BEIJING — When looking for solutions to its international hoops malaise, an affliction that may have reached a nadir during the 2004 Olympic Games, USA Basketball explored everything from the way it selected the men’s national team to who was providing the shoes the players wore.
As it turned out, the best solution may have been right there all along. Both Dwyane Wade and LeBron James were on that dysfunctional team that barely came away from Greece with a bronze medal — although, admittedly, you might not have known it from the scant playing time they received.
Four years later, with the Americans entering Wednesday’s quarterfinal round as the overwhelming favorites to win the gold, it’s hard to imagine that the awfulness of Athens really took place. And that’s largely the result of James and Wade.
“I hate to say it’s just two guys, because our whole team has played really well,” Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski said Monday night after the Americans routed Germany 106-57. “But those two guys are really playing at the highest level.”
In many ways, reaching the highest of heights has been achieved by getting down and dirty. The duo has been, quite frankly, quite nasty. And it has been that way from the time the U.S. played its first exhibition game in Macau almost two weeks ago.
Almost any contact with an opposing player has been taken as a personal affront. Minimally, there’s a sneer; more often than not, some poor, unsuspecting Angolan or Spaniard has been shoved aside after violating their personal space. Even the sportsmanlike gesture of lending a hand to lift one of the two up from the floor after a foul is likely to be met with disdain.
If that isn’t quite in keeping with the one, big happy sporting family theme that runs through the Olympics, James and Wade will apologize later. Right now, goodwill can kiss their gold medal.
“Being a leader of 11 other superstars, you have to have a chip on your shoulders,” James said Monday. “That’s just how I’ve wanted to play from the very beginning. I don’t think we can intimidate opponents, but we can take care of business. I’m just going out there and playing angry and trying to move forward each game.”
James has called his 2008 Olympic experience “the best time I’ve had since I’ve been in the NBA,” a run that includes reaching the 2007 Finals. Part of the joy he has derived stems from the misery he suffered in Athens, when he, along with the Nuggets’ Carmelo Anthony, could never escape the deep end of coach Larry Brown’s doghouse — a thought that rankles James today.
“I still don’t know what happened there. But for me individually, it just wasn’t good,” he said. “I was 19 years old; I thought I was good enough to be playing, but I wasn’t. And being away from home for 37 days and not doing what you love to do was tough on me.”
Wade actually managed to break through the force field that seemed to separate he, Anthony and James from the court in Athens, eventually gaining some regular playing time by tournament’s end.
Even so, Wade said, that chapter and the one currently being written are totally different. “They aren’t even in the same book. I look at this as a team; I look at that as a bunch of individual guys who never had a chance to become a team.”
That’s not to say Wade doesn’t have something personal at stake. The guard led Miami to the 2005-06 NBA championship and at the time appeared to be one of the brightest stars in the sport. The following season he averaged a career-high 27.4 points, but in 2007-08 he was hobbled by knee and shoulder problems. Although he averaged 24.6 points, he played in only 51 games, leading some to wonder whether the injuries had knocked him from his elite perch.
“I was written off in one year, quicker than anyone’s been written off before. ‘Dwyane Wade’s best days are behind him,’ ” he said. “I’m only 26 years old. I’d like to think there are a lot of good days ahead still. I had two major surgeries. Now I’m back strong, and I just want to continue to prove people wrong.”
Anthony Cotton: 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com
