COMMENTARY

By Dave Kindred

updated 12:48 p.m. ET Aug. 31, 2004

That basketball team?

You bet they were jerks.

Spoiled, pampered, prima donnas, they were too good to stay in the Olympic Village with rabble from around the world.

Stayed on a cruise ship in the city's fabulous harbor. Rode to the arena in limousines fit for potentates, pooh-bahs and lesser panjandrums.

These young men came thinking, "Who needs the Olympics?" If a guy is already rich and famous and has his own shoe line, what good can come from playing against stiffs from some weird country spelled with z's?

For the Olympics, the NBA's best player didn't care about suiting up. Said he was tired. No sense in risking injury for games that meant nothing. After all, there's real glory, and there's Olympic glory. Been there, done that.

The NBA's stars never got excited. They figured they were so good that all basketball-playing nations would fall before them in awe, losers by 50, and ask to pose with them for souvenir photographs.

Which, of course, they did.

That 1992 United States Olympic team was the greatest gathering of basketball players anywhere anytime. They toyed with the world. They won gold. But in the doing they created an atmosphere among NBA stars of divine right and entitlement that has led to a generation of egocentric players unable to grasp the simple concept of team.

1992: Dream Team.

2004: Bad Dream Team.

No gold medal, the first time such indignity has been suffered by our NBA Olympians. Worse, there was never a hope of winning.

The devolution began, it says here, during the gold medal ceremony of 1992 when Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley, to name the foremost jerks, stood for the playing of our national anthem while wearing — wearing — the American flag.

Wore it over a shoulder.

Wore it to cover a sneaker company's logo on their USA warmup suit.

That sneaker company, the Olympics' official supplier, was a competitor of a company that had bought players' souls.

There had been talk of refusing to play the Olympic tournament if Jordan, Barkley and other business partners had to wear that hostile company's shoes. After days of arguments that revealed the players' basest mercenary instincts — even their pride in those instincts — a compromise was struck. They'd wear the shoes; they'd cover the logo.

So as they stood with gold medals, they used flags to hide the logo of that other sneaker company.

"Loyal," was Jordan's key word of explanation for transforming his nation's flag into an accessory to his greed.

Loyal not to the United States, not to the idea of Olympic competition.

Loyal to a sneaker company.

Small wonder, then, that today's NBA players believe it's OK to think of themselves first, last, always and to the exclusion of all other considerations.

In Athens, the obvious evidence of the devolution across a dozen years was there for all to see. Whatever might be said of '92's prima donnas, once they set foot on a court, they were precise, powerful and merciless. As Barkley reminded us, remember, those guys from Angola might be carrying spears. Had to give 'em an elbow now and then.

In contrast, today's prima donnas played indifferently. No one could play defense with such lassitude if he cared about it at all. To lose to Argentina in the Olympics semifinals was no surprise; Argentina defeated an NBA team in the 2002 World Championships. But for the Americans to be so much the inferior team was to reveal themselves as poseurs who should be embarrassed.

Yes, the U.S. went to Athens without Shaquille O'Neal, Kevin Garnett, Vince Carter, Jermaine O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd, all of whom couldn't be bothered. It could have used two months of practice instead of two weeks to understand the problems presented by real teams exploiting the international game's flow, especially on 3-point shooting and body contact. In those months, maybe Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, Carmelo Anthony, et al., would have realized that Larry Brown, the coach, had more to say than, "The limos are here."

Still, it was the best team the NBA could put together.

And it lost to Puerto Rico? And Lithuania?

And to Argentines named Herrmann and Scola, Wolkowyski and Oberto, Montecchia and Ginobili? As it happens, Manu Ginobili, who scored 29 points while leaving Iverson and Marbury in his wake, is a rising NBA star with the Spurs. But, please, the USA couldn't defend against Walter Herrmann, the 21st century's Wild Bull of the Pampas?

As miserable as the American basketball experience in Athens was, it surely would have been more fun to see a team of U.S. collegians put together during the first week in April. Had they practiced and barnstormed for three months, I think J.J. Redick would have knocked down a 3-pointer against Puerto Rico.

But those days are gone, supplanted by relentless professionalization never less subtly demonstrated than in '92 when the NBA big-footed USA Basketball and transformed the Olympics from amateur sport into a global marketing tool.

Now the cost of that arrogance is known. The U.S. sent to Athens a team flawed in talent, character and commitment. And the world has answered the American challenge to raise its level of play.

Now it's the NBA's turn.

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