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