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[Arlyne Doepner]

Afterthe Dream Team's Olympic gold medal in 1992, USA Basketball continued to coast along in international play, remaining undefeated whenever NBA players represented the country, winning gold at the 1996 and 2000 Olympics. Then, at the 2002 FIBA World Championships in Indianapolis, an American team led by Paul Pierce and Michael Finley and coached by George Karl suffered losses to Spain, Argentina and Yugoslavia en route to a sixth-place finish.

Two years later, the NBA and USA Basketball hoped to keep America's post-1992 Olympic record perfect at the 2004 Athens Games, but several prominent players declined invitations, in part due to security concerns over attending the first Olympic Games after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The roster that head coach Larry Brown and lead assistant Gregg Popovich took to Greece proved to be flawed and hastily assembled, led by Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury and captain Tim Duncan, along with late additions LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade, all coming off their rookie NBA seasons.

Note: This previously unpublished oral history comes from reporting by Jackie MacMullan, Rafe Bartholomew and Dan Klores for their acclaimed book "BASKETBALL: A Love Story," available now in hardcover and in paperback Oct. 15 via Penguin Random House and wherever books are sold.

Luis Scola, Argentina forward: The first time I played against [Team USA] was in '99 in Puerto Rico. We were trying to qualify to the Olympics in 2000. We were very young -- I was 19, Manu [Ginobili] was 21, [Andres] Nocioni was 19 -- nobody was above 25. I was guarding Vin Baker, and I remember thinking this is just impossible. There's nobody in the world who could compete with these guys. They're taller than me, he weighs like 20 more pounds than I do but he runs faster and he shoots from farther and he can play in the post and he can guard. How can I compete? There's no one area I can take advantage of him. I felt miles away, like it was another sport for us. We didn't qualify to Sydney, but we start playing really well and things start to change after that tournament. The second time we play them, we still lost by 30 but we play a lot better. And the year after we start growing, and by 2002 things are completely different for us.

Jerry Colangelo, USAB Director since 2005: From '92 on, there was a committee put together of NBA people -- coaches, general managers. And in '04, we had players selected by a committee. But some players didn't want to go for whatever reasons. Contracts, some wanted to take the time off, some had no interest. What didn't exist was this desire to represent your country. But the committee format left something to be desired.

Bill Simmons, sportswriter and author: We sent this team to the '04 Olympics that was basically an All-Star team, and there was no thought into how the guys would mesh with one another. I looked at our team and I was like, "Stephon Marbury is gonna be playing, who's the other guy? The backcourt is Marbury and [Allen] Iverson? We're screwed! Those guys are gonna be in fistfights for the ball."

Larry Brown, Team USA head coach (2004): You know that's a sore point in my mind. That whole thing makes the hair on the back of my head stand up because we had Ray Allen, we had Jason Kidd, we had Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter -- that was an amazing team that was put together that qualified. We had Argentina down 37 points at halftime in 2003. That team had to qualify and they were playing unbelievable basketball, and then hardly any of those guys come. That team never went to the Olympics because of 9/11.

Marv Albert, TV sportscaster: [Brown] probably felt he could win with them, particularly since he knew Iverson. I don't think you can win in the Olympics unless you have a team where you know guys are gonna play together. I just don't think you can win.

Brown: We didn't get any practice time. They kind of picked the team at random and it's totally unfair. A lot of people were critical of the coaches -- I can accept that -- but they're critical of the players. Well, the players had the balls to go during that time to Greece. These kids, a lot of them weren't really sure what was going to happen. We were in Turkey and the hotel got bombed, and then we go to Greece and they hate -- they're not really excited about the Americans. These kids did some unbelievable things under difficult circumstances, with no time to prepare, no time to practice.

Scola: Obviously they are extremely talented, but they don't adjust well to the rules. They are frustrated about it. They didn't decide to just play through it, they were complaining a lot. This was a team that could be beat.

In Team USA's first game of the Athens Olympics, Puerto Rico ran the Americans off the court. The 92-73 blowout remains the worst loss the United States has suffered in international play, and it set the tone for a doomed Olympic campaign.

Rod Thorn, former Olympic Committee chairman: When we lost the first game to Puerto Rico in the bracket, it was like, "Wait a minute, we can beat these guys." And, you know, was the team constructed exactly like you'd like it to be? In retrospect, obviously it wasn't.

