Quest for gold comes with a risk

Deron Williams, shown here driving against Yao Ming, is one of three Utah Jazz players participating in the Olympics. Bob Rosato/SI Steve Aschburner's Mailbag Submit a comment or question for Steve. Name: Email: Hometown: Question: SEND

LeBron James goes up with two hands to smother a fast-break layup by China against the backboard and comes down awkwardly, landing on Yao Ming's foot and suffering a severe high ankle sprain. Kobe Bryant gets loose in transition but is fouled by Yi Jianlian, who shows an aggression untapped in his rookie NBA season and sends the Lakers' superstar sprawling into the basket stanchion. Dwyane Wade accepts the offer of a single flower from an adorable young Chinese girl before tip-off but slips in a puddle of spilled Coca-Cola, does an inadvertent splits and is done in Beijing with a groin injury.

Every NBA general manager's nightmare -- that is, those NBA GMs who have players on Team USA or one of the other national squads participating in the 2008 Olympics -- is being played out, again and again, over the next couple of weeks. This quest for gold and pursuit of patriotic pride comes with a risk, that a player might sustain an injury or simply get worn out by the international competition. Either way, it could hobble the NBA team that employs him, guarantees him tens of millions of dollars in salary and otherwise makes possible this "what I did on my summer vacation'' global adventure.

Motorcycle racing and skydiving are out of the question and generally prohibited in the standard player's contract. But playing with passion and abandon in a moonlighting gig while the folks at your day job are on the hook for anything that goes wrong? That's for mother, apple pie and country, apparently.

"What you do is, you keep your fingers crossed, hold your breath and hope nothing happens,'' Bucks general manager John Hammond said. "That is a part of having a player playing at this time of the year, playing at that competitive level. There is no doubt wear and tear that will come along with that.''

To object to that, to balk at the unfairness of exposing your stars to physical harm or fatigue while some other club's stars sit poolside in Malibu or Miami, is to seem selfish, un-American even.

Cue Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. Never one to run from risk, Cuban does have a problem when it isn't matched by a commensurate reward. That's the problem he has had, across two Olympics now, with both Team USA and the other national teams that have leaned on Dallas players. Guard Jason Kidd (USA) and forward Dirk Nowitzki (Germany) are the Mavericks currently involved.

Back in June, in an e-mail to the Dallas Morning News, Cuban wrote in part: "I hate the fact that we lie to ourselves and pretend this is about representing country. It's not. It's about money.'' Cuban's view was that players provide cheap programming for Olympic telecasts and huge marketing profits, and he noted that NBA players who are free agents (and thus wouldn't get paid in case of mishap) don't participate.

What Cuban and the architects of NBA rosters dread is a scene similar to what we saw in Game 1 of the Finals, when the Celtics' Paul Pierce crumbled on the end line with a possibly catastrophic knee injury. Only instead of returning minutes later, their guy is out until October ... of 2009. And the game in which it happens is played a world away, so the NBA club wouldn't even get that night's gate receipts.

Remember how Spain's Pau Gasol, then with the Grizzlies, broke a bone in his left foot at the FIBA World Championships two years ago and missed the first 22 games in 2006-07? The Grizzlies, after going 49-33 the season before, started 5-17 and wound up 23-59. (This summer, Gasol's brother, Marc, now a Memphis rookie, has joined his older sibling on Spain's Olympic entry.)

And again, it's not just the dreaded, debilitating overseas injury. It's the prospect that Wade, James or Milwaukee's Michael Redd (USA) or Andrew Bogut (Australia) could be more susceptible to breaking down in March after logging those extra miles this summer. Or that Utah's Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams (both USA) or Andrei Kirilenko (Russia) might hit a wall deep into a playoff run in May after playing nearly year-round.

"Our approach to it is, they need to know their bodies,'' said Kevin O'Connor, the Jazz's executive vice president of basketball operations. "They need to understand our season is a long, grueling season. [Coach Jerry Sloan] has done a wonderful job with guys who come back from playing international ball, monitoring their minutes, and he's done it since 1992.''

John Stockton and Karl Malone were members of the first two Dream Teams, in 1992 and '96. Both played 82 games in the seasons that followed and, at 34 and 32 respectively, took the Jazz all the way to the first of back-to-back NBA Finals in 1996-97.

"We can't have it both ways,'' O'Connor said. "If the commissioner -- and he has stated it on numerous occasions -- wants it to be a worldwide game, we've got to have our players participating in worldwide events.

"Can you imagine what thoughts are going through Carlos Boozer's and Deron Williams' heads, walking into that stadium [for the opening ceremonies]? The main thing is, they've earned the right to be on that team and we recognize that. We look at it as an opportunity for them to compete.

"We can all second-guess everything,'' O'Connor added. ' "That's why you're leaving you're jump shot short -- you're worn out from the Olympics.' But how do you say to a player, 'OK, Andrei, don't carry the Olympic torch for Russia?' ''

Some NBA insiders fret most about players such as Kirilenko, Bogut, Yao, Nowitzki, Manu Ginobili and the rest participating for nations other than Team USA. Many of those squads grind harder in practice. And, as "franchise'' guys for their homelands, the NBA players end up doing much of the heavy lifting.

"It's very safe to say that the USA team is also the deepest team,'' Hammond said. "You look at a team like Germany, I know they have some good players, but Dirk still is the guy on that team. Who else do they go to but Dirk at crunch time? I'm sure they'll extend his minutes when they have to win a game.

"The USA team, who do you go to? It might be Kobe, it might be LeBron, it might be Wade in certain situations.

"It can be tough on an individual like Dirk. He's an extreme, maybe the most extreme, example.''

So it isn't like playing pickup ball in the summer, the way most NBA players do. There's travel, there's practice, there's regimentation and there's recklessness, the way Yao threw himself across the baseline for a loose ball Sunday against the Americans. That had to be a lump-in-the-throat moment for Rockets GM Daryl Morey and coach Rick Adelman. Patriotism or even just peer pressure prompts players to push themselves beyond a pickup game's parameters, when there's a chance to medal.

NBA execs and coaches don't have to like that. They shouldn't like it, in fact, not when their team's fate and their livelihoods hinge on the good health and vitality of their stars.

Still, Hammond said: "We all have to accept that and live with it. They are keeping their skill level up at the highest level. They're keeping their conditioning up at the highest level. Even Kobe, the MVP, always wants to add to his game and must think, What better way than to do this? So it really can't hurt them, except physically.''

Exactly.

Steve Aschburner covered the Minnesota Timberwolves and the NBA for 13 seasons for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. He has served as president or vice president of the Professional Basketball Writers Association since 2005. His most recent book, The Good, the Bad & the Ugly: Minnesota Twins, can be ordered here.