School's OutThe U.S. men fought off a game Yugoslavia for the gold and may be the better for itby Michael Bamberger
THEIR CELEBRITY is immense. So are their wealth, their talent, their size. They have, some of them, very large personalities. What's hard to remember is that they're human beings. That's correct. Shaquille O'Neal, Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley and the nine other men who make up the U.S. men's basketball team are human beings. Put them in a game in which the only thing they can do is fail and they will fail. For opponents, give them a team that can only succeed and the opponents will succeed.
That's what happened at the Georgia Dome last night, when the U.S. played Yugoslavia for the gold medal. The U.S. failed and Yugoslavia succeeded. Yugoslavia played the entire first half with the intensity NBA teams usually reserve for the final two minutes of a tight game. At the half the U.S. lead was a mere five points. That was a success for the Yugoslavians and a failure for the Americans.
Djordjevic was cut off at the pass by Miller (10), Payton (14) and Richmond.
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Between the halves, Muhammad Ali was presented at half-court with a gold medal to replace his missing medal from the 1960 Rome Games, and the American basketball players gawked at the great man from the sidelines, plainly awed.
Reggie Miller motioned to Karl Malone as if to say, Can we approach him? Malone nodded, and the basketball players encircled Ali, pressed up against him.
Dreams end. The first wake-up call for the Yugoslavians came when Vlade Divac, the biggest man and the spiritual center of their team, fouled out with 15:20 left in the second half. Predrag Danilovic, the Yugoslavian guard—and, with Divac, the only other Yugoslavian in the NBA—began to tire. With Divac gone and Danilovic flagging, Aleksandar Djordjevic, the Yugoslavian point guard who can run the floor with just about anybody, suddenly found fewer shooting opportunities.
When Divac fouled out, the U.S. lead was only three. For a brief while it fell to one. Then the U.S. started seizing opportunities. David Robinson made back-to-back dunks in the middle of the half that left the crowd roaring. The U.S. lead was only seven points after the second of those dunks, which came with 10:57 left, but the game was over. The final score—U.S. 95, Yugoslavia 69—is practically meaningless. Naturally the Americans won. They couldn't not score more points than the Yugoslavians. But they did something better than win: They showed their humanity and their imperfection. In so doing, they allowed the Yugoslavians to reveal their greatness.
Earlier, when the U.S. players started warming up for the second half, Ali left the house in a green golf cart, his hands trembling, the tails of his red shirt flapping around his khaki pants. The ears of the players were filled with the applause for Ali. They know why the man is beloved—for his humanity, for his successes and for his failures. The 12 men on the 1996 U.S. Olympic basketball team are more human now, better, more like Ali. In a single night they knew failure and success. They lost and they won.
SI Olympic Dailies
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