Death of a Dream: The 2004 USA Men’s Team
By Jason Luthor
USA Basketball has a men’s team that enjoys great success today, but it was forced to learn its lessons during the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Olympics.
Time has a funny way of changing things up on us. While this edition of the USA Olympics squad isn’t the star studded affair it has been in the past, it still has a killer lineup filled with players like Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving.
Meanwhile, many other teams are still getting by on the past glory of players whose prime basketball years are behind them. That’s not a slight to them. It’s just a fact that Father Time remains undefeated. This past year, even Tim Duncan decided it was time to hang up the laces.
Still, despite the advantages Team USA now enjoys, it was just 12 years ago that USA Basketball’s men’s program was only a shadow of its current self.
Following a stretch of dominance that started with the original 1992 Dream Team, USA Basketball started to believe that, as long as it sent NBA players, the United States would always come back with the gold in Olympics basketball.
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What members of the men’s basketball program forgot was that the world was catching up to U.S. basketball.
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The problem with the approach the USA was taking to international competition should have been apparent as early as the 2000 Olympics. That year, a young Lithuanian squad nearly upset the USA men’s team in the medal round.
That year’s edition of Team USA, manned by players such as Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, and Antonio McDyess, was talented, but lacked the singular scoring force of a Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. It’s small wonder that the team escaped with only a two-point victory.
Lithuania was an amazing 3-point shooting team and nearly got off a last second three that would have given them the victory. The game came so close to a USA loss that Lithuania’s final shot grazed the rim, just inches from an international upset.
Rather than learn from Sydney, the USA men’s basketball program ignored the warning signs that the world was catching up.The players that continued to be sent to international competition remained talented, but without a single superstar player who could truly elevate the team.
In the realm of basketball, the World Championships are about as important as Olympic gold among international teams. The 2002 USA team, anchored by guys like an aging Reggie Miller and Antonio Davis, reflected how little the U.S. thought of World Championship competition.
That tournament was the beginning of a massive change in USA men’s basketball. It was the year that Manu Ginobili showed hints of the phenomenon he would become and Yao Ming demonstrated he could go toe-to-toe with the best centers in the NBA.
Dirk Nowitzki walked away with the tournament MVP. But the most shocking part of that year’s competition was just how bad Team USA looked.
It was the first time the United States had lost in international competition since the Dream Team, ending a 58-game win streak for the U.S. in international play.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but it was. International play had matured in the decade since 1992. Ginobili had been playing with his national team for years, as had many other players. These were cohesive, disciplined teams with loads of talent. The USA had all the talent in the world, but walked into that tournament expecting gold.
Instead, it had to settle for sixth place in a badly contested World Championships that showed the deep flaws of the USA Basketball program. It was the year Argentina took silver to Yugoslavia’s gold, while Team USA couldn’t even sniff the podium.
Still, it was the World Championships, not the Olympics. When 2004 rolled around and Team USA headed to Athens, there was an expectation that a team loaded with NBA professionals would do the same thing that every NBA-manned Olympics team had done since 1992: win the gold.
This was a team with Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan and a who’s who of talented rookies that included LeBron James, Emeka Okafor, and infamously, Carmelo Anthony.
If this had been 2008 LeBron, the U.S. might have won it, but the 2004 USA men’s team once again lacked a singular scoring force who could take over. Duncan was a pivot man who could dominate in the post, but whose style of play kept him in foul trouble throughout the tournament.
Iverson had never in his life been accused of sharing the ball too much and, while a great penetrator, couldn’t deliver the scoring force needed to lift the team.
Guys like James and ‘Melo were good, but nothing like what they would become at the prime of their careers, and the 2004 USA men’s team was best known for clanging threes off the rim.
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More importantly, the USA men’s team should never have leaned so hard on rookies in an international tournament that was stocked with hungry, professional level players with loads of team experience.
There was a stretch of time when Ginobili was considered the second-best shooting guard in the NBA behind Kobe Bryant, and he was leading an Argentinian team that was stocked from top to bottom with NBA level players.
Carlos Delfino, Walter Herrmann, Andres Nocioni, Fabricio Oberto, Pepe Sanchez and Luis Scola would all enjoy various levels of success in the NBA. Some of them would become champions.
None of them were as talented as Duncan was or as James would become, but they were good, and Ginobili was more than great. He was greatness defined. More importantly, the best teams in that tournament knew how to play together.
They shared the ball, ran brilliant out of bounds plays, played great defense and got wide open 3-point shots off the bounce. That’s why it should have surprised nobody that, in the opening round of group play, Team USA fell against Puerto Rico.
The loss brought shocking flashbacks to anyone who remembered the 2002 World Championships, but the losses wouldn’t stop there. In the fourth game of group play, still not even in the qualifying rounds, Lithuania would avenge their 2000 Olympics loss by winning, 94-90, over Team USA.
Limping into the quarterfinals, the U.S. men’s basketball team beat a talented Spanish team, but found themselves staring down the world changing 2004 Argentinian men’s team.
In that game, Ginobili showed why the San Antonio Spurs had drafted them. On the world’s largest stage, he demonstrated why he’d won an NBA championship in his rookie season.
His team played a style of basketball known for quick decision making, smooth passing, and instinctual basketball. It was a style that would saturate the NBA over the next decade, and Argentina was ahead of the game.
They walked out of the Olympics with gold medals draped around their necks, while Team USA had to settle for the bronze.
That was the beginning of massive changes in not only the U.S. Men’s basketball program, but in basketball as a whole. Ginobili’s style was infectious, and the Spurs adopted lots of the Argentinian playbooks moving forward.
The NBA itself slowly adopted quick play reading, screening, passing, and open threes, over isolation or grind-it-out post play. More than anything, it showed that the world’s best could compete with the USA’s best on any given day.
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Team USA would mount its revenge tour for the next four years, but only after learning some hard lessons in in the 2004 Olympics.