ATHENS, Greece - The United States has suffered upset losses in team sports before and will again. But none has ever been as humiliating as the blowout loss Sunday night in basketball to Puerto Rico.

The small arena that hosted this historic debacle wasn’t even full for the game that laid to rest any lingering misconceptions about the United States' continuing supremacy in world basketball. Even much of the media that has helped foster the notion that the United States was invincible at the game it invented and disseminated around the globe didn’t show up.

Why should they have bothered? The game was miles away from the heart of the Olympics, in an arena that was more like a gym tucked into a corner of an old U.S. Air Force base on the outskirts of Athens. And Michael Phelps was swimming at nearly the same time. There would be plenty of time to write about this latest edition of the Dream Team, which couldn’t possibly lose to the likes of Puerto Rico.

So few thought it mattered that only Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson from among the NBA’s biggest stars bothered to come to Athens. Americans are the greatest basketball players in the world and should play that way. Even if their average age is 23.6, they are a team replete with players who have proved themselves in the cauldron of championship play.

No one really believed this outfit was a dream, but it had inherited that name from the original 1992 squad, and it carried a winning streak by U.S. professional players of 58 straight Olympic contests. By the end of the night, not only was it not a dream, but it was also exposed as not even being a team in any sense other than that they wear the same uniforms and ride the same bus to the game.

In what the rest of the world views as the biggest basketball tournament of them all, Not-a-Team USA came out flatter than a drunk at a karaoke bar. Its offense consisted of someone — usually Allen Iverson or Stephon Marbury — driving the lane, getting the defense to collapse around him, then dishing the ball to an open man on the perimeter, who then shot an air ball.

"We came out flat," admitted Dwyane Wade. "I don’t know why."

Maybe it was because a lot of the members were out late the night before, being big celebrities and having a whole lot of fun at Sports Illustrated’s big party. Maybe it was because they believe their own hype.

More likely it was because they simply aren’t a team, but a collection of people with a lot of individual skill, but little grasp of the fundamentals of the game.

You could see the difference between a team and a collection of celebrities during the pregame warm-ups.

The United States had seven basketballs on the court for 11 guys — Emeka Okafor, who didn’t play, spent the warm-up period getting his back kneaded by a trainer — and they used their time to hoist up random jump shots.

The Puerto Ricans had three balls out and they practiced passing, setting picks, and spotting up for jumpers.

You didn’t know watching the scene how the game would unfold. Puerto Rico is still a team that had never beaten U.S. professionals. Its point guard is the Utah Jazz's Carlos Arroyo, not well known before the game, a national hero on his home island after it was over.

But the game went like the warmup. Puerto Rico ran plays, worked the ball around, blocked out, did all the little things that make big differences. The U.S. players stood around on the perimeter waiting for Iverson or Marbury to draw the defense with a drive. When that happened, the guards kicked the ball out to an open man, who threw up either an airball or one that hit nothing but iron.

That’s the beginning and end of the U.S. offense. It wasn't even particularly adept at getting the ball inside to Duncan. It turned the ball over more often, gave up more fastbreak points, committed more fouls, had fewer steals, and, for much of the game, was barely outrebounding its smaller opponents.

At halftime, the United States was down by 22. It would play furious defense in the second half and would put on a run that got the deficit down to eight points late in the game. But it  couldn’t close the gap, couldn’t stop Arroyo, and ultimately got blown out.

"I don’t know what we can get out of this," said U.S. coach, Larry Brown, who surely deserves better than this outfit. "We’re going to find out what we’re made of and what it means to truly be a team."

It may be too late for that. Unless these guys can learn how to pass and set screens and run plays in the next couple of days, they are going to be hard pressed to make the medal round.

Richard Jefferson, who did not distinguish himself, thought that the loss was simply an aberration. "You know Allen Iverson’s going to knock down shots," he said. "You know I’m going to knock them down."

Actually, we don’t know that. We only know that they lost to Italy and needed a miracle shot at the buzzer to beat Germany in a pre-Olympic tournament.

You have to wonder what Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, Kenyon Martin, Vince Carter, Tracy McGrady and the other stars who couldn’t be bothered to come were thinking when the saw the debacle. You have to wonder if Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan retched at halftime or waited until the end of the game.

But you don’t have to wonder if any team in the world will ever fear a U.S. team again. They won’t. They learned Sunday night they don’t have to.

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