By TERRY LYONS
BOSTON – On September 30th in the Year 2000, immediately after the United States men’s Olympic basketball team narrowly defeated Lithuania, 85-83, in the Sydney Summer Games, Randy Harvey of the Los Angeles Times wrote that “the rest of the world had caught up with USA Basketball.” He was not alone in that point of view. Today, on July 25th in the Year 2021, in the few hours since France upset the USA Basketball Olympic team, 83-76, in the opening game of Pool play of the 2020ne Tokyo Olympic Games, the Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, New York Post, NBC Sports, Deadspin, and countless other media outlets throughout America all wrote that “the rest of the world had caught up” with USA Basketball’s best, as if it were something new?
That’s a 20 year news cycle of “catching up.”
“When you lose a game, you’re not surprised,” 2020 USA Basketball head coach Gregg Popovich told the assembled reporters covering basketball in Saitama Japan today. “You’re disappointed. I don’t understand the word ‘surprised.’ That sort of disses the French team, as if we’re supposed to beat them by 30. That’s a hell of a team.”
The wise guys in Vegas had it more like 12 points, not 30, and they were certainly influenced by USA exhibition game losses to Nigeria and Australia earlier this month when they set the point-spread. But, an upset is an upset and the disappointment is no longer a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to world basketball.
When Nigeria defeated the American team in Las Vegas, the headlines screamed “stunning, shocking and historic upset,” and one report went so far as to state, “Nigeria pulled off one of the greatest upsets in international basketball history on Saturday night by stunning Team USA in an Olympic exhibition game in Las Vegas, beating them 90-87. It was Team USA’s first-ever loss to an African nation. They had defeated Nigeria 156-73 in August 2012 at the London Olympics.”
There was some bickering over the margin of victory expected when USA Basketball suits up for an international game, no matter who the opponent. The 83-point margin of victory differential from 2012 didn’t mean a damn thing to the 12 Nigerian players who suited up vs USA on July 11, 2021. Half the Nigerian team had NBA experience and the head coach, Mike Brown, has a ton of NBA experience and three NBA championship rings (as an assistant coach) to prove his mettle.
Facing fact, the “fear factor” that the 1992 USA Dream Team had sitting on its bench was long gone by the time the 1996 Olympic Games were played in Atlanta. In 2000, longtime NBA executive, GM, and assistant coach, Donnie Nelson, was working as an assistant for his beloved Lithuanian team. Nelson noted that in pool play that year, maybe there were two players on the Lithuanian club who thought they “had a chance” against the Americans, but by the semi-final, some 10 players or more believe they could win. The 85-83 score reflected Nelson’s viewpoint.
The mechanism for USA Basketball assembling its teams has long been questioned. There seems to be a cyclical n nature to the Olympic team successes, if you examine the era of the ’92 team to the carry-over of some key players (Scottie Pippen, Karl Malone, John Stockton and Karl Malone), along with Coach Lenny Wilkens who assisted the ’92 head coach Chuck Daly. In ’94, with Shaquille O’Neal leading the way, the USA cruised to the World Championship in Toronto.
By 1998, NBA labor strife had tossed the national team upside down and, in 2000, the senior team was re-assembled after a successful Olympic qualification tournament in Puerto Rico. Rudy Tomjanovich and Larry Brown split the coaching duties and the Americans managed the gold in Sydney.
By 2002, the cycle had turned again, and the USA senior team failed miserably on its home turf of Indianapolis at the FIBA Worlds. It was downhill from there and the 2004 team was asked more about the players that weren’t on the roster than the players standing in the gym themselves. Coach Larry Brown “lost” the team while still practicing on American soil and the Olympic team staggered to a quarterfinal loss to a better Argentine team, yet the USA regrouped and showed some determination and class in gaining the bronze in Athens.
In 2005, USA Basketball and the NBA took a major step and turned the senior team program over to longtime NBA senior administrator and Phoenix Suns guru Jerry Colangelo, who had served as Chairman of the NBA Board of Governors until he sold the Suns to Robert Sarver for a then-record sum. Colangelo demanded autonomy and, at least, a three-or-four year commitment from the players who would sign-up and “change the culture” of USA Basketball.
The NBA hierarchy and Colangelo also made a very bold decision, and that was to allow the head coaching spot to be relinquished from an NBA coach to the great Mike Kryzyewski of Duke University, a longtime USA Basketball coach who assisted on the ’92 Dream Team but had stepped back as the NBA head coaches took over the senior national team. Colangelo and Coach K teamed-up like long lost brothers from Chicago and guided the program to unparalleled success and continuity.
If you remember, in 2006, they first faced adversity when a young USA team lost to Greece in the medal round of the 2006 FIBA Worlds, coincidentally in Saitama, Japan. But, from the bronze medal win in Japan right on through to the 2016 Olympic Games gold in Rio, the USA Basketball team dominated once again and Coach K went 88-1, including the three Olympic golds and two FIBA World Cup golds.
After Rio, blame it on a long period of time and service, Coach K passed the torch and many of the players in the program bowed out. Coach Popovich took over a new, talented and highly capable roster for the 2019 World Cup of Basketball in Spain but saw 19 players either withdraw, get injured or cut. The 2019 USA World Cup team finished a miserable seventh even though the program Colangelo had re-created had a roster of NBA All-Stars some 35 deep.
USA Basketball was re-loading once again, and suffice to say, the rest of the world hadn’t simply caught-up. They were better than the United States, whether they had NBA players on their roster or not (Greece in 2006).
Now, at the 2020ne Olympic Games, don’t knee-jerk to the 20+ year old cliche that the “rest of the world caught up” to the USA in basketball. And, don’t blame the roster of NBA players representing the USA in Japan, either.
Just face the facts and acknowledge, the United States was beaten by a better basketball team today, a French team that gave the 2000 Olympic team quite a run in the gold medal game 20 years ago. Coach Popovich has been on the losing side of the ledger in five of the last eight games he’s coached the national team, dating back to the 2019 Worlds and he is 17-9 in USA Basketball games he’s coached as an assistant or head honcho.
Bostonians must be aware, too, as Celtics forward Evan Fournier scored 28 points and hit the key three-pointer to ice the seven-point victory for his native France.