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The Daily OrangeMBB | Gold standard
Boeheim's calming influence helped Team USA find redemption
By Tyler Dunne
Posted: 9/10/08, 12:32 AM EST Section: Sports
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Across the globe, there was Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim cracking a joke with the reigning NBA MVP Kobe Bryant. Boeheim laughed and gave Bryant a playful whack on the shoulder. He returned to the bench. Bryant returned to the court. And the road to redemption continued for United States Basketball.
This time, the U.S. team wasn't a running punch line at the Olympics. Order was restored, and Boeheim was the center of it all.
"They play 100 games a year," Boeheim said. "They're the most talented players in the world. It was fun coaching those guys."
Fun because the complete re-haul of U.S. men's basketball worked. As an assistant coach, Boeheim helped bring justice to the "Redeem Team" moniker the squad embraced so fervently. As head coach Mike Krzyzewski's right-hand man, Boeheim wasn't his engaged self, pacing the bench back and forth as if doing the shuttle run.
Instead, Boeheim was a quiet, behind-the-scenes influence for a program besieged by an embarrassing bronze-medal finish in 2004. The result for Team USA was an undefeated finish and a return to the top of the basketball pantheon.
To Boeheim, the reclamation project was fueled by a culture shift, jumping at that notion before the question is finished.
"Yes, no question," the 33-year Syracuse head coach said. "We wanted to get everybody on the same page. That was the theme, and the players responded to it."
Four years ago, Team USA was chastised for disinterested, frozen-footed defense. Puerto Rico's Carlos Arroyo - a fringe NBA player that has played for five teams in seven years - became the highway billboard for everything wrong with U.S. hoops, corkscrewing his way to 25 points in a 92-73 win.
Boeheim remembers it, calling the '04 Games "embarrassing." A change in personnel wouldn't be enough. The team needed a cultural shift, away from the era in which NBA stars turn down international requests as if it were a slapdash pickup game. Away from the perception of laziness that was fortified by the team's off-court antics at Athens.
Boeheim was part of the antidote to shed this image and build a new one.
No stranger to the international scene, Boeheim has coached in 10 different international championships at all levels, accumulating five gold medals, three silvers and two bronze medals. Familiarity was the tipping point in adding Boeheim to the Redeem Team. Finding great basketball minds can be fish-in-a-barrel. After all, 2004 U.S. head coach Larry Brown was considered a defensive genius.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Laurie
posted 9/10/08 @ 11:31 AM EST
Wow, Syracuse can definitely be proud of Coach Boeheim. What a well-deserved honor to help take the US team to the gold!
Thanks for a great story Tyler. (Continued…)
gene
posted 9/10/08 @ 4:59 PM EST
Coach Boeheim is a class act and a fabulous ambassador for Syracuse University , both as a former player playing alongside Dave Bing and , of course, as a coach. (Continued…)
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