Tag: Kobe Bryant

LeBron rebrands, as does USA Basketball

LONDON — They posed at times. But never as famously as Usain Bolt did.

They never peed in the pool, either figuratively or bodily. Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte admitted they had.

They never tested positive. They were never accused of tanking. They were actually born and raised in the country they played for. And they didn’t, unlike some of their basketball opponents, swing at vital body parts.

What they did was happily attend other Olympic events, and meet all obligations with the media, and win every game with respect for the sport and their opponents.

The rebranding of USA Basketball is complete.

The rebranding of LeBron James is getting there.

Sunday closed more than the Olympics. It also closed the debate about whether the 2012 gold medalists are better than the Dream Team of 20 years ago.

James, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul are special. But the Americans at times on Sunday played a frontline of small forwards because they had no other choice.

Where are the big men? Apparently, in Spain. And as the Spaniards scored 100 points in what was mostly a tight game, someone in the stands in London likely wondered if that would have happened in his day.

David Robinson, with Patrick Ewing subbing, would have defended the rim.

Still, this odd lineup worked, especially when Durant aimed from the shorter international 3-point line. The Americans played together, and they accepted roles. Sunday, when pressed, they also reacted with considerable poise.

During their time in London they also stayed out of the tabloids, and that’s not always easy. This team, as it was with the 1992 version, had a Beatlemania feel in the land that created it.

Given that, the Olympic press would have jumped on the slightest hint of bad behavior. And if they had ever done what the Spanish team did in 2008? Posing for a team picture by slanting their eyes before leaving for Beijing?

“We would’ve already been thrown out of the Olympics,” Jason Kidd once told a reporter.

Maybe they understood all of this. Sunday, when Sergio Rodriguez stuck a finger into Tyson Chandler’s face, nothing followed.

And when Rudy Fernandez slammed into Paul at midcourt? Paul was far nicer than he is in the NBA.

When the game ended, Paul ran onto the floor to track down the basketball; he wanted to secure it for history. Moments later, several of the U.S. players nodded to history.

They went to Doug Collins, who was working for NBC, to give a nod toward him and the 1972 Olympics. Collins choked up.

The difference between this team and the joyless, dysfunctional group in 2004 is staggering. And there in Athens, stained for the first time, was James.

Other stains would sink deeper, and were seemingly indelible. The Games could never erase The Decision, right?

Maybe not. But what James completed here will change how some see him. Now, in the same year, he has an NBA title, an NBA MVP trophy, an NBA Finals MVP trophy and the Olympic gold medal. Only Michael Jordan has done the same.

It’s also how. James remained unselfish, and he did the dirty work without complaint. On this team, he had to play post defense.

“LeBron James has shown an incredible amount of growth as a person, as a player and as a leader,” Jerry Colangelo, the managing director of USA Basketball, said Sunday. “And it’s all come because of what has transpired in his life.”

Colangelo said winning the title with the Heat was huge for James. “But he also knew this was big for him and his legacy, and he seized the opportunity. He wasn’t going to let it go. Because he had a lot riding on this thing.”

So ahead by only one point entering the fourth quarter, James didn’t respond as some see him, like the pampered Olympian who stays in a 5-star hotel. Instead, he cut inside, where Kobe Bryant found him, and spun for a score.

He rebounded and set up teammates, and he finished. With two minutes left, James cemented the gold with a 3-pointer.

“We knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” he said. “We didn’t want it easy.”

None of it has been easy these past eight years. Not for USA Basketball, not for him.

bharvey@express-news.net

Twitter: @Buck_SA

How Howard impacts the West

It just doesn’t seem possible that one team can continue to hit the jackpot as often as the Los Angeles Lakers. From Wilt Chamberlain to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Shaquille O’Neal to Pau Gasol, there might not be a franchise in North American pro sports that has had more success prying prime assets from their competitors.

Add Hall of Fame-bound center Dwight Howard to the list following the recent completion of the four-team deal that delivered him from Orlando to Hollywood for a pu-pu platter of journeymen and mediocre draft picks. If most of L.A.’s other exchanges were made for pennies on the dollar, this was borderline theft. And now the Spurs and Oklahoma City, who battled for last year’s Western Conference title, will have to deal with the results.

It’s hardly a lock that the Lakers, who also pried the still-productive Steve Nash away from Phoenix, have vaulted past both. Look at their own spotty history when it comes to building teams around aging superstars.

The West/Baylor/Chamberlain triumvirate of the late 60s and early 70s never lived up to expectations. Indeed, it wasn’t until Baylor was forced to retire that the Lakers finally won their first title in 1972. Then there were the ill-fated additions of Gary Payton and Karl Malone in 2004, with the former never meshing with Phil Jackson’s triangle offense and the latter breaking down in the midst of a pounding from Detroit in the Finals.

