Kobe Bryant was the leader bringing the gold medal back to the U.S.!
People actually thought the U.S. Basketball team’s performance was bad this past summer. A 7th place finish gets lost for a couple of reasons.
- The NBA was in the middle of the biggest free agency bonanza in history. The stars weren’t risking injury folks.
- It was the World Championships. This was not the Olympics.
Let’s take things back to the summer of 2004 when the team was in Greece for the Olympics. Remember the team that limped to a Bronze medal?
That Bronze medal team played uninspired, almost had a team mutiny and for some reason, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade sat at the end of the bench for the entire tournament.
U.S. Basketball changed how they built their roster and Kobe Bryant was one of the first players the basketball executives called. When James and Wade decided to come back and try again in 2008, Olympic history was made.
Kobe’s influence showed descriptive evidence of what the stars had to do to sacrifice for the team. After the 2004 debacle, it was mandated for players to give a 18-month commitment to participate on the U.S. roster.
Think of where the basketball program would be if the “Redeem Team” did not win the gold medal in 2008. It would have been very difficult to convince NBA players to invest their time for 18 months.
Finally, Kobe Bryant fans want to remember the championship years, with and maybe more importantly without Shaquille O’Neal.