Saturday, September 18, 2004
He said the team didn't practice together long enough to be in top form.
SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Bob Knight said Friday that the U.S. Olympic men's basketball team didn't win the gold medal in Athens last month because the players were too pampered on and off the court.
The Texas Tech coach, speaking to a gathering sponsored by the San Antonio Sports Foundation, said things would have been different had he been leading the team instead of Larry Brown. For starters, the NBA stars representing the United States would not have been staying on a luxury ocean liner.
"They would not have been on the Queen Mary," said Knight, who coached the U.S. men to the gold in 1984. "They would have been in the Olympic village, just like everybody else."
He recalled his own Olympic experience in Los Angeles with a squad that included Michael Jordan, Chris Mullin, Sam Perkins and Patrick Ewing.
More than 70 players were invited to try out for the team, he said, and the hopefuls were pared to 12 over several strenuous months of auditions. He contrasted that to the 2004 team, whose players were assured roster slots.
The players that brought home a bronze medal from Athens did not practice together long, and he said for that reason they did not develop into a team whose players were toughened by a common struggle.
Picking the players
"You can't just pick a team and ask the players to play if they didn't earn a chance to play," he said.
Craig Miller, a spokesman for USA Basketball, said the basketball players' living situation in Athens was not all that different from other U.S. athletes.
"Most of the teams didn't stay in the Olympic village," Miller said by phone from an organizational retreat in the Colorado mountains. "It wasn't five guys to a room, like the village, but where the [basketball] team stayed was a USOC-controlled facility, just like the village."
Regarding the team selection, Miller said, "I'm sure USA Basketball will be looking at things down the road on what needs to be done differently, and input from a lot of sources will be given."
Knight was especially critical of the several nonstarters on the 2004 team who openly complained about limited playing time.
He didn't refer to anyone by name, but NBA rookie sensations LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony expressed their dissatisfaction about too few minutes.
Knight suggested that perhaps the United States should send the defending NBA champion to represent the nation at the Olympics.
"The Detroit Pistons would have won the Olympics," he said of the current champs, also coached by Brown. "They would have won because they are a team. ... Their bottom four or five players already know their role."
Knight did, however, have praise for the team-oriented play of one man near and dear to his listeners -- San Antonio Spurs star forward Tim Duncan.
Not only did Duncan make his teammates better on the floor, Knight said, he did so while playing out of his natural position as the team's center.
"If we had a 12-man team with the approach Duncan had, we would have had a team that would have won," he said.