LeBron James is one of those players. He and Carmelo Anthony, both rookies, were late additions to the ’04 team. Both now say they were unprepared and uninformed about what they would see when they arrived in Athens.

“The first year, I really didn’t understand it too much,” James said. “I was a rookie, my first year being on the Olympic team, didn’t play much. It didn’t really sink in to me.”

And fixing USA Basketball didn’t just mean finding the right players. The Americans also had to ditch the wrong coaches.

Brown and George Karl, who oversaw the Americans’ sixth-place flop in the 2002 world championships, are known to nag players with their pursuit of the perfect game. Brown went even further, infuriating USA Basketball with his complaints about his roster, even though he had a large say in assembling it.

But knowing the coach and players would be together for three years, Colangelo went outside the NBA to pick Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, who knows about having long relationships with players and hasn’t tried to overwhelm them with his basketball knowledge.

“I think when you got the kind of pro players that Krzyzewski got, in my estimation you supervise,” said former Arkansas coach Nolan Richardson, now coaching Mexico. “The thing that he’s probably got to do more than anything is make sure that they share the ball. Share the ball and play the kind of basketball that they’re capable of playing.”

Anthony has seen U.S. basketball at its lowest, and is now one of the keys to getting it back to the top. And with the belief that the right program is in place, there are no excuses if the Americans can’t get it done next year.

“We only can show that,” Anthony said. “I think I’m tired of saying it. If we just focus in, we can get it. I just want to show it and I’m pretty sure my teammates just want to show it. We’re tired of talking about it.”

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