The hearts were there, but being strongly in synch as a team doesn't happen overnight. On some level, USA players probably saw their teammates as rival stars, having typically played against each other. As such, you couldn't really expect the whole to equal the sum of all parts. Other teams had the opposite: the kind of synergy in which the whole exceeded what you'd expect from each individual part. Group dynamics means everything in sports.

I think jamestkirk hit the nail on the head here. I did not even watch this team. I knew just by hearing who was on it that there would be dicipline problems. It goes way beyond simple talent here. All these guys have atletic talent or they would not be in the NBA. They lack charachter. They lack dicipline. They lack Class. They lack Maturity more than anything and for the most part are a bunch of rich spoiled thugs. Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson seem to be the only ones who have big game experience and Iverson definitely falls in the thug category. No coach could have forced these punks to play like a team. The NBA is full of punks these days. MJ marked the end of a great era in the NBA. Now we are forced to put up with a bunch of young fools who if they could would probably be rappers.

Nothing new about that. Very few teams in the NBA play team basketball. One of the few that does won the NBA championship this past season, but none of those players were on this US team sent to Greece. Guard play killed our team.

Yes. They didn't play as a team, though, because they weren't a team. They were just the first available all-stars the committee could find.

The U.S. team played the game they were taught to play - NBA, one on one ball. They didn't play team ball because they haven't been taught to play team ball.