Led by Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade, USA Basketball can once again say that it is the best team in the world (Image courtesy of New York Daily News).
However, Spain’s NBA All-Star Pau Gasol, his brother Marc Gasol, future NBA player (one would assume) Ricky Rubio, and Juan Carlos Navarro did not make it easy on the NBA’s best. The Spanish team frequently pulled within single digits and looked like they were in position to pull an upset after surviving an offensive explosion by the United States in the first half.
In the end, Kobe Bryant’s clutch play, along with Dwyane Wade’s hustle were too much for Spain, who stayed competitive with the US, even after being defeated by 35 by the same team earlier in the Olympic games.
Just four years after USA Basketball shocked the world by only managing a bronze medal in the 2004 games, the USA team is officially “redeemed.”
Seeing the emotion on the NBA stars’ faces as the clock expired was a refreshing look at what sports is “supposed to be about.” Sure, the NBA players get paid for being at the Olympics, much like athletes from other countries, but with the rest of the international community literally stepping up their game to the level of the NBA, this team felt like they had something to prove.
With much of the 2004 team not being invited to join this year’s squad (see Paul Pierce, Allen Iverson, etc.) and many of the NBA’s biggest names signed up for a team that spent much more time together than the 2004 edition, it was refreshing to see that this Olympics mattered to some of the wealthiest athletes on the planet.
Was it relief? Was it accomplishment? For once, especially with the battle that Spain gave the United States, the joy on the players’ faces looked to be genuine, much like seeing the faces of athletes who win any other Gold medal. We’ve come to expect USA Basketball to obtain gold and it seems like an inevitability, but it’s clear that this is no longer the case. International competition has made Olympic basketball competitive and the basketball community is all the better for it.
It’s come to the point where it’s not as if the USA would be able to take on a team of the world’s greatest players like it could before, seeing as the team had all it could handle with just the team from Spain this year.
And despite past dominance, the 2004 Olympics (and World Championships) might have been the kick in the pants that the NBA needed to make this Olympic sport matter again. The USA took pride in its game this time around and it paid off with a Gold medal.
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1 response so far ↓
1 kimekia // Sep 16, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Wot up LeBron James………………………
yeah ya!!!!!!
SEXIII BOYIIII……..
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