Kobe Bryant's Sweet Redemption in Beijing

Spain was within two points with barely three minutes to go in the basketball gold medal game, with bitter memories of the USA's debacle in the last three world caging tilts starting to haunt the Redeem Team. Kobe Bryant, badly wanting the ball in his hands, calmly took a pass and coldly sank a three-pointer that broke the defending world champions' back.

Had he missed, it would most likely have been another monumental collapse. But thanks to the courage of the best cager in the planet, Bryant took it upon himself and completed the great American redemption in basketball.

Nobody from the past three Olympic teams dared to take that chance. Most of them passed off important shots down the stretch because nobody had the courage to take risks. Consequently, they went down, literally and figuratively, in the history as the first all-NBA team who failed to bring all the marbles in caging.

Those humiliating losses just made the likes of LeBron James, Dwayne Wade, and Kobe Bryant more determined and hungry.

Their nationalism had to come out ahead of anything else and so they responded to the challenge without reservations, unlike some of their predecessors who totally gave it all up when they had experienced stinging losses.

More importantly, they learned that basketball is still a team game. Although, there were many instances when they still played individually, the 2008 Redeem Team came out as the best "team" ever. They really played as a team.

Spain was not able to take advantage of the "secret" in dismantling an all-professional basketball team. They were not able to play perfect basketball for 40 minutes.

The formula just got harder this time, though. With the way Kobe and company played, now it would probably take more than a perfect game to bring down Team USA.

And now that the Olympic gold medal is back where it rightfully belongs, it will probably be a while before Team USA loses it again.