Team USA beat Spain for Olympic gold on Sunday with a roster of 12 men that embraced their respective roles. They shoved their egos aside for the good of the team and yada yada yada. Tired of the clichés yet? After watching Team USA’s big, happy family roll over opponents for two weeks, I am too. But hey, they deserved each one. Getting a group of superstars to agree to a 12-way split of the spotlight is tough, and Mike Krzyzewski managed
// Team USA will face Spain on Sunday in a rematch of the 2008 Beijing final. The Americans survived Pau Gasol’s 21 points to win a 118-107 classic and recapture the gold medal they were unworthy of in Athens four years earlier. There was no way to tell by watching that fiercely contested final that only a week earlier, the United States had beaten the same Spanish team by 37. And when it comes to Olympic basketball, that’s just it. Given the
Team USA won 59 straight basketball games after allowing NBA players to compete in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. That included Olympic titles in 1992, 1996 and 2000 and a FIBA World Championship in 1994 (the U.S. sent a ragtag group of non-NBA players—Trajan Langdon, Brad Miller, Wendell Alexis—and picked up the bronze in 1998 during the NBA lockout). But ten years after Jordan and Barkley got things rolling in the right direction, the United States entrusted Baron Davis, Paul Pierce and Raef
In 1992, Lithuania ran onto the floor of Palau Municipal d’Esports in Badalona, Spain led by Arvydas Sabonis and Sarunas Marciulionis, both draped in the greatest warm-ups in the history of sports. Their shirts were tie-dyed in Lietuva’s red, green and yellow and featured a dunking skeleton slapped across the middle. Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead were behind the slick get up, and very much behind Lithuania’s cause, as the Baltic nation sought to escape the Soviet’s shadow and compete under
A monster third quarter from Kevin Durant and a buzzer beating three from Patty Mills will send Team USA into the medal rounds as the only team without a loss. The United States went to the locker room up 60-59 on Argentina before a 42-point explosion in the third quarter put the 2004 gold medalists in USA’s rearview for good. Seventeen of those 42 belonged to Durant, who hit five of his eight threes in the third and moved past Carmelo
Team USA has been a spectacle in the Olympics’ first week, the conversation surrounding them filled with more oohs and aahs than X’s and O’s. We’ve dissected the records they’ve set more than the teams that they’ve beaten and gotten our compression shorts in a bunch over some hypothetical match up between 11 young NBA players (and Kobe Bryant) and 11 graying Hall of Famers (and Christian Laettner). Can this team beat the Dream Team? Who cares. Tell me about Russia. Up until now, Team
With Brazil up 74-72 and six seconds remaining, it seemed as though Russia wouldn’t waltz into their meeting with Spain undefeated after all. Then Vitaly Fridzon took a pass from Alexey Shved in the corner and heaved up a prayer. Russia: still perfect. All Spain had to was dispose of the fledgling hosts and our heavyweights would meet in the ring as planned. But threes from Dan Clark, Nate Reinking and Luol Deng in the final 28 seconds cut the Spanish lead
// Mike Krzyzewski has won 927 college basketball games, made 11 Final Fours, won four NCAA Championships and earned an Olympic gold medal since landing his first head coaching gig at Army in 1975. In those 37 years, he’d never sat courtside for anything this ludicrous. “Well, obviously, we just shot better than any team in a game that I have ever coached,” Kryzewski said after Team USA’s 156-73 dismantling of Nigeria. When the buzzer sounded, finally and mercifully, Team USA had