With Kobe Bryant, Gasol and Nash all on the wrong side of 30, and a glaring lack of depth, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if L.A.’s latest super team fell short as well. But, with such a top-heavy collection of talent, the Lakers should present a massive challenge to their fellow contenders.

San Antonio: Even more than the Lakers and Thunder, the Spurs’ biggest enemy, as always, is time. Retirement looms on the near horizon for Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili, at which point they’ll finally be forced to embark on the rebuilding job management has done so well to stave off in recent years. The additions of Nash and especially Howard should only accelerate that process, with both addressing major holes for the Lakers — namely, playmaking, outside shooting, consistent interior defense and athleticism.

Oklahoma City: If any team can feel good about how it matches up with the Lakers, it’s the Thunder. They boast one of the top interior defensive tandems in the league in Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins. And with Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden all still under the age of 25, the Thunder should only get better, presenting a stark contrast to L.A.’s potent but graying lineup. Westbrook is likely already salivating at the prospect of attacking Nash off the dribble, and Bryant is no longer capable of matching buckets with Durant.

So, while it’s anything but a given that the Lakers will be able to beat either team on its quest to reclaim the Western Conference crown, the chase has obviously gotten much, much more interesting.

Buck Harvey: Bronzed: Ginobili, U.S. owe each other

LONDON — Manu Ginobili said he and his teammates know they aren’t as good as the United States. “We know our limitations,” he said, and Luis Scola took that further.

“You don’t need to be smart to know that,” he said, smiling.

That’s why they care about Sunday’s bronze-medal game as much as the Americans will care about their gold one.

“If bronze is the highest we can aim,” said Ginobili, “that’s our game.”

But that’s also why Ginobili and Scola owe so much to the U.S. team that went to Athens in 2004. Maybe Argentina couldn’t have won its groundbreaking gold medal then, no matter how much magic Ginobili had.

Unless the Americans had become as careless as they did.

It’s an NBA world at Olympic basketball, and that was clear after Friday’s game. Kobe Bryant talked for maybe 15 minutes, and the Olympics barely came up. Everyone wanted to know what he thought about the Dwight Howard trade.

Ginobili was asked, too, and he said this: “I’m so happy it happened finally. It’s been such a long soap, how do you say, soap opera.”

He was kidding, of course. Ginobili said he didn’t know the details yet, but he understood the basics.

“I know Dwight got to L.A. and (Pau) Gasol stayed,” he said. “That makes them even tougher. So we will go play them as hard as we always have and try to beat them regardless.”

It’s a parallel to how he’s often seen his national team. The Argentines never had the best talent. But if they played together, and kept at it, wasn’t anything possible?

That’s what happened in 2002 at the World Championships in Indianapolis. Then, Ginobili and Argentina became the first team to beat the U.S. with NBA players.

Most forget what happened the next summer. In qualifying in Puerto Rico, the U.S. routed Argentina by a margin greater than Friday’s 109-83 score.

More emphatic was this: The Americans went on a 21-0 run in the first half, with Tim Duncan starring, and led at the break, 60-27.

Larry Brown called it the best game any of his teams had ever had, and players said they had reversed what had happened in Indy.

“I think everybody’s back on notice,” Jason Kidd said afterward, “that we can play the game the right way.”

A year later in Athens, however, Kidd wasn’t there. Neither were Jermaine O’Neal, Tracy McGrady, Mike Bibby and Ray Allen, all of whom had been in Puerto Rico.

For various reasons — some were even valid — players had opted out. The American program was as unmotivated as the players, and what was left was a mess built around Duncan.

Given that, the Argentines beat the U.S. in Athens in the same semifinal the two were in here. And Ginobili remembered the Americans of 2004 this way on Friday:

“They had lost before (actually twice) and they were a little shaky. I think we faced the game knowing they were a better team than us, but that we had a better chance than we had today.”

The Argentines deserved that gold medal, and they were different, too. They were deeper and bigger than they are now, and they had a young Ginobili just entering his prime.

“We were younger, crazier and disrespectful, probably,” he said.

Still, there is no way a roster of American professionals should lose, not if the best show up, not if they try. As much because of 2004 as anything, USA Basketball woke up and remade itself.

Told what they had done to improve the Americans, Scola thought about it. “I think I should get paid,” he joked.

Ginobili and Scola got paid in another way. They have a gold medal on their résumés, as well as global respect.

Who can forget? Even as they try for bronze Sunday, there was a time when they forced the U.S. to do the same.

bharvey@express-news.net

Twitter: @Buck_SA