Process Prevents a True Olympic ‘Dream Team’

So, when are we going to stop messing around and start taking this Olympic basketball thing seriously and come up with a better system so we can finally send our best players and not the junior varsity to the Summer Games?

(I do love a golden oldie, don’t you?)

That blast from the past, so popular in the late ‘80s after Team USA crashed, burned and took the bronze in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, was presumed buried for good once the college kids were shoved aside to make way for the red carpet laid at the feet of Michael, Magic and Dream Team I in 1992. But USA Basketball--perhaps bored by the prospect of more 60-point group-play victories in Sydney, Australia this summer--exhumed the old complaint last week by announcing an Olympic roster that excluded a potential 1999-2000 All-NBA starting five.

Or, if they entered as a group under their own flag, a Sydney 2000 gold-medal game finalist.

In fact, let’s match them up right now.

Team USA 2000:

F--Tim Duncan.

F--Grant Hill.

C--Alonzo Mourning.

G--Jason Kidd.

G--Ray Allen.

Not Team USA 2000:

F--Chris Webber.

F--Vince Carter.

C--Shaquille O’Neal.

G--Allen Iverson.

G--Kobe Bryant.

Who would you like in such a head-to-head encounter?

With Jason Williams, Eddie Jones and Karl Malone coming off the bench for the Stay-At-Homes?

OK, so O’Neal took himself out of the running with a been-there, won-that-already shrug. Or at least that was his position as of the first Tuesday of January. Give him a few months, a long ride deep into the NBA playoffs and strike up the swelling strains of the Countdown to Sydney, Go U-S-A band and . . . you never know.

Last Tuesday, USA Basketball announced the addition of Hill, Mourning and Allen to the final 12-man roster, which also includes Duncan, Kidd, Vin Baker, Kevin Garnett, Tom Gugliotta, Tim Hardaway, Allan Houston, Gary Payton and Steve Smith. Not a bad squad. Barring an unexpected epidemic of shellfish poisoning, that’s a team ready for its photo op atop the medals podium.

Just don’t call it a “Dream Team.” This is more of a Nodded Off During the Clipper-Maverick First Overtime and Started Counting All-Stars in My Sleep and Woke Up Before I Could Get to the Young Really Exciting Guys Team.

There has to be a better way, and, of course, there is: Pick the Olympic team after the NBA season. It’s a win-win: USA Basketball gets more time to deliberate on the wild young bucks, the wild young bucks get more time to “grow up” and the 1999-2000 NBA champions--did someone say the Lakers?--might actually get a representative on Team USA.

USA Basketball has made its choices: solid consistency over flash, predictability over the great unknown. Which is fine, provided you keep spanking the rest of the world every four years.

But let Canada come within 25 points come September and Kobe’s front yard will be crawling with TV reporters seeking comment.

REMEMBERING THORPE

Thursday, the U.S. Olympic Committee pays tribute to Jim Thorpe with a banquet in his honor and the unveiling of a bronze sculpture of Thorpe--nice gestures, and timely, considering how the greatest American athlete of the first half of the 20th century got the short shrift when it came time to hand out the 100-year hardware.

Suppose Thorpe had been born 80 years later and accomplished the following during the hype-till-we-drop ‘90s:

* Made All-America twice as a do-everything, all-way player--playing halfback and defense, kicking field goals and punting, returning punts and kickoffs, occasionally even serving as a wedge blocker.

* Scored 198 points and 25 touchdowns during his senior season.

* Between his junior and senior seasons, won two gold medals at the Summer Olympics--winning four of five events in the men’s pentathlon, then taking fourth place in the high jump, then taking seventh place in the long jump, then competing in his first decathlon and routing the field by 688 points over his closest challenger.

* Played eight years in the NFL and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

* Spent six seasons in the major leagues and hit .252 for his career, which is more than a certain athlete of the century, a shooting guard who also dabbled in baseball, ever did.

Suppose Thorpe did all of that on SportsCenter, including the following exchange with King Gustav V of Sweden at the Olympic victory stand:

King Gustav: “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.”

Thorpe: “Thanks, king.”

He’d be starring in Burger King commercials for the rest of his life, raking in millions in royalties from his Air Thorpe cross-trainers and advising Michael Jordan to “Stick with it, kid. You’ll get there someday.”

Unfortunately for Thorpe, he concluded his athletic career 50 years before cable and 40 before Nike. Old-school is cool, but too-old-school leaves you in the dust when the youngsters gather at the end of the century to dole out the big awards and they’ve never seen you play, even on ESPN Classic.

But then, Thorpe and all the other great Olympic decathletes failed to carry much weight in any of the best-of-the-century polls. Where were Bob Mathias and Daley Thompson, two-time winners of the Olympic decathlon? How about Bruce Jenner, Rafer Johnson, Dan O’Brien?

As Olympic decathlon champions, didn’t they all hold the traditional unofficial title of “world’s greatest athlete”?

Yes, and what did that get them?

Thorpe was seventh on ESPN’s best athlete list, but the rest of them finished out of the top 50--and behind a horse named Secretariat, which checked in at No. 35.

A DUEL, BUT STILL A DUO

Reports of a rift between longtime friends, training partners and world’s-fastest-human rivals Ato Boldon and Maurice Greene apparently have been exaggerated.

Boldon, the Trinidad native who won the 200-meter world championship in 1997, was quoted last weekend in the Trinidad Express saying his quest for gold in Sydney superseded his relationship with Greene and to fully dedicate himself to the cause, he would no longer be training with Greene.

“There will be no tag-teaming this year,” Boldon told the newspaper. “It’s every man for himself. “I will continue to be the cat burglar. I won’t smash a front window. I’ll enter through the back so I won’t be noticed.”

The newspaper also quoted Boldon saying, “There is no question that I can run 9.7 seconds. Maurice got first shot, but because of my injury, I could not respond. However, he beat me just once in three [meetings].

“But the focus is not to beat Maurice every day. It’s not realistic to win every race and it wouldn’t matter if I lost every race but the Olympic final.”

Tuesday, however, Boldon issued the following statement through his Irvine-based track club, HSI:

“I do not plan to leave our group and I never made any claim that I am no longer training with our group . . . In addition to my practices with Maurice and the others [at HSI], I am also working out in my personal home gym.

“There is no doubt that my intentions are to beat Maurice Greene; however, he remains my close friend.”

Boldon said that he and Greene, the world-record holder at 100 meters, will race twice during the upcoming indoor season--in New York and Birmingham, England.

TAKING THE OFFENSIVE

American cyclist Lance Armstrong, whose comeback ride from testicular cancer to the 1999 Tour de France championship was tainted by media speculation about steroids, hits back in a new Nike television commercial.

“Everyone wants to know what I am on,” Armstrong says during the 30-second spot. “What am I on? I’m on my bike--six hours a day. What are you on?”

The French media had a field day with Armstrong during the Tour after traces of steroids--from a skin cream, Armstrong claimed--showed up in a urine test. The International Cycling Union cleared Armstrong, ruling that cyclists could use the cream if a physician had prescribed it.

Armstrong doesn’t believe his commercial will do much to sway his doubters in the European media.

“Of course not,” he said last week. “We’re talking about the French here.

“We [professional cyclists] just have to ride it out and show that we are clean, hard-working guys.”

Armstrong, who aims to compete in both the Tour de France and the Olympics this summer, began the year by receiving the Wide World of Sports athlete of the year award for 1999. He is the third cyclist to win the international award, joining Greg LeMond of the United States (1989-90) and Miguel Indurain of Spain (1995).