BASKETBALL: When even other athletes take their photographs you know that LeBron James and company are on a different level of fame, writes KEITH DUGGAN
CELEBRITY IS relative. The USA basketball team may be the chief curiosity of these Olympics but in the minutes after their opening match win over France, it was the stars’ turn to look a bit dazzled as they lined up to receive their congratulations from Michelle Obama.
The requirements of being First Lady are manifold and delivering hugs to 12 perspiring millionaires was chief among her duties yesterday afternoon. After trading high-fives with the French players, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James made a beeline for the enclosure where a beaming Mrs Obama was waiting and the ballers did not try to disguise the fact that they were pleased to have her in the audience. One by one, the most recognisable faces at these Olympics stepped up for their moment with political royalty.
“We knew she was coming because we had met her in Washington. But it was special to see her,” said Deron Williams afterwards.
“I’m glad she came out and supported us. She’s a busy woman!”
The presence of Mrs Obama gave LeBron James the novel sensation of not having all eyes in the room fixed on him. You only have to spend a few minutes in a crowded room with James to get an idea of the strangeness of his life: everybody is looking at him, pointing phones and cameras at him and drinking him in all the time.
While Kobe Bryant, now the senior man on this American team, deals with the unyielding public and media attention with glittering charm, James is more arch and guarded in his dealings. Already ranked as one of the most complete players in the history of the game, James won his first NBA title with the Miami Heat last June, thereby ending much of the anguished criticism of ditching his hometown club, the Cleveland Cavaliers, in favour the ritzier Miami.
He has been dealing with comparisons to Michael Jordan since he was 15 and now that he has replaced Jordan as the most recognisable athlete on the planet, the USA team that he leads has provoked inevitable comparison to the so-called Dream Team who were paraded in front of the world at the Barcelona Olympics of 1992.
The question as to whether the USA 1992 side – containing the iconic triumvirate of Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird – would beat today’s vintage is both daft and fun. But James wasn’t about to concede that the old timers might have an edge.
“No. If you play for a certain team, would you imagine saying that you might lose. As a competitor, I would never say that we might lose to the 1992 Dream Team. We are competitive. It would be great but it is never going to happen. It is impossible. Father Time doesn’t stop for any athlete.”
Mike Krzyzewski, the coach who has turned down repeated multi-million dollar offers to coach in the NBA so he can remain in his (equally lucrative) role with the Duke college team, was assistant on that Dream Team staff 20 years ago. Now that he is tasked with leading the USA to a second consecutive gold medal placing, he considered the ways in which the sport has changed in those two decades.
“I do think players are much more versatile than they were 10 years ago. I am not sure that there has ever been an international player like LeBron. He can play and defend all five positions. Carmelo (Anthony) can play three. They can put the ball on the floor. And the game itself has advanced worldwide since the Dream Team. Twenty per cent of the NBA is international now. And that makes all of us basketball people very proud. These guys have been terrific. They are easy to work with. They respect what we do and are very team oriented.”
For Krzyzewski and the players, their role here is twofold. They are expected to win and uphold the American basketball tradition. But in a broader sense, they are ambassadors for the sport. So they happily put up with the daily wrong turns their bus driver made on their way to training, ending up stuck in the London traffic. They make regular appearances in the athletes’ village, where most of the other competitors instantly revert to fandom. When the basketball team appeared in the USA parade at the Opening Ceremony, hundreds of other athletes tried to get photographs of Bryant and James just as eagerly as the crowd did.
“It is very humbling that people want to watch us and see us and be around us,” James said.
“There is going to be a time when it is not going be like that so we don’t take it for granted. We take it all in. As a team, when we get on the floor we try and play as a team and when we are off the floor we remain a team.”
Their debut – a 98-71 win over the French – on a rainy afternoon in London was a mixture of spectacular and sloppy. The French managed to keep the contest close for the first quarter, thanks mainly to Tony Parker who you will know as an ingeniously tricky point guard if you watch ESPN and as The Former Mr Eva Longoria if you watch E! Entertainment. The San Antonio veteran took the fight to his NBA colleagues but it soon slid into little more than an exhibition, with the Americans decorating a mundane game with a series of staggeringly athletic drives and dunks. Their shooting was off – afterwards, it emerged that the Americans find the baskets a bit tight.
“You either swish it or it seems it won’t go in,” Williams said. “I had to adjust the arc on my shot.”
“I dunno. I’m not a shooter,” James flashed. “You gotta ask one of the shooters. I drive and dunk the ball. It doesn’t bother me.”
The sub plot of the afternoon lay in observing how players like Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant – each the star players in their own clubs – handled lesser roles within this dream cast. The NBA is a gruelling 90 game season and the rivalries are intense.
“We know each other. We respect each other. It’s not like this is the first time we all met. I know Kevin Love since I was 14, I know Chris Paul since I was 14. I know LeBron since I was 17. Carmelo grew up in the same area as me so I know him since I was about 13. I know all these guys . . . it’s just about us growing up and playing NBA.”
And that’s the strange thing. Their lives are predestined: in a country of 300 million players, the future stars of basketball begin to flicker in their early teens. Only the elite few make it to the NBA. And only a handful of those get to play in an Olympics. By then, the world knows who they are.
