Call It The Esteemed Team

Beijing

As "cheesy" as Nike's nickname for this team may be -- as Nike spokesman Kobe Bryant keeps noting -- the U.S. has more to redeem than its primacy in basketball.

If sometimes you win and you really lose, as Gloria says in "White Men Can't Jump," the U.S. was losing more than games long before it started losing games.

Opposing teams bristled at the U.S. players' attitude. It would be 10 years before the pros representing the U.S. lost their first international game, but almost from the moment the Dream Team left Barcelona in 1992, opposing players had stopped asking to pose with them for pictures.

Jay Triano, a star guard for Canada in the 1980s and '90s, said the arrogance could be seen in "almost everything," from the poses the players struck to the entitlement they felt, assuming all they needed were 12 stars and two weeks of practice.

Of course, sometimes when you lose, you really win, as Gloria also said. This U.S. team may not lose any games, but if it lost them all, it already has won.

If we never see another Dream Team, these U.S. players have dialed the clock back to 1992 in terms of the respect they're extending and receiving.

It's more than the postgame pictures with the other team, now choreographed by the NBA Entertainment crew shooting that documentary for Nike.

The same people who rolled their eyes at the Americans' bad manners for years say this team is different.

"I think they've been outstanding, the way they've conducted themselves, [although] they may be coming from a fairly low base from some of their predecessors in the way they've gone about it," former Australia star Andrew Gaze says, laughing.

"I think also off the floor, seeing the guys, the way they interact with the public, the reporters -- you look at Kobe Bryant, every photo they want taken, he's been obliging.

"I think they've really taken on the challenge, not only to resurrect the reputation of what goes on the court but what goes off the court."

If this is a mellow U.S. team compared with some -- like the 1994 world championship squad that had one of its players, Larry Johnson, named to the All-Principal's-Office Team -- it's not just a fortunate, spontaneous development.

It came from the top, from managing director Jerry Colangelo and Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who brought in Triano, a Toronto Raptors assistant, not only to coach the U.S. Select team but to tell the big team what the world thought of them.