ATHENS, Greece - David Stern came to town to watch this one. He came to watch the best his league could scrape together — from among the few NBA players who care about their image and reputation in the world — take on Argentina with a chance to advance to the Olympic gold-medal game.

I won't even waste electrons transmitting the full irony of the situation. The NBA needed to beat Argentina, which hadn't been seen on the international stage since it lost the epic battle for the Falkland Islands. That's Argentina, the setting of a really swell musical but not the first name that pops into your mind when someone asks you to name the world's leading basketball powers.

You know who won. And you know who got hooted and jeered out of the building and back to their limos and into the night, where they faced the task of preparing for Saturday's bronze-medal game.

And if you're looking for David Stern, he's probably the little guy sitting in the darkest corner of the most out-of-the-way taverna in Athens, wearing a false beard, a slouch hat pulled low over his eyes, and dark glasses, ordering ouzo, "And leave the bottle here."

Don't feel sorry for him, though. He brought this on himself, allowing his deputy, Stu Jackson, to assemble a team of high-flying stars to play in this tournament. It was a team that could run the break but couldn't shoot from the outside.

And it was a flashy group that came here, the best young players who could find time in their busy schedules to squeeze in some games for their flag and country — and their sponsors and posses.

Any illusions they had that it would be easy were shattered two weeks before the Olympics started  when they got thrashed by Italy. The 89-81 loss to Argentina on Friday was their third of the tournament. That's one more than the United States had lost in the first 68 years of Olympic basketball.

You can make any excuses you want about this one. You can talk about the officiating, which has hardly been consistent or sterling throughout the tournament. You can talk about the team's lack of outside shooters. You can say the world has gotten a lot better.

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But in the end, you're left with the raw and ugly truth: The NBA became an inferior product here in Athens.

It was stripped naked and exposed for a highlight film devoid of fundamentals, a sideshow to the international standard of setting picks, running the pick-and-roll, finding the open man, running the back-door play, packing the paint with zone defenses.

They had their chances — many of them. But with several starters, including NBA star Manu Ginobili, in foul trouble in the first half, Argentina finished out the second period without a starter on the floor — and stretched the lead.

The Argentineans were as many as 16 points ahead in the second half, but the enormity of what they were doing almost choked them. At times, they looked as if they had as little idea what to do with a big lead against the United States as a caveman would have to do with a computer.

But when the Americans chipped the lead down to eight points and had a chance to steal the game, someone would foul an Argentine on a three-point attempt, or leave somebody who was all elbows and jerky moves open on the perimeter, or let someone walk uncontested into the paint for a lay-in.

And when it was over, the United States could only say the refs were lousy and they got beaten by a better team. By Argentina. You can bet that's not a line they ever thought they'd have to say in their lifetimes.

They were embarrassed but not humbled. LeBron James had already set up his excuses before the medal round began, saying he came to win a gold medal, but if he didn't, hey, that was cool, too.

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And now he's going to have to fight to get even a bronze medal so he and his teammates can chant on the plane ride home, "We're No. 3!"

I said this was going to happen before the Olympics ever began, but it doesn't excuse the NBA, or Stern, or the players. The best of the league couldn't be bothered to come, secure in their arrogance that the NBA could send anyone and win. Jackson picked a team that couldn't shoot. The players themselves weren't able in a few weeks to learn the fundamentals they neglected to pick up in college and high school, because fundamentals don't make SportsCenter highlights and don't attract shoe contracts.

And now the gauntlet has officially been dropped. The United States got killed in the World Championships two years ago. They've been undressed on the Olympic stage. In two years, the World Championships will be back, and the U.S. will be just another team trying to show that it knows how to play a game with which it showed so little familiarity in Athens.

It will be then, when their pride and that of the nation is at stake, when they have their next chance to regain their honor, that we see what they're made of, when we see if they care.

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