‘There’s stress’: USA Basketball has always faced unique pressure at Olympics
WPlaying for Team USA at the Olympics can feel like a no-win situation for a professional basketball player. Although it was invented by Canadian James Naismith, the sport has become the ultimate American world game. The U.S. men’s team has won the vast majority of the competition’s gold medals, taking the top prize 16 times, including one silver in 1972 and two bronzes in 1988 and 2004. But since America brought in the pros in 1992, starting with the star-studded Dream Teamthere is more pressure on them. If Team USA wins, that is to be expected. If they lose, it is a failure. The same goes for the women’s team, although they have been more dominant than the men over the decades.
Despite this, Team USA continues to attract the biggest names in basketball to compete every four years. And the upcoming 2024 Games in Paris are no different, with LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant ready to play for the men’s team and Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi for the women. But what can newcomers like Anthony Edwards or Sabrina Ionescu expect this year when they play for their countries? “International basketball,” says two-time NBA champion coach Rudy Tomjanovich, who led the men’s team Team USA to gold in 2000, “the pressure has been turned up to a level that’s really high, especially for Americans.”
Not only are expectations sky-high, but preparation can be minimal, Tomjanovich notes. While many other international teams band together throughout the year, NBA and WNBA players compete in their respective leagues. Their teams typically don’t come together for a few weeks to play in the Olympics. The teams heading to Paris this year, for example, have never played together as a 12-person unit.
“We had to play basic basketball,” Tomjanovich says of his 2000 squad, meaning his team didn’t have time to implement anything complicated. “We had a few plays. But we wanted to defend and run. We tried to get our big guys up early. If we didn’t get the fast break, the big guys would come in the past and we’d play basketball based on that.”
For the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Tomjanovich’s team was stacked with All-Stars Alonzo Mourning, Vince Carter, Gary Payton, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Antonio McDyess, Tim Hardaway and more. At one point, however, Mourning left the team during the tournament to return to the United States for the birth of his child, returning a few days later. “Talk about jet lag,” says Tomjanovich, who recently NBA Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement Award. “Talk about body tax!” The 2000 Games are also known as the time when Vince Carter posterized the 7-foot-1 Frenchman Frédéric Weis, jumping over him and embarrass him on a world stage“When he made that phenomenal dunk over the Frenchman – wow,” Tomjanovich said.
But 2000 wasn’t all high points for the coach and his team. The U.S. men won their first six games with ease, but in the semifinals they faced Lithuania in a game that was too close for comfort, despite Lithuania missing their legendary player, Arvydas Sabonis, who had retired. After the U.S. had taken a big lead in the first half, Lithuania fought back in the second half. With a minute to go, the score was 80-80. Then, with 43 seconds left, McDyess fouled a three-point shooter. But Lithuania could only make one free throw. Carter then scored, giving the U.S. a one-point lead. The U.S. then had two more free throws, but Garnett, uncharacteristically, missed both. McDyess, however, grabbed the rebound from the second and put it back in for the winning bucket of the gameIn the next round, the South defeated France for gold.
“Antonio McDyess was the one who put the ball in the basket,” Tomjanovich said. “When I went to congratulate him, he was still hyperventilating because he was the one who fouled the three-point shooter and he didn’t want to be the goat. [The NBA players] had never lost at that point and no one wanted to be on the team that lost for the first time.”
Tomjanovich says the prospect of becoming the first professional men’s team to lose an Olympic game was never discussed openly, but everyone could feel the tension, the pressure. The world had gotten so much better since 1992. If you didn’t respect the other teams, they would hurt you, the coach says. After the 2000 Games, Tomjanovich recalls writing a scouting report and telling Olympic officials like Jerry Colangelo that future teams had to be built cohesively, with rebounders, shooters, defenders — not just a collection of stars. Unfortunately for the U.S. men, the team lost the next Olympics in 2004, and Argentina won the gold medal.
“A lot of these teams spend more time together than we do,” Tomjanovich said. “It’s starting to become apparent that international players are more skilled. They may not be as athletic, but they’re more all-around skilled than American players. If you make a mistake or don’t take someone seriously, they’ll burn you.”
Tim Hardaway, a five-time NBA All-Star who was on Tomjanovich’s roster in 2000, remembers how busy the whole thing was. The year before, the U.S. team had had to qualify for the Olympics and at that time Tomjanovich was not with the team, because he was dealing with personal issues. So Team USA not only had to move quickly, they had to do it with multiple coaches. “When we were in Puerto Rico [qualifying],” Hardaway told the Guardian. “He wasn’t our coach. It was Larry Brown. So we developed a coaching relationship with Larry Brown who was playing in Puerto Rico to qualify and when Rudy came in, his philosophy was different than what we were used to.”
Still, everyone was able to make it work, he says. The players were scared like the pros they were. “We went out there and played when our names were called,” Hardaway says. “It was all about the U.S. It wasn’t about Tim Hardaway or anything. It was about what was on your chest. And you played for each other and that’s what it’s all about. Team. It’s about let’s hoop.” Hardaway says he also remembers that game in Lithuania. “Antonio McDyess,” he says, “came up with a really big putback on a free throw!”
For Lenny Wilkens, however, times weren’t nearly as tough. The nine-time All-Star as a player and NBA championship head coach with the Seattle SuperSonics was an assistant on the original 1992 Dream Team, featuring Michael Jordan. That team, widely considered the greatest ever, was assembled in the wake of the all-collegiate men’s team that failed to win gold in Seoul at the 1988 Olympics. Wilkens also served as head coach of Team USA in 1996, which brought back gold. “It was an amazing experience,” Wilkens, 86, told The Guardian.[In 1992] The world really saw what professional basketball looked like.”
Wilkens says he knew many of the guys on the Dream Team from the pros and coached them in All-Star games. But the players bonded overseas during the 1992 Games in Barcelona. “They were all respectful and got to know each other a little better,” he says. But when it came time to get down to business, no one worried about the outcome. “I said, ‘If you want the world to see how good you are, come prepared,'” Wilkens recalls. “And they did. They came prepared. We blew everybody away.”
However, since 1992, the competition has become fiercer every year and it has become more difficult to win on the men’s side (the American women). still tend to dominate). Even in the NBA, the past six MVP trophies have been awarded to players born outside the United States. This season, the top three players with the most votes are were all born abroad. The last American NBA MVP winner was James Harden in 2018. Not only that, the league’s most exciting young player, Victor Wembanyama, was born overseas in France. With stiff competition on the men’s side at this year’s Paris Olympics from Wemby, Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić and others, Team USA’s men’s team will need to be at their best if they hope to win it all again in 2024.
“There’s stress,” Hardaway says. “All eyes are on you. You’ve got to go out there and perform. Go out there and win. Every mistake gets worse, gets bigger and bigger. Everything is under a magnifying glass.”