When it comes to dominating the sport of basketball at the Olympics, there’s no one close to Team USA. The United States has won the most gold medals in the Olympics, and more often than not, they have done so by a huge margin. However, during the 2004 Olympics, Team USA had one of the worst Olympic campaigns.
Following that disappointment, ahead of the 2008 Olympics, The Redeem Team was created. It featured many big names, such as LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony, and many more. As expected, The Redeem Team brought the gold medal back to the USA in a historic fashion.
Richard Jefferson On 2004 Team USA
Former NBA player Richard Jefferson was one of the players present on the 2004 Team USA. In light of the release of Netflix’s ‘The Redeem Team’ documentary, Jefferson talked about what went wrong with the 2004 Team USA.
“I haven’t watched ‘Redeem.’ There’s some things that, like, even people are telling me, and it’s, like, there is a whole other story. And I was like, if I watch it and I start saying, like, ‘Well, wait a second guys. Let’s talk about how we got to the redeem spot a little bit more. Do you remember the Tournament of the Americas? It was T-Mac. It was Vince. It was Jason Kidd. It was Bibby. Like, Karl Malone was on that team. That team won the Tournament of the Americas to go to the Olympics. Then, nine guys leave that team and say they’re not coming. And then they bring in all of the young guys like, you know, me and Bron, D-Wade, Carmelo. All of us. All of us show up a couple of weeks before the Olympics and try and figure it out. Man, that was a f****g recipe for disaster. No national team would ever do that again, what they did in ’04
In the end, due to a mixture of inexperienced players and the egos of star players crashing, the 2004 Team USA was doomed to fail. Fortunately, the 2008 Team USA was far from that, and coach Mike Krzyzewski managed to create a jealous-free environment for The Redeem Team. The end result was that they won the gold medal in Beijing Olympics.
