Jerry Colangelo, take a bow for yourself. Now that Team USA has the Olympic gold medal firmly in hand after a difficult, 118-107 win over Spain, we can now say for sure that you were right.

From the first day USA Basketball put itself in the hands of Colangelo -- eschewing the discombobulated committee method, often spoiled by NBA politics, by which Team USA used to be chosen -- he identified the No. 1 problem faced by American teams playing in international tournaments. It was a lack of cohesion, a lack of familiarity with each other on and off the court. That led to a disjointed style that made Team USA's overall approach resemble that of an NBA all-star team.

The offense had consisted of a series of alley-oop attempts and clanging outside shots. The defense had been all futile waving hands, no moving feet and no communication. No one could shoot. No one filled roles. Players disliked teammates who dominated the ball. They didn't much like coaches who were struggling to find consistent combinations of players and messing with players' minutes as a result.

LeBron James savors his first taste of gold.

If the problem of cohesion could be fixed, Colangelo said, the United States would be restored to the top of the international basketball heap. So Colangelo did what most assumed was impossible: He made playing for Team USA a privilege. He refused to beg for players. He invited players to try out for the team with no guarantee of making it, and said he'd only take guys willing to make a three-year commitment. He completely turned around the perception of Team USA.

Colangelo made playing for Team USA something cool.

"Some people say this is going to be an awesome responsibility to get people to commit," Colangelo said in a press conference just after being named director. "I understand all that, but that's part of the responsibility. To now have an opportunity to represent your country in a time and place where the reputation we enjoyed as the pinnacle of basketball has been more than challenged, but taken away, it's a great opportunity to take back something we've taken for granted."

And now, here they are, gold-medal winners in the 2008 Olympics.

Not just gold-medal winners. This team was vastly different than any team of Americans we had seen since the original Dream Team. This squad -- until the challenge from Spain -- won its first seven games by at least 20 points. This team was facing very difficult international competition -- probably the best field ever assembled at an Olympics -- yet it still plowed its way to gold.

More on Team USA

Recap: U.S. team tops Spain for gold

Deveney: Give Colangelo his due

Weiner: United States back on top

TSB: Same ol' Team USA

This might not be the best version of Team USA, but it certainly played better defense than any previous team. It was also the first Team USA to truly understand and utilize the differences in international rules. It was also ego-free. There were important contributions from just about every player. In the eight games, the United States had five different leading scorers.

The team's unselfish attitude translated off the court, as well. The players acted like Olympians, not all-stars. They went to other venues to watch their countrymen compete. They went sightseeing. They were thrilled at meeting Michael Phelps. They admitted to goose bumps. They interacted with fans, even though they were fairly mobbed wherever they went.

It may seem cynical to get excited over basketball players who simply act like normal human beings, but, then, that shows how much USA Basketball had deteriorated. It shows, too, just how much Colangelo has accomplished in his tenure. Not only did this team bring home gold, but it brought home dignity. Once again, the standards for USA Basketball have been set high. Where they should be.

Sean Deveney is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at sdeveney@Sportingnews.com.

33

If you think it's impossible for Team USA to lose after barreling through its first seven games unbeaten with an average margin of victory of 30.3, just remember that we all felt pretty much the same way about the U.S. softball team's chances against Japan on Thursday. The Americans hadn't lost in eight years, had outscored opponents 57-2 in these Olympics and had pitcher Cat Osterman on the hill against Japan's Yukiko Ueno, who had thrown more than 300 pitches in a span of a day-and-a-half. Still, it was Japan 3, United States 1, and a silver medal for Team USA.

Upsets happen. It is not a likely outcome for Team USA against Spain, which already lost to the United States by 37 points in a pool-play laugher. The Americans should plow their way to gold, and probably will. Observers and fans can say that. Team USA can't—it needs to recognize that upsets happen.

As coach Mike Krzyzewski said of Spain, "They're the world champions. We got a great game against them in pool play, but pool play does not win you a gold medal. It just gets you into the medal round."

Here at the Olympic climax, the United States still has to trouble itself with the messy little details of winning the game. Spain's coaching staff watched the U.S.-Argentina semifinal from the stands Thursday, and no doubt came away encouraged by what they saw in the second quarter. That was when Argentina settled into a zone, and the United States settled for jumpers that weren't falling. If Spain has a chance to beat Team USA in the gold medal game, it will need an inspired performance from Pau Gasol, but it will also have to play a ridiculously packed zone and hope the Americans take the perimeter route again.

For Krzyzewski, though, there's more to it than that. Like most everything in Krzyzewski's world, playing against the zone on offense comes back to how you're playing defense. "I think our defense leads to good offense, not just in turnovers but in an attack mode," Krzyzewski said.

"I thought we didn't attack the zone [in the second quarter against Argentina], but weren't attacking defensively, either. You've seen us play here the whole time, the real heart of our team is playing defense. In the second half, we attacked the zone very well and whatever, but in that second quarter, it showed that when we let up or just don't play well defensively, it has an impact on the other end of the court."

