It's Redemption For Team USA

So, it’s redemption after all.  After trouncing defending champion Spain, 118-107, USA’s Team Redeem has accomplished its mission to reclaim the gold in the game that originated from the heart of America – basketball.  And it’s as if we nurtured doubts about it.

            Not really, if you can sustain an average of over 20 points winning margin against all seven major takers, from Asia to Oceania, from Africa to Europe, from the best to the greatest, then there should be no doubt. 

            But doubts did persist.  If they had lost to Australia in their sixth game, after five successive wins, they could have gone home with no medal at all.  If they had lost to Argentina after the 7th, then they could have picked up a bronze at best.  If they had lost to Spain, do you think a silver medal finish would be enough to satiate the American public?

            Fortunately, Team America did not just send Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, and nine other players to form an NBA selection for the Olympics like it did in the  2004 Sydney Olympics and in the World Basketball championship two years ago in Japan.

America sent a team, with Bryant, James, and Wade just a part of it.  The three, along with their other teammates, played cohesive, unselfish basketball, with everyone playing his role on the floor like true amateurs and cheering from the bench like rookies.

            For sure, they were not familiar with these roles.  In the NBA, they are the best of the crop, millionaire sportsmen with attitude.  They fight against their teammates for minutes played, for ball possession, for more points, etc. 

            This is not the NBA, each of them were reminded, specifically by team director Jerry Colangelo, who told the players earlier in their training,  “…you 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."

            The 2008 Beijing Olympics represents the culmination of coach Mike Krzyzewsky three-year commitment to build up a team precisely “to take back something we’ve taken for granted.”  After another disastrous performance in 2006, coach Krzyzewsky, with Colangelo’s solid support, embarked on entirely different training mode, with more emphasis on role playing and teamwork. 

            After living through a nightmare in 2004 and a rude awakening in 2006, coach K and his boys crushed their opponents in swashbuckling fashion in their first seven games until Spain, led by Bryant’s LA teammate, gave them a scare in the finals, trailing only by four points, 71-75, going towards the end of the last quarter. 

            The close call should remind the redeemed Team USA that Spain, Argentina, Lithuania and the rest of the world are still capable of posing a serious challenge to its reclaimed title  as the king of basketball.