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"FacebookPinterest\n\n Boys Against Men\n\n Richard Jefferson (forward, Team USA): My whole time in Greece depends on one thing. I'm not here to be an ambassador. I'm not here to go see sights or travel around. I'm here to try and win a gold medal.\n\n Alexander Avramovski (fan, Macedonia): Before the Olympics, we were watching U.S. play Serbia. We got excited, because the U.S. team are not connected with each other.\n\n David Stern (commissioner, NBA): I don't use the words Dream Team, okay? There was one Dream Team and only one Dream Team.\n\n Tom Tolbert (color commentator, ESPN): In our first game, Puerto Rico whacked us by nineteen. After that, I think teams stopped being intimidated. It was almost like Rocky hitting Drago over the left eye and Rocky's trainer saying, \"See? He's just a man!\"\n\n Carlos Arroyo (guard, Team Puerto Rico): The first half, we ended up by twenty-two points. If we were on the other side, we would be frustrated too. We made history that night.\n\n Carsten Mayer (reporter, Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Germany): I can't understand why they are so bad. Why are they so bad?\n\n Jose Ortiz (center, Team Puerto Rico): Tim Duncan shook my hand and said we deserved to win. Nobody else shook my hand. Eight years ago, we would have been taking pictures with the U.S.A. players. Now we beating them.\n\n Chuck Daly (coach, 1992 Dream Team): I was talking to one of the Puerto Rican players\u2014he was 40 years old! Plus, he could play! We are now playing boys against men. Maybe four [players on the 2004 Olympic team] should have been still in college. And some in high school.\n\n Peter Vecsey (columnist, New York Post): You could have sent the [NBA expansion team] Bobcats, who've never played, and you should have won this championship. Come on! It's a joke! Puerto Rico. Who'd they have?\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n Deuce Is Big\n\n Aaron Goodwin (LeBron James's agent): The Queen Mary 2 [where Team USA stayed during the Games] is a real nice boat.\n\n Dwyane Wade (guard, Team USA): Every time I said boat, they corrected me and said ship. It was like another world on that ship.\n\n Koustautinos Tsorukoglou (guest, Queen Mary 2): Carmelo Anthony would call the Queen Mary 2 Deuce. He said, \"Deuce is big.\"\n\n David Gevanthor (vice president, Cunard Line): The Queen Mary 2 is 1,132 feet long and has fourteen decks. It's the world's largest ocean liner. There is an onboard art collection worth in excess of $5 million. The largest collection of wine bottles at sea, over 50,000 bottles. The only planetarium at sea. A Canyon Ranch spa. Couples therapy. The cost, normally, on a first-class transatlantic crossing is $27,000 per person.\n\n Tsorukoglou: I saw Carmelo get lost. He walked past me, then walked past again twenty minutes later.\n\n Carmelo Anthony (forward, Team USA): I was down there with the workers, and they were wondering what I was doing. I didn't know where I was at. I thought I had left off the boat.\n\n Shawn Mario (forward, Team USA): There was this huge navy battleship sitting in the water next to us. The guns were drawn. Allen Iverson keeps saying this is the safest place in the world right now. Ain't nobody messing with those guns.\n\n Carl Marasigan (housekeeper, Queen Mary 2): I helped Tim Duncan take bags to his room. He gave me two bucks for a tip. I can't believe it\u2014he had pretty big stuff. Coach Brown tipped someone $20, and he left 100 euros for the housekeeper.\n\n Recel Macapagal (housekeeper, Queen Mary 2): Their rooms are a mess. It's like they were playing basketball inside, throwing everything everywhere.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n The Greek Game Was the Worst\n\n Tolbert: I don't know what's worse: not playing as hard as you can and getting beat by nineteen, or playing really hard and beating Greece by six points. I think beating Greece by six points is a little more disturbing.\n\n Amar'e Stoudemire (forward, Team USA): The Greece game was probably the worst. People were screaming. There were police in the crowd. Carmelo turned to me at one point on the bench and said, \"Man, if we don't win this game, these Greeks are going to tear this place up.\"\n\n LeBron James (guard, Team USA): That was the loudest arena I've ever been in.