Spanish point guard Jose Calderon probably won't play, and guard Juan Carlos Navarro is struggling with injury issues, too. That leaves the bulk of Spain's guard duties to 23-year-old Rudy Fernandez and 17-year-old Ricky Rubio. Fernandez has been outstanding in the tournament, averaging 11.9 points per game. Rubio, though exciting at times, has shown his youth, shooting just 27.6 percent from the field. Both players are turnover-prone, so the U.S. guards must hound them, and also must apply that hounding to how they attack Spain's zone.

Krzyzewski has Team USA in the gold medal game, and no doubt his biggest pregame goal is to get his players to erase from their memory banks the pool-play blowout of Spain. Now would be a very bad time for this team to try to cruise to a win the way it did in the second quarter against Argentina in the semifinals. Team USA is so close to regaining basketball superiority internationally and honor here at home, but a letup tonight—however unlikely it seems—would squander that opportunity.

Remember: softball.

6

Let's take the optimist's view on this one. Because, of all the games Team USA has played in the Olympics, this semifinal win over Argentina on Friday—by a score of 101-81, its tightest margin of victory of this tournament—was the biggest head-scratcher.

It didn't start that way. To open the game, the United States was sharp. The Americans played crushing defense, allowing just 11 points in the first quarter, and opened a 21-point lead early in the second. But then weird things started happening. Argentina guard Manu Ginobili, the Olympics' leading scorer, went out with an ankle injury and after that, Team USA played like a team that had better things to do.

For the second quarter, the Americans fell into every bad habit for which USA Basketball has been criticized over the past six years. They tried to make circus passes, as if they were playing against the Washington Generals. They failed to work for good shots against the zone defense, choosing to jack up the 3-point shots that are so fickle when they come from the red, white and blue. They eased up on the defensive throttle, most likely because they didn't feel Argentina had a shot without Ginobili.

Argentina is too good a team for that kind of nonsense, and that 21-point lead was whittled to six. The Argentines got 13 combined first-half points from Paolo Quinteros and Juan Gutierrez, who had accounted for just 22 of the 505 points Argentina scored heading into the tournament. Rather than a blowout at halftime, Team USA led by just nine.

But, again, let's be optimistic. We know that Team USA did not play very well after the first quarter here in the semis. They didn't force turnovers the way they'd been accustomed to doing. They didn't shoot particularly well, making 47.1 percent of their shots from the field overall and just 32.3 percent from 3-point range. Carmelo Anthony was just 3-for-14 from the field, and Kobe Bryant was 5-for-14.

Still, we've reached the point in the tournament where how you win doesn't really matter. It's whether you win. We've seen every team in this tournament, and Team USA is clearly the best. No matter who was injured, no matter how ugly the performance, Team USA beat one of the world's best by 20 points. The Americans are going to the final, after playing for bronze in their last two major tournaments, and playing for fifth in the tournament before that. They're poised to face Spain, the team the United States drubbed by 37 points in pool play.

Team USA does not have to be perfect to beat Spain. The Americans don't have to win by 37 again. They just need to win—it can be ugly, if that's what they need to do—and the gold medal finally will return to the United States.

Sean Deveney is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at sdeveney@Sportingnews.com.

12

How about a tip of the cap to Argentina?

Argentina, you'll remember, holds the distinction of being the first team to crack the dominance of USA Basketball's NBA-infused run and ending a 58-0 streak. The Argentines celebrated madly when they knocked off a very dysfunctional Team USA gathering with an 87-80 win in the 2002 World Championship in Indianapolis. As it turned out, that wasn't such a big deal. The U.S. lost two more times in that tournament and three times in the '04 Olympics, forcing the reorganization of the entire program.

If you're proud of this version of Team USA, thank Argentina, because they started it. Chances are, when the two teams meet in the semifinals Friday morning, they're going to regret what they helped push the U.S. to do.

Argentina is still a fearsome team. What often happens in international basketball is that a country will get a good batch of players who are about the same age, and those guys will win medals, pushing that country's hoops fortunes ever higher. But, when the group starts aging, there's not necessarily another great group behind them. That's where Argentina is. They've already lost Walter Hermann, Pepe Sanchez and Ruben Wolkowyski. They're down to, essentially, six players.

But those players are still pretty darned good. Pablo Prigioni has been a very efficient point guard. Manu Ginobili has been the leading scorer in the Olympics (20.3 ppg). Andres Nocioni, Luis Scola and Fabricio Oberto make up a smart, tough, talented front line. Carlos Delfino is a good defender and can be a hard-to-handle scorer when he's locked in.

And they know this is the team's last shot at Olympic glory. Ginobili is 31 and Oberto is 33. If they have one last strong showing in them, if ever there was a time to muster up everything they've got for the sake of their illustrious international hoops careers, this is it.

Having said that, let's be honest here: Argentina is facing a very large steamroller. The six-man lineup is good and can keep things close in the early going, but like every team before them, they just don't have the depth to maintain an extended fight against the Americans, who go 10 deep. Team USA will apply pressure from the beginning and will not let up.

