August 21, 2004 -- ATHENS — It's funny the things that can get lost along the way. The greatest sport at these Olympic Games hasn't been watching Michael Phelps collect swimming medals like baseball cards. It hasn't been seeing the usual procession of weightlifters set off fun-house bells once they hand over their urine to the testers.
No, analyzing the U.S. basketball team has become the No. 1 spectator sport in all of Greece. It's already classified as a demonstration sport, and may well achieve full medal status before the end of the weekend. The amateur experts are everywhere. They are in the stands, where one man held a sign up the other day: "Bring Back Jordan."
It's in the streets of Plaka, where shop owners stop American journalists and point to their supply of NBA game jerseys and lament, "When do they start playing like the Dream Team again?"
The U.S. has fueled this, of course, with the way it has occasionally coasted through its games, the way it was pummeled by Puerto Rico, the way it fell into a quick 12-point hole against Australia. Tonight's preliminary-round game with Lithuania will surely add to the conversation, since Lithuania was the team that nearly picked off the last Dream Team, in the semifinals of the Sydney competition.
So, yes, it's funny when you step back and you remember a simple truth about basketball. If you have the best player, you have an awfully good chance to win every night. And if you have the best player in the world . . . well, then it follows that you'll have a great chance of winning every night, against anyone in the world.
"Tim Duncan," Stephon Marbury reminded everyone the other day, "is the best player in the world."
And as such, the Americans begin every game they play with an enormous advantage. They don't always make the most of it, of course, ignoring him for long stretches of games, forgetting about him until they absolutely need to remember him. But he is there. And as long as he is there, the rest of the world has to figure out a way to stop him. So far, nobody has.
This has of course captured the attention and the ire of Larry Brown, who has spent much of this week sounding an awful lot like Norman Dale, espousing so many old-fashioned basketball values you half expect to see him draw up the picket-fence play out of timeouts.
"When I was growing up, the first thing players used to do was throw the ball inside, trying to draw fouls or make easy baskets," Brown said. "Great players like Michael Jordan, Larry Bird or Magic Johnson understood this from the beginning of their career, but it's going to take some time for these players to understand it as well."
Brown insults his players' basketball IQs by insinuating they don't know enough to get Duncan the ball. Of course they know they have to. It's just that everyone collapses on Duncan now, utilizing international rules to surround him with two and three defenders every time down the floor, and the Americans' inability to hit open jumpers have kept opponents attached to Duncan every second they can.
The players have to start hitting those shots. The coach has to stop delivering these lectures on modern basketball culture and devise a way to get the best player on the planet more touches. You know what? Duncan isn't the first player to be swallowed up by a zone. Other coaches have adjusted. No one ever faced more trick defenses than Lew Alcindor at UCLA, and yet John Wooden always figured a way to get his man the ball.
For his part, Duncan low-keys the problem. "I have no problem with the amount of shots I'm getting," he said after Thursday's escape against Australia. "My teammates are looking for me. I'm fine with what they're doing."
But his teammates shouldn't be fine. Every team has its meal ticket. Every team has its go-to guy. That's Tim Duncan for Team USA right now. He needs to get the ball. A lot.