\n\n Marion: Everybody is against us. We're out here all on our own.\n\n Andrew Bogut (center, Team Australia): The Greek fans wanted U.S.A. to lose, because they're cocky, pound their chests. You see that in the NBA, but in Europe it's not respected.\n\n Daly: Let's be serious. If we take Kobe and we take McGrady and we take, you know, Shaq\u2014I mean, you gotta be kiddin' me. I don't care how good they think their teams are. I really don't care.\n\n Grant Hill (Team USA, 1996): I think I'm being honest in saying that the NBA season is the priority [for NBA players].\n\n Vecsey: I'd say more than half of the guys that go play in the Olympics wind up with a pretty big injury the next year.\n\n \"Pepe\" Sanchez (guard, Team Argentina): A lot of great NBA players didn't come. Some of my teammates don't even know who the U.S. players are. I had to tell them, \"Okay, this guy, he can shoot. That guy, he play defense.\"\n\n Wade: If they hadn't pulled out, some of us guys wouldn't have got the opportunity to go. So my thoughts on them is always just, Thank you.\n\n Vecsey: I think Pat Riley said it\u2014we should have sent the Pistons. And he's right. Role player. Superstar. Everything is as it's supposed to be. They have Stu Jackson, who failed with the Knicks, Wisconsin, Vancouver, and now he's in charge of picking the Olympic team.\n\n Wade: We were trying to get adjusted to the FIBA basketball. It's just so slippery. Even I can't palm it, and I got big hands. Practice was like little kids was playing at first. The ball was just kicked and slipping out of people's hands.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n They Let Their Hair Down\n\n Anthony: [Aboard the Queen Mary 2] We play Boo and Bullshit and Bour\u00E9 and Buddha. That's poker, man. That's all we do on the boat. We play cards all day and all night.\n\n Wade: Iverson was always playin' around. Like in your sleep, he gonna put something in your ear. You'll be listening to your headphones, and he'll take the headphone thing out when you ain't looking, and you're like, \"What happened?\" He's so quick.\n\n Tsorukoglou: They also have a basketball court on the ship. Allen Iverson was there by himself, shooting baskets at night in a button-down shirt.\n\n Goodwin: LeBron stays in his room a lot. He loves to read.\n\n Lamar Odom (forward, Team USA): We got a spot on the boat called G32\u2014a little club\u2014and we all hang out there. I'm usually the DJ. I get the party pumped up.\n\n Wade: He got a future if basketball don't work out.\n\n \"JULIAN\" (house-band member, G32): When they dance, they let their hair down, though most of them have bald heads. They were hands off the women, though. They didn't want another Kobe.\n\n NICK ARISON (assistant, Team USA): We're sort of in a bubble. We're pretty isolated. The ship's so big, and everyone is spread out. The amount of people is nowhere near the normal capacity.\n\n Pavlos Kanakis (host and driver, Olympics): Most of the decks are empty.\n\n Deimente Staniuliene (fan, Lithuania): Did you see [Team USA assistant coach] Roy Williams? He has a big tan.\n\n Tsorukoglou: I saw him out by a pool. He was there a lot.\n\n Manu Ginobili (guard, Team Argentina): The rest of the world is getting better. The U.S. is getting bored.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n The Dream Team Is Dead\n\n Sarunas Jasikevicius (guard, Team Lithuania): The worst talker on the court was Shawn Marion. He kept saying \"miss\" when I would shoot. And I kept making them. The ball was coming off my fingers, and he said, \"Miss, you fuck. Miss. You're in the NBA now. Miss like you should, fuck.\" After a while, he stopped, because I kept making them.\n\n PAUL BRAGNA (waiter, Queen Mary 2): They ate too many hamburgers. They were always in line. That's why they lose. They cannot jump anymore.\n\n JASIKEVICIUS: Nobody wants to sign me. I'm a slow, fat white guy. But those slow, fat white guys beat the U.S.\n\n SEAN JENSEN (sportswriter, St. Paul Pioneer Press): At least three times, the PA announcer asked the Lithuanian fans to refrain from blowing whistles. Every time the U.S. touched the ball, they booed and whistled. I don't mean just at the beginning or the end of the game. I mean throughout the entire game.