Prigioni has been unflappable at point guard, and his 6.75 assist-to-turnover ratio leads the tournament. Ginboli is, of course, a good ball handler who will not fear Team USA's guards. But they'll face wave after wave of defense, picking them up full-court. They'll face Jason Kidd and Kobe Bryant, they'll face Chris Paul and Deron Williams, they'll face different combinations of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and, possibly, Chris Bosh and Tayshaun Prince. The U.S. has an enormous array of defensive options it can throw at Argentina's ballhandlers, as Spain can attest. It's only a matter of time before they crack, start turning the ball over and give up game-sealing fast-break points.

There are other problems for Argentina. The U.S. has been suffocating foes with perimeter defense, allowing just 28.6 percent shooting on 3-pointers, a staple of the team's offense. Meanwhile, the Americans have been making their 3-pointers -- 37.2 percent is not great overall, but considering the way past Team USAs have shot the 3-ball, it's outstanding. And Argentina could not have been happy watching Kobe Bryant have a 25-point breakout game in the quarterfinal win over Australia.

Looking at what Argentina is up against, this should be a rout. But Argentina is a talented and proud team that knows this is its Olympic swan song. They'll go down fighting. That makes the team more dangerous than its personnel suggests.

Sean Deveney is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at sdeveney@Sportingnews.com.

4

For a while, Goorjian looked a bit like Norman Dale, and Jimmy Chitwood was an Aussie -- Australia trailed 25-24 at the end of the first quarter, and 41-36 with just over four minutes to play in the first half. But, while this one started out like Hoosiers, it looked like it could have been titled the Beijing Chainsaw Massacre by the time it ended.

The strength and quickness of Team USA proved too much for the Aussies. Any potential for drama was snuffed out in the third quarter, and the U.S. cruised to a 116-85 win.

This might have been the perfect way to open the medal round for the Americans. After some up-and-down performances against weaker foes China and Angola in the first two games of pool play, Team USA ran full throttle against two of the better teams in the field -- Greece and Spain - and then against a lesser bunch, Germany. They won those three games by an average score of 36.3.

Talk of not even being challenged in this tournament sprung up. Naturally, comparisons to the '92 Dream Team followed. We need to talk about something, after all.

But this is not what the team should be thinking before it's won the gold.

After the blowout against Spain, when coach Mike Krzyzewski was asked about the lack of worthy opponents, it looked as if steam might shoot out of his ears. What coach really wants to hear, "Are you surprised by how badly everybody else in this tournament stinks?" (I'm paraphrasing there, by the way.)

"We feel we have had good competition," he said. "The last two ballgames, Spain and Greece are two of the top teams in the world. I think our guys have played well in both games. � I think that helps prepare you for the medal round."

Krzyzewski knows he has the best team in the tournament, and he knows the gold medal is theirs to lose. For all of Team USA's early struggles, Wednesday's game became a blowout pretty quickly.

Deron Williams' 3-pointer at the buzzer to end the first half gave Team USA a 12-point lead and momentum it never surrendered. Kobe Bryant opened the second half with a 3-pointer, giving the U.S. a 15-point lead, and finally had the breakout scoring game he's been looking for, scoring 25 points on 10-of-16 shooting. LeBron James was his usual, steady self, scoring 16 and grabbing nine rebounds. And the U.S. demoralized Australia on the boards, outrebounding the Boomers, 58-28.

Kobe Bryant scores 25 points against Australia.

But for Krzyzewski, the ho-hum start to this game should prove to be a blessing in disguise. He has been eager not to let this team get ahead of itself, not to let them fall into the trap of thinking about gold in the quarterfinals. It looked like they were doing just that in the early going.

For the first 18 minutes of the game, Australia reminded the world that, if you are to beat Team USA, you have to do five things. And Australia did those five things early on:

1. Pack the lane. Australia's defenders backed off Team USA's shooters, preventing them from getting to the rim and forcing them into jump shots. The Americans have been shooting the ball much more effectively, but their jump shooting can still be shaky at times, and they started the game 2-for-12 from the 3-point line.
2. Limit turnovers. Australia has solid guards who were not intimidated by the U.S.'s pressure defense.
3. Shoot 3s. Australia had been making 44.4 percent of their 3s entering the U.S. game. They didn't shoot so well Wednesday, but they kept hoisting the shots.
4. Move nonstop. FIBA rules allow screeners to get away with a lot more than NBA rules allow, and the U.S. defense has had some trouble with that. Australia was at its best when it set hard screens on the American guards (at one point, Chris Paul got walloped in the face by David Andersen's backside) and freed up their guards for shots or penetration.
5. Get lucky. The basketball gods will have to smile on you if you're going to beat this bunch. In the first half, Team USA was just 10-for-20 on free throws. Of course, Australia blew 10 layups in the half, so fortune was not all going their way.

Can any team put together and maintain all five of those factors over 40 minutes? Probably not.

But it's a good thing for Krzyzewski that Australia was able to do it for so long in the first half. You can bet, when Team USA sits down to watch game film, Krzyzewski will focus on went wrong in the first half. He probably won't even show the second half.

It'll be all Hoosiers, no bloodbath.

Sean Deveney is a writer for Sporting News. E-mail him at sdeveney@Sportingnews.com.

7