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Dream summer

Focused U.S. team made coaching a breeze

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Posted: Monday August 16, 1999 01:17 PM

To go to Puerto Rico for the Tournament of the Americas, and be in a situation where you're around great players and USA Basketball people, was great. It was also very refreshing in the fact that the players were so motivated, and that coach Larry Brown did such a great job leading the team after Rudy Tomjanovich had taken ill and Larry had to take over.

In order to make sure that Purdue's recruiting was not disrupted during my trip, my two assistants had to be highly organized. We had planned this ahead of time and we already knew where everybody was going and what they had to do. One thing that really helped us, though, was that we already had five commitments, so it wasn't like normal summers where you have to go out and hustle because you have a lot of scholarship openings. Now whether the players will honor these verbal commitments remains to be seen, so basically we made sure we went and saw these young men play. And of course, we still have possibly have six scholarships to use, so we'll see what happens there.

As most coaches will probably testify, many times our biggest problems are not necessarily coaching and playing games, but teaching players the values of life. Going to class everyday, being on time and trying your best are probably harder for some people than playing basketball. But I can tell you that all 12 of the men in Puerto Rico were easy to coach. They listened, and they were on the bus early. They were totally focused on the job at hand.

Since this the first time a United States team had to qualify for the Olympics, it was seen as easy by other people, but the players were ready to play at game time. I think the most important things to say about these talented players is that they play hard, they were a lot better defensive players than most people will see on television and the reasons we won were they had great team chemistry and were totally together in their goal of qualifying for the 2000 Olympics in Sydney.

Clamping down on defense

Tim Hardaway and the U.S. squad played determined baskeball in preparation for the 2000 Sydney Olympics. AP

International competition usually is tough because you don't know your opponent very well. Most of the Division I schools we play have a scouting report, but the guys from other countries, we don't know well at all. Most of them are great three-point shooters, but Gary Payton, Allan Houston and Jason Kidd did a great job putting pressure on the ball and not allowing them to get open looks. Then when Tim Hardaway and Steve Smith and those guys came off the bench, they just continued that pressure and we would eventually wear the opponent down. Inside play was dominated by Tim Duncan, Vin Baker, Tom Gugliotta and, of course, Kevin Garnett, and those guys pretty much took care of the inside defensive scheme.

We had 12 great players. Three of them were young -- Wally Szczerbiak, Elton Brand and Richard Hamilton -- and had great success at the college level, but were typical rookies in that they are going to have greater success in the future. But it was a situation where you're always proud of the fact that these young men contributed in a way by being very unselfish and team-oriented.

Finals MVP just kept rolling

I can tell you that Gary Payton was a great leader for us. Tim Duncan was very unselfish in a situation where I know he had to be tired because of the constant pressure down the stretch of the NBA season, and he was tremendous as far as just playing. That's another thing I thought was great about this team -- they just played and shared the basketball and probably over-passed, if that's possible, but it was great to see some games where we had 25 to 30 assists.

Hopefully we can keep this thing going and carry over into the Olympic Games in the fall of 2000. It will be very interesting to see who the committee picks to fill the other three slots. It was a great experience for me, I feel like this was a great honor to be a part of team representing the United States. I appreciated the opportunity very much.

 

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