\n\n JEFFERSON: I'd rather they be yelling in a foreign language. Then you can't hear if they're talking about your mom.\n\n STANIULIENE: The Dream Team is dead. It's over. We play team basketball. You can't be like NBA attitude, not together. People no root for U.S.A. Because nobody likes what U.S.A. is doing rest of world.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n Where Is the Disco?\n\n Stoudemire: A few of us went out, just to get away from the ship. Didn't matter the night, we just wanted to get away from everything, and we couldn't find a place to go. We ended up walking around for hours. It's frustrating because we just wanted to relax.\n\n Gregg Popovich (assistant coach, Team USA): You can't blame the U.S. players who came here. You can't blame them for wanting to sightsee and go to dinner. This isn't their end-all. This was a summer basketball trip.\n\n Goodwin: Shawn Marion went to look at real estate.\n\n Marion: I did get out a lot. I mean, how long can you stay on the boat?\n\n Tsorukoglou: His escort and Realtor took him to see an area that is very old.\n\n Marion: I went to an area that was really upscale housing and checked it out. It was like Beverly Hills but older.\n\n Goodwin: Carmelo went sightseeing.\n\n Tsorukoglou: He said they drove to see many ancient historic sites. I asked him which ones he saw. He said, \"I don't know the names, but they were old.\"\n\n Stoudemire: They took us all around, showed us all those old things. It was all right.\n\n Juliana Mendes (tourist, Brazil): One night I saw Carmelo and his friend. He told me he played on Denver and also U.S.A. I don't even know where Denver is. He said Denver was like Los Angeles but colder. Carmelo said, \"I need to dance, I need to dance.\" He said he buy all my friends drinks at disco. He danced on the street to show me. And he's not good dancer. He was funny. [Carmelo and Amar\u00E9] were just standing there, asking, \"Where is the disco?\" They smelled like they drinking a lot.\n\n Anthony: It's just like back home. Everybody shows us love. People like our personality.\n\n Anna Vamvoudakis (fan, Greece): The U.S. players think they're sexy. They try to talk to you. They flirt. They say things like, \"I need someone to show me around town.\" But they don't. What they need is [someone] who can shoot.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n As Soon as They Ahead, They Chirping\n\n Wade: I'm not the typical point guard who sets up every play, but Coach wanted me to do that. At times I wanted to attack and I couldn't; or I shoulda attacked and I didn't, because I didn't know what Coach wanted.\n\n Vecsey: They would have been better off with no coach. In a playground game, you lose, you sit. So you figure out instantly who's the best shooter, rebounder.\n\n Mario Pesquera (coach, Team Spain): Against Spain was the first game the United States looked like a team. If they had played the entire tournament that way, they could have won.\n\n Jorge Garbajosa (forward, Team Spain): Against us, they look worried. They didn't talk much when game was close. But as soon as they ahead, they chirping. Especially Richard Jefferson. What did he have? Six points?\n\n Pesquera: I'm tired about the opinions, the articles, that say the U.S. team is the best. The Spanish team demonstrated that they were the best team, because we just lost one game. No other team did that.\n\n Stenr: It seemed that we were making excuses. And Americans don't like excuses. They want you to go out and play and either win or lose. And I think there was a very negative reaction to that.\n\n Wade: I felt like a lot of people back in the States was rooting against us to actually not win the gold. And that's sad to say.\n\n Hill: There was so much negativity surrounding the team. I just felt people thought, Here's twelve African-Americans, let's talk about their not playing hard, or their not doing this or doing that. Maybe it was a race thing, I don't know. I wanted them to win that semifinal game and win the gold, just to kinda shut everybody up.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n There Wasn't a Tomorrow No More\n\n Ginobili: I saw their roster and I knew we would beat them.\n\n Popovich: Against Argentina, Tim was officiated like he's never going to be officiated in the NBA. There were times he was absolutely knocked to the floor, kicked over, and trampled\u2014and no call?