Gone are the days of the Dream Team.
Widely lambasted after its 92-73 loss to Puerto Rico Sunday, the United States men's basketball team made many yearn for 1992, when Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were the leaders of the American Olympic campaign, and of those long-ago Barcelona Games themselves.
In their place, a stoic Tim Duncan and a tattooed Allen Iverson serve as leaders for a ragtag bunch with no true point guard and no outside shooter. This latest incarnation of American basketball is a sad mockery of the greatest team to ever grace the hardwood (and a nifty set of McDonald's cups).
But it is not just the men's basketball team that is flailing. Since the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics, a number of men's teams have gone south. The soccer team, composed of the nation's best under age 23, failed to play to its potential during qualifying matches, and a number of track and field athletes buckled under pressure of impending drug scandals. Perhaps the most embarrassing Athens absence is the U.S. baseball team. While never a lock for gold -that would be Cuba -the Americans should be expected to at least reach the Games in a sport they invented.
There are exceptions to this sad rule, of course. While Iraq, of all nations, marches forth in the Olympic soccer tournament, and Japan is expected to contend for a baseball medal, the American men's swimmers and gymnasts are enjoying their finest Games of a generation.
Michael Phelps, the nation's preordained golden boy, has been nearly as good as advertised, winning three gold and two bronze medals. He will not surpass Mark Spitz's 1972 record of seven golds, but he can still tie the single-Games record of eight overall medals. And he's only 19.
More impressive, though, is Paul Hamm, who became the first American man to ever take gold in the all-around gymnastics competition. All but eliminated after four rotations, Hamm delivered a performance on par with Kerri Strug's 1996 vault by registering 9.837 on both parallel bars and high bar to jump from 12th to first.
If these Games are remembered, though, for American dominance in any one area (and I say this loosely, as there have been only five days of competition), it will be for the continued rise and success of women's sports. Though early, soccer and softball seem poised for another gold, while 19-year-old Mariel Zagunis already won a gold medal for individual sabre. And the women's gymnastics squad performed well, though with a few key errors, in winning the team silver behind Romania.
Should these Games continue along the same path they have since Saturday, they might well be remembered as a turning point -a true turning point -for women's athletics. The nation might well shy away from men's basketball altogether (enough have already condemned the NBA), and watch instead something more interesting, more enjoyable and more competitive, like the new dream team: America's women.
-LaWell is a sophomore journalism major who has not slept in a week because the Olympics are on and his couch is comfortable. Send him an e-mail at matthew.lawell@ohiou.edu.
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Matt LaWell