Doug Collins, former coach and TV analyst: In 2004, I broadcast the games in Athens, and it was a disaster. The level of frustration -- there were rumblings that they wanted to send guys home before they even got to the Olympics. And basically, I think the commissioner said, "No, this is our team," but there were things along the way that you knew were gonna come to a head once we got to the Olympics and I was there to watch it. Mike Breen and I did the games and when we'd take our headsets off after the game, we were like, "What did we just watch? What was that?"

Scola: By the time we get to play the U.S., we felt prepared. This was our chance. They had talent, but in a one-game scenario we knew it was possible. ... We knew that we needed to let them shoot. We needed to pack the paint, not let them go inside, because with their athleticism and their strength it was going to be almost impossible to beat them. We needed to make them shoot, and they shot pretty bad that game.

Collins: [Team USA] won the bronze medal and I said, "Something's gotta be done." We had gotten so arrogant that we had thought it didn't matter -- we can send anybody and win. And after '04 we found out we couldn't do that.

Allen Iverson, 2004 Team USA guard: Yeah, [losing] hurt. I mean, 'cause I was a part of it. It always haunts me because my dream was to win a gold medal, but the way I look at life is, the things that I've accomplished, people where I'm from don't even get to the doorstep of doing anything like that. So I thank God that I had the opportunity to do it, but yeah, it still bothered me.

LeBron James, 2004 Team USA forward: We didn't have the discipline, we didn't have the structure to be able to play on a world stage. We had great basketball players but we didn't have the structure, and I think that's part of why we finished third.

Iverson: LeBron James might've played five minutes a game, Carmelo might've played five minutes a game. It's just a whole bunch of things. I mean, it just wasn't meant to be. It's simple as that. The talent was there -- it just didn't happen.

Collins: They chose LeBron James on that team, who was a young player. Carmelo Anthony, some young guys. Those guys have always played, and now you're asking them to come and sit there?

Simmons: People close to LeBron always say that was good, the way Larry Brown treated the young guys on that team. He treated them like young guys. They had never been treated like they weren't the s---, and that was the first time they had some coach like, "Yeah, you're not gonna play; I've got these other guys."

Brown: I thought, man, under the circumstances, they did pretty darn good. Spain was great that year, and we had to beat them [to reach the semifinals], Tim Duncan fouled out of every game, hardly got to play.

David Stern, NBA commissioner (1984-2014): 2004 affected our thinking about this whole Olympic experience because it became clear that even though we were trying to be good partners and leave it to USA Basketball, that [the NBA] was going to ultimately get blamed for anything that happened. So we made the determination that we had to take a more active role in the entire Olympic experience.

Colangelo's first move as the head of USA Basketball was to call a gathering of basketball minds to discuss what reforms were necessary and to name a coach who would lead the team in future Olympic and world championship competitions.

Colangelo: When David Stern called me back in '05, I was home recovering from prostate cancer after having sold the Suns. It was a traumatic year for me, '04. So David called, saying, "Would you take over USA Basketball?" And I said, "Sure, two conditions: full autonomy -- I pick the coaches and the players. No more committees or politics." And he said, "Absolutely, you got it, what's No. 2?" and I said, "I don't want to hear about a budget." And he went off ranting and raving and I let him go and I said, "Are you finished?" and he acquiesced.

Stern: He took it very seriously, and you know, he announces to the world in every interview: He said he had complete freedom and his budget was complete, and that he could spare no expenditure. If you put me up against the wall under oath I would nitpick that somewhat, but he was perfect because he was respected and devoted and he went about putting together the team the way it should be.

Colangelo: If you were a basketball fly on the wall, you couldn't have picked a better place to be. I called a meeting in Chicago of former Olympic coaches and athletes, and I held it at the Italian American Sports Hall of Fame on Taylor Street and, with the exception of Pete Newell, from the '60 team, who was recovering from cancer surgery, and Bobby Knight, who was on some fishing trip or something, which disappointed me, every other [Olympic] coach was there going back to 1960. Larry Brown wasn't, 'cause he was coaching in the playoffs I think, but you name 'em, they were all there -- Lenny [Wilkens], Chuck Daly, Rudy [Tomjanovich], and on. Then I had athletes like Jerry West and Michael Jordan. We had 30-some people there. I wanted to pick their brains out of respect for them, bringing the basketball people together to have this discussion. I had each one of them talk. What was your experience as an Olympian? How do you see things? What do you think needs to happen? Everyone had a chance to speak. It was great stuff, and once all that was over with I said, "Well, now let's talk about coaches."

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