Did the USA Basketball Team Select the Right Players?

When the USA Basketball team began forming a few years ago there was a pretty nice team assembled. Team USA was a nice mixture of the most popular players in the NBA, the most talented players in the NBA and a nice selection of role players to fill in the last remaining spots. Last week Team USA dwindled down to the final 12 players that will represent the USA at the Olympics. What remains is a team loaded with star players and this is not a good thing for Team USA.

When Team USA began using NBA players in 1992 the original Dream Team was made up of superstars. The USA Olympic team cruised to the gold medal. I doubt anybody could have beaten the 1992 Dream Team but at the time the other countries' basketball teams were also not very good. It is now 16 years later and a lot of countries have improved.

Most of the other countries have improved because they have learned team basketball and they are very high on fundamentals. Meanwhile, Team USA comes into the Olympics with a bunch of superstars that try and go one on one and play by themselves with the exception of an occasional alley-oop passes.

It looked like maybe Team USA had finally caught on this season when the original team had some good role players but once again Team USA will go into the Olympics with a bunch of individuals instead of a team.

Named to the 2008 Olympic USA basketball team were Carmelo Anthony, Carlos Boozer, Chris Bosh, Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard, LeBron James, Chris Paul, Jason Kidd, Tayshaun Prince, Michael Redd, Dwayne Wade and Deron Williams. Out of these 12 players only Tayshaun Prince and maybe Michael Redd would be considered non-superstars.