Opinion

Team USA poses low-profiled at basketball worlds

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-08-13 12:58

NEW YORK - With Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the gold-winning "redeemed dream team" at the 2008 Olympics taking this summer off, the talent and leadership void will be filled by the guys with the biggest gifts and smallest ego in the undersized US roster for the Turkey world basketball championship.

The mission of extending US basketball's momentum from its dominant gold-medal performance in Beijing, and avenging past disappointments at the FIBA world championships, falls on the slender shoulders and immense talents like Kevin Durant and Rajon Rando.

For 21-year-old, 6-9 Durant, it's a journey exciting for his first international appearance, but dare not try any overconfidence for the so-called shrank "Dream Team" at the world stage.

"I have the confidence to do fine at the world championship, but it's not overconfidence. You know the difference between confidence and overconfidence," said Durant at the Radio City Music Hall of New York on Thursday at the first international basketball festival opening-up.

"You never know what will happen. We will go and start playing, and we'll see. We have the talent; we have the good guys here fitting to our system. We will look forward to playing there and we'll see," added he.

Durant downplayed the stay-away of star players in the US team. "We got a lot of guys of athletics. We got a lot of great shooters, that will help us for loss of size. I think we're all anxious for the start to play (world championships). I'm confident, we can go over there and play our game and play it right way. We have to play hard and play together, you know we'll be fine."

To US coach Mike Krzyzewski, team USA's chances in the world championships can not be defined as overconfidence at all. He put his team as underdogs to Spain and no lock for silver, which will depend on how well and how quickly their disparate talents and personalities come together.

The current US team is much undersized and less experienced compared with their latest international rosters. The team is seriously undersized after losing Amar'e Stoudemire due to issues of contract insurance with the Knicks and Brook Lopez due to mononucleosis. The only members of the roster with international experience are Lamar Odom (2004 Olympics) and Chauncey Billups (2007 FIBA Tournament of the Americas).

"We can't just expect to pick up and be world beaters right now," said Billups, who's with the US team for the basketball festival, which also functions as a warmup for worlds.

"We've got to take advantage of that because we've got a lot of things working against us. We're not that big as a team. We don't have a dominating force that we can go to and say, 'Go to work down there.' So we're going to have to be creative. We can get it done, but at the same time, it's going to have to be collective. It's not one guy or two guys that are going to take this thing over. It's going to be a collective effort."

American dominance has lessened in recent years. Facing increased competition, US team failed to win a medal at the 2002 world championship, finishing sixth. The 2004 Summer Olympic team lost three games on its way to a bronze medal, a record that represented more losses in a single year than the country's Olympic teams had suffered in all previous Olympiads combined.

United States won its first seven games at the 2006 World Championships in Japan before losing against Greece in the semi-finals, ending the competition with the bronze medal.

"International players in the NBA account to 20 percent, You're playing against professional players. Every country, everybody is professional, though the US team has the 'dream team', the else around the world just caught up pretty a lot," said caoch Krzyzewski.

"Kevin is our best player, but not necessarily our leader, we have a couple of leaders in the team, but Kevin is an emerging star, who is unique. He is not like Lebron James, Dwyane Wade. Durant is 6-9, he can shoot, he can dribble, he's very pure, he's really an amazing guy who is always we can count on the game and he is unbelievably easy to coach. He is emerging as one of the best players in the world. But he is 21, he is going to get a lot better and I think this tournament will help him."

The US team is the most successful team in Olympics competition, winning medals in all sixteen Olympic tournaments it has entered, coming away with thirteen golds.

After a week of practice in New York, including an appearance at Radio City Music Hall, a scrimmage against China on Saturday, and an exhibition game against France on Sunday, Team USA heads to Madrid for a four-day training camp and two more exhibitions against Lithuania and Spain. Then it's on to a two-day camp and an exhibition against Greece in Athens before the preliminary round of world championship play begins August 28 in Istanbul.