Team USA Won Olympic Gold So Now Let’s Talk About All The Stuff

There were a few narratives about the U.S. Basketball team in the 2024 Olympics that are worth revisiting.

#1. Serbian coach Svetislav said this team is better than the Dream Team

#2. The Europeans have caught up.

#3. Steve Kerr can’t coach and misused Jayson Tatum.

So was Pešić right? Well it’s a nuanced answer.

To an extent, the Dream Team was hype. The focus was on having Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird on the same team, but by 1992, Johnson had been forced to retire due to his HIV status and wasn’t anywhere near his peak, and Bird’s back problem was so severe that he had to lie on the floor when he wasn’t in the game. He also had to have his spine realigned on a regular basis.

The rest of the roster was pretty great though. Jordan and Scottie Pippen were terrific both ways and superb defenders. John Stockton, Karl Malone, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, David Robinson, Charles Barkley and Clyde Drexler were all outstanding NBA players and Christian Laettner was coming off of an epic four-year career at Duke.

But there wasn’t really anyone to test them. In fact, some of the other players actually asked them for autographs. It was night and day.

Legend is undefeated so the Dream Team will always be seen as better and needless to say, that team never went down 17 to anyone as this year’s team did to Serbia.

And players today, generally speaking, are more versatile and certainly have better training, nutrition and equipment than the Dream Team had access to. The game has changed in many ways. No doubt all of the guys on the Dream Team could play today and excel, but they would have to adapt to the modern game as well.

As for the second question, it seems a bit backwards.

The Europeans caught up to the US between 1992 and 2004 and then the US caught back up again.

We got hints as far back as 1988, when Oscar Schmidt destroyed the US in the Pan American games - in Indianapolis no less.

By the 2004 Olympics, the US had seriously slipped and a lot of players didn’t want to bother. The short camps didn't help and players like Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury were willing to trade hard-fought twos for quick threes. If you look back at the Dream Team footage, that group could hit threes to be sure, but they still didn't take them as liberally as the Europeans did. And a lot of Americans were kind of indignant that they shot threes that way, but the Europeans understood math perfectly well.

And the roster wasn't built with roles in mind. It was still more of let's take the best talent we can. Young players like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony were not really used effectively. Tim Duncan was disgusted with the whole experience, saying “FIBA sucks” and he never played for Team USA again.

In the Jerry Colangelo/Mike Krzyzewski era, some of this stuff was rectified. Players were asked to make a three-year commitment and, starting in 2008, teams were crafted rather than being thrown together.

Krzyzewski asked his players to make a commitment to winning and to accepting whatever role they were given.

The 2004 team focused a lot on defense but also had some really good shooters. Tayshaun Prince, Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant and Michael Redd could all counter the Europeans penchant for three point shooting.

The U.S. caught back up and has stayed ahead of the Europeans and the rest of the world, although not by much. Still, there’s no question that the Americans have deeper talent and athleticism and when they play as a unit as effectively as the Europeans do, the results are going to be good.

Finally, the controversy over Jayson Tatum’s minutes is mercifully over.

As Duke fans, we hated to see him not play, particularly against Serbia since the Serbs very nearly knocked Team USA off, and indeed were up by 17 at one point on Thursday.

Some of the attacks on Kerr were ludicrous though. Did he have a vendetta against the Boston Celtics? Why would he? You’d think if he had a vendetta it might be against James, who actually cost his team a championship or maybe Kevin Durant, who left Golden State under unhappy circumstances.

Why Boston? Why Tatum?

That never made any sense. You see people like Dave Portnoy who said he was going to pull for France he was so upset about Tatum, or Bob Cousy, now the patriarch of the Boston Celtics, who wondered publicly if Kerr had an issue with the Celtics. Even Draymond Green, who plays for Kerr and Golden State, was harshly critical.

Now that gold has been won, we’ll hear more from the people who were in the locker room, but Kerr himself gave a big hint in his comments immediately after the U.S. knocked off France. Did you catch it?

He said that America was the only country that would be ashamed to win silver. That was a very telling comment. The players will get past a loss. Indeed, James earned a derisive nickname in 2004 - LeBronze.

No one remembers because he’s been terrific.

The coaches can’t shake a loss as easily. Larry Brown is one of the greatest teachers in the history of the game. He sees the game in ways that very few people ever have.

But he bombed in the 2004 Olympics and the stench has never fully dissipated.

Whatever you think of Tatum’s playing time, the bottom line for coaches is this: win or pay the price.

And for Kerr, like Krzyzewski and Gregg Popovich who had the job before him, his focus was solely on winning.

When Kawhi Leonard was sent home due to his knee, there was a lot of pressure to pick Boston’s Jaylen Brown as his replacement.

There was a telling remark by Grant Hill, who by the way has barely been mentioned and should be since as the director of USA Basketball he is the architect and visionary of this latest gold medal ride. Props to Hill for a job well done.

Hill and his staff went with Boston’s Derrick White instead of Brown and there was an uproar. Remember?

Do you remember Hill’s explanation?

He said that Bam Adebayo and Anthony Edwards had an obvious chemistry and so they went for a versatile defender instead of another offensive talent. And after seeing Durant, Curry and James dominate, clearly he was right: Brown would have been redundant.

Hill also ended the three-year commitment that Colangelo and Coach K had insisted upon, saying that it wouldn’t work for today’s players.

Who does that put the most pressure on?

Well, the head coach.

Our worry about that was exactly what Australia’s Josh Giddey said: other teams would have vastly more experience as a unit and would thus have a chance to beat the Americans, which was an advantage for those teams before the Americans solved that problem.

Kerr had a very limited time to get his team together and, crucially, to establish roles. You could argue that he didn't do it very well of course and that might even be fair.

That doesn’t change the reality though: the U.S. had to put a team together quickly and to get them to work well as a unit.

To their credit, the players bought in. Tyrese Haliburton barely played but he kept a positive attitude. Tatum had a sensational year and still didn’t play as much as he would have surely liked.

He didn't insist on starting or throw a fit over minutes. Anthony Edwards is one of the great rising stars in the game and one of the healthiest egos and he probably didn't get as much time as he wanted either.

Roles had to be established, and quickly. Tatum’s ring or first-team All-NBA status didn’t matter or help.

What mattered was what worked. Kerr had multiple problems to solve and only a few solutions were going to work. He managed to solve them in different ways in different games, and when the Serbians presented a huge challenge, the players took over and solved that for him. Same thing happened against France.

In the end, this team was organized around James, Curry, Durant and Anthony Davis. Everyone else had moments, but everyone else was also secondary.

It’s also worth pointing out that James is nearly 40, Curry is 36, Durant 35 and Davis 31.

Tatum is 26, Haliburton 24 and Edwards is 22. They are the future. Their time will come and next time around, they’ll be among the most experienced players. Indeed, with much of this roster aging out by 2028, they’ll be relied on as veterans.

People got worked up about Tatum’s minutes and he probably isn't thrilled himself. But the bottom line is success and the U.S. won gold for the fifth straight time. You can do a lot of things in life, but you won’t get many chances to win those medals. So congratulations to the team and especially Tatum, who acted with great professionalism in Paris, and we do hope he’s back in 2028.