‘There’s stress’: USA Basketball has always faced unique pressure at Olympics

When playing for Team USA in the Olympics, it can feel like a no-win situation for a professional basketball player. Though it was invented by Canadian James Naismith, the sport has become the quintessential American global game . The United States men’s team has won the dominant share of gold medals in the competition, taking home the top prize 16 times, silver once in 1972 and bronze twice in 1988 and 2004. But ever since America brought the pros in to play in 1992, beginning with star-studded Dream Team , it has been more pressurized. If Team USA wins, it’s expected. If they lose, it’s a failure. That is the same for the women’s side, too, though they’ve been even more dominant than the men through the decades.

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Nevertheless, Team USA continues to draw the biggest names in hoops every four years to compete. And the forthcoming 2024 Games in Paris is no different, with LeBron James, Steph Curry and Kevin Durant set to suit up for the men’s team and Breanna Stewart and Diana Taurasi for the women. But what should newcomers like Anthony Edwards or Sabrina Ionescu expect this year when playing for their country? “International basketball,” says two-time NBA champion coach Rudy Tomjanovich, who led Team USA’s men’s squad to gold in 2000, “the pressure is elevated to a level that is really high, especially for Americans.”

Not only are expectations sky-high, but preparation can be minimal, Tomjanovich notes. While many other international teams are coalescing throughout the year, NBA and WNBA players are competing against one another in their respective leagues. Their teams usually only come together in a matter of weeks to play in the Olympics. This year’s teams set for Paris, for example, have never played together as 12-person units.

“We had to play basic basketball,” Tomjanovich says of his 2000 roster, meaning his team didn’t have the time to institute anything complex. “We had a few plays. But we wanted to play defense and run. We tried to get our big guys posted up early. If we didn’t get the fast break, then here come the big guys into the past and we’d play basketball off that.”

For the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Tomjanovich’s team was loaded with the likes of All-Stars Alonzo Mourning, Vince Carter, Gary Payton, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Antonio McDyess, Tim Hardaway and more. At one point, though, Mourning left the team during the tournament to go back to the United States for the birth of his child only to return a few days later. “Talk about jet lag,” says Tomjanovich, who recently won the NBA’s Chuck Daly Lifetime Achievement award . “Talk about strain on the body!” The 2000 Games are also known as the time when Vince Carter posterized the 7ft 2in Frenchman Frédéric Weis, leaping over him and embarrassing him on a global stage . “When he did that phenomenal dunk over the Frenchman – wow,” says Tomjanovich.

But 2000 wasn’t all highlights for the coach and his team. The American men won their first six games handily, but in the semi-finals, they played Lithuania in a contest that was too close for comfort, despite Lithuania missing their legendary player, Arvydas Sabonis, who had retired. After the US went up big in the first half, Lithuania fought back in the second. With a minute left, the score was 80-80. Then with 43 seconds left, McDyess fouled a three-point shooter in the act. But Lithuania could only hit a single free throw. Carter scored next, putting the US up by a point. Then the Americans were awarded two more foul shots but Garnett uncharacteristically missed both. McDyess, however, got the rebound off the second and put it back in for the game’s winning bucket . In the next round the S. defeated France for gold.

“Antonio McDyess was the guy who put the ball in the basket,” Tomjanovich says. “When I went out to congratulate him, he was still hyperventilating because he was the guy who fouled the three-point shooter and he didn’t want to be the goat. [The NBA players] had never lost at that time and nobody wanted to be on the team that lost for the first time.”

Tomjanovich says the prospect of being the first team of male pros to lose in the Olympics was never discussed outright but everyone could feel that tension, that pressure. The world had already gotten so much better since 1992. If you didn’t respect the other teams, the coach says, they would hurt you. After the 2000 Games, Tomjanovich remembers writing a scouting report and telling Olympic officials like Jerry Colangelo that future squads needed to be assembled cohesively, with rebounders, shooters, defenders—not just as a collection of stars. Sadly for the US men, the following Olympics in 2004, the team lost and Argentina won the gold medal.

“A lot of these teams spend more time together than we do,” Tomjanovich says. “It’s starting to become obvious that international players are more skilled. They might not be as athletic but they are more skilled all around than American players—if you make a mistake or take somebody lightly, they’ll burn you.”

Tim Hardaway, a five-time NBA All-Star who was on Tomjanovich’s 2000 roster, remembers how pressure-packed the whole thing was. The year before, the US squad had to qualify for the Olympics and at the time Tomjanovich wasn’t with the team, as he was dealing with personal issues. So, not only did Team USA have to jell quickly, they had to do so with multiple coaches. “When we were in Puerto Rico [qualifying],” Hardaway tells the Guardian. “He wasn’t our coach. It was Larry Brown. So we developed a coaching rapport with Larry Brown playing in Puerto Rico to qualify and then when Rudy came, his philosophy was different than we were accustomed to.”

Nevertheless, everyone was able to make it work, he says. The players scarified like the pros they were. “We went out there and played when our names were called,” Hardaway says. “It was all about USA. It wasn’t about Tim Hardaway or anything else. It was about what was on your chest. And you played for one another and that’s what it’s all about. Team. It’s about let’s hoop .” Hardaway says he remembers that Lithuania game, too. “Antonio McDyess,” he says, “came up with a really big putback off a free-throw!”

For Lenny Wilkens, however, times weren’t nearly as tough. The nine-time All-Star as a player and NBA champion head coach with the Seattle SuperSonics was an assistant on the original 1992 Dream Team, which featured Michael Jordan. That squad, which many call the best team ever assembled, was arranged in the wake of the all-collegiate 1988 Olympic men’s team that failed to win gold in Seoul. In 1996, Wilkens was also the head coach for Team USA, which brought back gold. “It was a great experience,” the 86-year-old Wilkens tells the Guardian. “[In 1992] the world really saw what professional basketball was like.”

Wilkens says he knew a lot of the guys on the Dream Team from the pros and coaching them in All-Star games. But the players bonded abroad in 1992 at the Games in Barcelona. “They were all respectful and they got to know one another a little better,” he says. But when it came time for business, no one was worried about the outcome. “I said, ‘If you want the world to see how good you are, come ready,’” Wilkens remembers. “And they did. They came ready. We blew everybody out.”

Each year since 1992, however, competition has gotten stronger and winning has become more difficult on the men’s side (the American women still tend to dominate ). Even in the NBA, the past six MVP trophies have been given to players born outside the United States. This season, the top-three vote getters were all foreign-born . The last American NBA MVP award-winner was James Harden in 2018. Not only that, but the league’s most exciting young player, Victor Wembanyama, was born abroad in France. With major competition on the men’s side coming this year in the Paris Olympics from Wemby, Nikola Jokić, Luka Dončić and others, Team USA’s men’s team has to be at their best if they hope to win it all again in 2024.

“There’s stress,” Hardaway says. “All eyes are on you. You got to go out there and perform. Go out there and win. Every mistake gets compounded, gets bigger and bigger. Everything is under a magnifying glass.”