\n\n Tim Duncan (center, Team USA): FIBA sucks.\n\n Sanchez: How come European players go to NBA and adapt to it, and they can't adapt to us? If you don't make a jump shot that's wide open, how can that be our fault?\n\n Bogut: The body language of some players on the bench was terrible. I think they were getting frustrated with not getting playing time. There were guys not even paying attention during the time-outs.\n\n Sanchez: They didn't shake our hands after the game. They walk away. We don't care. That's them.\n\n Tolbert: They lost to Argentina, 89\u201381.\n\n Marco Graeber (Olympic staff security guard): None of the U.S. players showered after the game. Odom stood outside the bus for a long time. The rest of the players got on the bus. They hurried. The bus was waiting. Odom was just standing there, staring up. I could see some players on the bus looking at him through the window. They were waiting for him so they could go home.\n\n Allen Iverson (guard, Team USA): A lot of people don't understand how Muhammad Ali lost a fight. But things happen. Roy Jones got knocked out. Smarty Jones lost a race.\n\n Graeber: Dwyane Wade threw his bag. He threw the bag ahead. Then walked to his bag and picked it up. And threw it again, all the way to the bus. He had a bag of ice in one hand. He tore it open and let the ice spill everywhere. My supervisor told us we are not allowed to talk. But how do you not talk about this? How do you forget this? They were devastated.\n\n Wade: That was the most disappointed I've been in sports. We didn't go over there just to win a medal. We went over there to win a gold. We lost other games, but there was always a tomorrow, and after we lost that, there wasn't a tomorrow no more. I think I remember Iverson saying this was a worse feeling than even losing in the championship.\n\n Graeber: Duncan was on the pavement between two garbage cans, flat on his back. He looked like he was homeless. People had to step around him to pass. He didn't move for a long time. He ended up sitting against the wall between the waste cans, in the dark, with his hands covering his face. He was crying, I think.\n\n Iverson: Just understand that first and foremost it's an honor to be selected to this team. I feel like a special basketball player to be selected to a team like this.\n\n Fabricio Oberto (center, Team Argentina): We were inside the stadium, waiting to go out to get the medals. We were singing songs, like soccer fans. The Americans were very quiet. It was like two faces\u2014twelve players on one side, singing, and the other guys very quiet, looking at us.\n\n Wade: Honestly, I thought the class they showed wasn't good. If we would've won it and we would've been doing things that they was doing, we would have been publicized for being too cocky.\n\n Massimo Bulleri (guard, Team Italy): It was really strange to see American players below us on the podium. When we played against them in Germany, a few days before the Olympics, I stepped onto the floor and said to myself, \"I am only dreaming. I am playing against my idols.\"\n\n Wade: I was confused. I didn't know\u2014Should I be happy that we won a medal? Or should I be sad that we didn't?\n\n Oberto: After the Games, we took a taxi in Buenos Aires, and we didn't pay. They took everybody free. That's unbelievable, because our country got a lot of economy problems. We were walking in the street, and everybody stopped and clapping the hands. They make us feel like gods.\n\n Hill: The guys that were there took time away from their summer, knowing that they're going to go into the regular season exhausted. Those guys just wanted to be there. And no one talks about that. No one talks about that.\n\n James: I had no idea what I was getting into. I just wanted to have the experience. Everything on the court I didn't expect. But I think I'd do it again.\n\n Anthony: I don't know what's up. I'm busting my ass in practice, I'm doing all the right things, and Larry still won't play me. No matter. Put me down for '08. I'll be back. I ain't worried. I still have '08 and maybe '12.\n\n Additional reporting by John Canzano, Sean Jensen, Patrick Hruby, Greg Veis, and Kevin Sintumuang"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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