Hoping a Care Package Has Arrived

United States men's basketball coach Larry Brown is hammering the "team" concept into his players, some of whom appear to be listening. (Lucy Nicholson -- Reuters)

ATHENS

Give the USA basketball team a break. After all, these are the nice guys, the ones who came. There are a lot of other players who couldn't find time in their busy summer schedules for the Olympics. And you know what? The Americans may yet go home with something valuable, and by that I don't just mean a medal, but a sense that the game can be more satisfying when you play with, and for, someone else.

Wouldn't it be funny if the story of this USA basketball team turned out to be "Hoosiers?" That's what Coach Larry Brown is working up to, and it may just pay off. It's too pat to write the Americans off as selfish and heartless, though I admit it was the easiest conclusion to jump to after watching them lose to Puerto Rico by 19. The Yanks are more complicated than that, as their fourth-quarter performance Thursday against Australia proved. They recovered from a 12-point deficit, pulled together for an 89-79 victory and showed signs that they're beginning to slough off their air of detachment and form an actual -- believe it or not -- team.

"This is great for us," Lamar Odom said. "It's wonderful for us. Humility makes you better. All the great winners lost at one time or another."

The final 10 minutes against Australia were their best of this tournament. For the first time, the Americans played defense on every possession, showed good ball movement, took (mostly) smarter shots and played as well without the ball as with it.

A lot of the Americans -- though not all -- have better intentions than they've been given credit for. They also have some legitimate problems that are not of their own making. They're inexperienced, their roster is not a particularly good mix, and they only had a few days of practice together before they entered this tournament. Nevertheless, there is a core group of players genuinely willing to listen to Brown in the interest of avoiding an embarrassment of historical proportions. Consider this huge development: With the game tied at the start of the fourth quarter, Shawn Marion made a defensive stop and saw LeBron James drifting downcourt toward the basket. Marion threw a long pass to James, who flicked it to Dwyane Wade for a layup. The ball never hit the floor until it fell through the net. It was the start of the game-winning, 10-point run, but that was the least of it. It was the start of a promising collaboration, the chief ingredient the team has been missing.

"We don't have them all, but they're starting to care about each other and understand the importance of representing our country the right way," Brown said.

And Brown is beginning to zero in on which ones they are. Team USA is gradually finding combinations of players who are willing and who work well together. The group that broke the Australia game open consisted of Wade and James, two of the youngest players on the roster, along with Marion, Odom and Tim Duncan.

"This young kid [James] and Dwyane Wade started throwing the ball inside, and all of the sudden everybody on our team got better," Brown said. "Hopefully we've got to remember that. But we're not dealing with Michael Jordans and Larry Birds and Magic Johnsons that have done that from the beginning, and it's going to take time for some of these young people."

Perhaps the biggest problem Brown has to overcome is that he's a great teacher trying to teach players who've never really been taught. The game Brown teaches is basketball-as-ethic. But what used to be called coaching is now called criticism by the modern young superstar. Disrespect. "The biggest challenge coaches have today on all levels is for guys to think of coaching as coaching and not criticism," Brown says.

This is the direct and warping effect of being raised in the incubator of the NBA, where swaggering acts of isolation are mistaken for big plays. This is not specifically their fault; they have simply never been taught to look for anyone else on the floor, never consciously relied on or trusted another player. It's not that they're innately selfish or willful. They simply haven't formed connections with others because they've been told since they were in AAUs that they're the go-to guy.

No wonder when Brown halts a practice to correct them, some of them duck their heads sulkily, and refuse to meet his eye.

"These kids have so far never been coached, benched, or asked to play roles within a team," he says. "But I have to keep talking to them, and I believe that deep inside when they see you care about them they are going to listen."

Brown's struggles remind me of an old Dean Smith story. Once, Smith decided to cure a young player of his selfishness. He cleared the practice floor and told the player to stand on the baseline. Smith tossed him the ball, and told him to inbound it.