July 22, 2004

by Adam Lucas, Tar Heel Monthly

For at least a few days, the center of University of North Carolina basketball will shift to the south.

Tar Heel alum Larry Brown will convene his first training session for the 2004 United States Olympic team beginning Monday in Jacksonville, Florida. In addition to the 12 players selected to the team, he'll be joined by assistant coach Roy Williams and a certain special guest: Dean Smith.

Smith will make the short trip to Jacksonville in an observing capacity, where he'll be reunited with Brown and Williams. Even the USA assistants that don't have specific Carolina ties have roundabout Tar Heel affiliations--Smith knows USA assistant Gregg Popovich because mentor Bob Spear was Popovich's college coach at the Air Force Academy.

With less than a month until Brown's Olympic head coaching debut, he's already asked his former coach for some advice.

"Coach Smith told me to keep it simple," Brown said Thursday. "He told me to do what we always want to do: play hard, play smart, play defense, and play unselfishly."

Brown, who is coming off an NBA championship with Detroit, has had a Carolina blue summer. His Pistons re-signed Rasheed Wallace this week, and after a coaching staff shuffle vacancy opened two slots on his coaching staff, he hired Phil Ford as a bench coach. According to Brown, Pat Sullivan, who spent last year as the Pistons' video coordinator, will also be moving up to assume a spot on Detroit's bench.

Neither of those men will be present in Athens, where Brown has been handed a team with multiple soap opera-type storylines. The Olympics will feature the reuniting of LeBron James and Carlos Boozer, former teammates with the Cavaliers before Boozer bolted on a handshake deal to join the Jazz.

The main focus so far, however, has been not on Boozer and James but on the players who aren't on the roster. Due to a variety of injuries, concerns about security, and personal issues, only three players who participated in Olympic qualifying last year in Puerto Rico are back with the Olympic team. Already this summer, Brown has been forced to field endless questions about the players--Shaq, Kobe, Vince, etc.--he's not taking to Athens.

He has enough international experience, including a gold medal from his stint as a player on the 1964 squad and an assistant coaching tenure on the 2000 gold medal winning group, to realize that if his team fails to win the Olympic tournament, the storyline will quickly shift. Lose a game--any game--and no one will care who isn't on the team. It is Olympic basketball, and the United States is supposed to dominate.

"I'm not worried about the pressure and I don't want the players to worry about the pressure," Brown said. "We have a responsibility to show the world that we're the best team there is...I would assume we will be the favorite."

To help mold his collection of individuals into a cohesive unit, USA Basketball has given Brown a formidable training schedule. The Americans will spend five days in Jacksonville before jetting to Cologne, Germany, on August 1 for games against Italy and Germany. They'll spend August 5 and 6 in Belgrade and will tune up for the Olympics in Istanbul, Turkey, from August 7-12. Their first Olympic preliminary round game is August 15 against Puerto Rico.

"Anytime you represent the United States in basketball, the expectations are very high," Brown said. "You're supposed to win. If we play the right way and the guys sacrifice like we feel they will, we'll be pretty good."

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.