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Monday, October 2
Americans struggle to win gold
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia -- One by one the U.S. basketball players
bowed to receive their gold medals, each of them flashing a wide,
genuine smile.
They were smiles that were a mixture of joy and relief, smiles
that had been repressed throughout the Olympics.
|  | | Allan Houston and the U.S. had to fight off a tough France defense in the second half. |
"It was just a tremendous feeling, the best moment I've ever
had as a basketball player," Vin Baker said, tears falling from
eyes as he recalled the moment. "This wasn't an easy journey for
us."
No it wasn't, right up until the end.
The U.S. men let France creep within four points with 4 minutes
left, but after that, there was no repeat of Lithuania's near
miracle in the semifinals. Vince Carter had a double-pump dunk with
1:40 left and the U.S. team scored nine of the game's final 12
points to defeat France 85-75 Sunday (Saturday night ET).
It was the 12th gold medal in 14 Olympic basketball competitions
for the United States, but this one will be remembered as the
Olympics when the rest of the world caught up.
"We played together, and came up and proved we're the best team
in the world," Allan Houston said. "It was a little bit tougher
than I thought. Nobody can tell us we didn't earn it. That's what
makes it even more special.
"We had to play every second for the gold medal that we got."
The final victory margin of 10 points was the lowest ever for
the United States in a gold-medal victory. It was the fifth time in
these Olympics that the Americans won by 15 or fewer points, quite
a difference from 1996 and 1992 when the U.S. teams won every game
by at least 22 points and often had victory margins of 40 points or
more.
"What this Olympics demonstrated is that the competitive level
of international basketball has improved -- more so than casual
observers of the game understood," NBA commissioner David Stern
said.
That competitiveness didn't manifest itself in the gold medal to
the same degree it had in the semifinals.
France led only twice, 2-0 after scoring the first basket of the
game and 7-6 on two free throws by Stephane Risacher following a
technical foul on Gary Payton for getting in the face of a French
player during a stoppage in play.
Still, the Americans found themselves ahead just 76-72 after
Antoine Rigaudeau hit a 3-pointer with 4:26 left to complete a 16-4
run that turned a slow-paced, foul-plagued game into an interesting
one.
Kevin Garnett followed with a put-back after the U.S. team
grabbed two offensive rebounds, Alonzo Mourning hit two foul shots
and Garnett scored on a bank shot to restore a 10-point lead and
end any thoughts France might have had of duplicating Lithuania's
feat of two days earlier.
"Just wanted to keep it going," Carter said. "Didn't want to
make it this far to quit. If we were going to lose, we were going
to go down fighting."
After Carter put an exclamation point on the victory with his
showtime dunk, the U.S. coaching staff started hugging each other
on the sideline.
When the final buzzer sounded, the American men walked over and
exchanged high-fives with the women's team, who won their gold
medal Saturday night.
Garnett and Baker kissed their gold medals after receiving them.
After the national anthem was played, Mourning raised his right
fist and then held his medal aloft in his left hand.
"It was fun within our little unit, but I really didn't feel we
were welcome here," Mourning said. "You could just feel it, the
lack of respect, how the people wanted to see us lose. Our strength
came from inside our own unit."
A few of the players pulled out cameras and snapped photos from
atop the medal stand, the French players standing to their right
and the bronze medal-winning Lithuanians, their arms locked around
each other's shoulders, standing to their left.
"One of the greatest feelings ever," coach Rudy Tomjanovich
said. "Winning is great. This was different, it was a national
deal. You're not playing at home. You're on hostile land. The whole
process of becoming a team was just wonderful, when you take guys
from different teams and just focus on one thing. It was a team and
everyone pulled for each other, and it wasn't easy."
Carter had another impressive dunk with 31 seconds left,
slamming in an alley-oop pass that Payton bounced off the
backboard. But the referees waved it off in one of several
questionable calls that occurred throughout the tournament and
caused the U.S. team repeated grief.
There was a lesson in it, though, a lesson that the Americans
learned well in the past two weeks: Strange things happen in
international basketball games, stranger things than anyone could
have imagined just a short time ago.
The U.S. team scored 95.0 points per game and won by an average
margin of 21.6 points -- a number that was inflated by a 47-point
win over China and a 46-point victory over New Zealand.
All the other games were closer than anything the Americans had
seen at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics -- with the exception of the 1996
gold medal game against Yugoslavia.
The Americans went more than nine minutes without a field goal
in the first half as the officials were busy calling 36 fouls -- 18
on each team.
The tedious pace silenced the sellout crowd and made the game
seem somewhat boring, although that was likely a welcome relief for
the Americans after having to fight for their Olympic lives in
their previous game.
French center Frederic Weis went to the bench with his third
foul less than five minutes into the game -- just as the Americans
were starting a 13-2 run to assert control.
Carter, who tied Allen for team-high scoring honors with 13
points, ended the run with a pair of 3-pointers for a 20-9 lead.
An 11-2 run followed with seven of the U.S. team's points coming
from the foul line, and the Americans made 17 free throws before
ending their nine-minute field goal drought on a corner jumper by
Antonio McDyess that made it 43-30.
Mourning picked up a technical early in the second half for
arguing a foul call, and Weis clanged the ensuing free throw
attempt high and hard off the backboard to leave France trailing by
14.
Soon it would be a different game as France made its run, but
the Americans responded as if they had gotten used to it, which
indeed they learned how to do during these Olympics.
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