When Team USA Bronze was Good as Gold

Remembering the 1998 Dirty Dozen men’s basketball team

It was the summer of 1998. The Bulls had completed another threepeat and sent Michael Jordan to retirement, and the Clippers kicked off the offseason by selecting Michael Olowokandi with the first pick in the draft.

A week later on July 1st, free agency never got started. A labor dispute between the players and owners led to a long, ugly lockout that would last over six months and cost the NBA many games and huge sums of money.

That wasn’t the only cost. The 1998 FIBA World Championship would tip in a month and no NBA players would go anywhere near with their contracts up in the air. Even recent players wouldn’t go, unwilling to look like scabs.

And so in the same decade that saw two Dream Teams dominate, Team USA was forced to turn to a selection of NBA minor leaguers and European pros in hopes of saving the day. They called them the Dirty Dozen.

A full roster had already been selected for Athens. The team would feature players like Tim Duncan, Grant Hill, and Kevin Garnett. TD and KG were both just 21, but Duncan was First Team All NBA already. Even without MJ, Shaq, and Malone, the team would have rolled.

The starters would have been Hill, Duncan, Gary Payton, Glen Rice, and Vin Baker. Tim Hardaway would lead a second team of Allan Houston, Tom Gugliotta, Kevin Garnett, and Chris Webber with Terrell Brandon and Christian Laettner available as well.

Imagine Team USA with a pair of Timberwolves on the roster — nearly a trio since Brandon would join the team months later. And there’s Laettner back on Team USA, the one blemish on an otherwise perfect 1992 Dream Team.

Chris Webber was still on the Washington Bullets, Grant Hill was still healthy, and Vin Baker was still good. The team was to be coached by the legendary Rudy Thomjanovich with a very able staff featuring longtime coaches Del Harris, Mike Jarvis, and Lon Kreuger.

It wasn’t the best the NBA had to offer, but it was a darn good team. They would have rolled through Athens.

Of course money has a way of messing things up, and that was the case that summer. All twelve players bailed immediately, and none of the likely replacements would take Team USA’s calls. Even guys like Dominique Wilkins and Byron Scott who were playing in Europe wouldn’t come and play.

In all, 300 potential players were crossed off of Team USA’s list of hopefuls — the equivalent of 25 full NBA rosters.

Tomjanovich and his staff stayed on anyway. They invited about 30 guys to try out for the team including a number of future pros that would be cut before Athens including Rip Hamilton, Earl Boykins, Troy Hudson, and Chucky Atkins. Imagine — 5'5 Earl Boykins in an American uniform! It was not to be.

In the end, Tomjanovich settled on one collegian, a few guys from the minor league Continental Basketball Association (a predecessor to the D-League), and a handful of European pros.

The two most recognizable names on the roster today were Brad Miller and Trajan Langdon. Miller was a 2-time NBA All Star, and Langdon was an Alaskan sharpshooter from Duke. You already know their stories, and you are probably already thinking how this team wasn’t so bad after all.

But Miller and Langdon were the DeMar DeRozan and Harrison Barnes of that team, wasting away at the end of the bench. Miller played the third fewest minutes on the team while Langdon was last, just 50 minutes in nine games. Langdon was just entering his senior year and would be a 1st round pick the following season, the only one on this roster. He would ultimately land on the 2000s All-Decade Euroleague team with Juan Carlos Navarro and Sarunas Jasikevicius, while Miller would go on to become the first undrafted player to be an All Star in 2003. Neither was a factor in Athens.

You may also recognize the name Jimmy King — the other guy on that Michigan Fab Five roster. If you’re wondering what King is up to these days, check out Celebrity Family Feud last Sunday under “Jalen Rose & Friends.”

Kiwane Garris was Illinois’ second all-time leading scorer. Jason Sasser had a brother that played in the NBA. Gerard King played 63 minutes on the ’99 Spurs title team. Bill Edwards’ Wikipedia page calls him a “Wright State legend.” He scored 6 points in his NBA career.

Starting point guard Michael Hawkins was born in Canton, Ohio. That was the closest he ever got to the Hall of Fame. Ashraf Amaya actually started 34 games for the expansion Vancouver Grizzlies just a few years prior, but you’re forgiven for not knowing his name.

David Wood was the team’s most prolific NBA player outside of Brad Miller — he actually played 412 games for eight teams over seven seasons. That means there’s a better than 25% chance he played for your favorite team in the ‘90s; ever heard of him? Wood was 33 when selected for Team USA and would go on to play for a team from the Philippines called the Purefoods Tender Juicy Hotdogs. He is the 8th most important David Wood all time behind actor, environmental activist, philosopher, British army officer, Christian apologist, New Zealand rock star, and journalist David Woods.

The team’s two stars were Jimmy Oliver and Wendell Alexis. Oliver led the team in scoring at 11.8ppg. This would be his 14th team in seven years — four NBA, six CBA, and four overseas — and he’d play on eight more teams afterward. Only once in his career did Oliver play more than one season with the same team.

Alexis was actually pretty good, compared to the rest. He was 3x MVP of the German Bundesliga for Alba Berlin and helped his club to six consecutive titles at the turn of the century. Alexis was the second leading scorer for the Dirty Dozen.

And so the Dirty Dozen was formed. Each player got to bring one guest to Athens. The tournament was not promoted here in the States and was not shown on NBC at all. ESPN2 offered limited coverage —if we reached the second round. Only Tomjanovich’s hometown sportswriter Eddie Sefko even bothered following the team to Athens.

The FIBA World Championships featured 16 nations including Senegal, Japan, South Korea, and Nigeria. Team USA was drawn into a group with Lithuania, Brazil, and Korea. The team opened pool play with a dominant 83–59 win over Brazil. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard after all?

The following day Team USA faced Lithuania and everything changed. Led by then Maryland collegian Sarunas Jasikevicius, the Lithuanians jumped out to a 13-point halftime lead. USA came storming back in the second half with 18 from Oliver and 16 from Hawkins but it was not enough. USA fell 84–82, its first international loss since professionals had been integrated in 1992. They beat Korea by 26 a day later to advance.

In the second round, USA beat an Argentina team featuring 21-year-old Manu Ginobili with hair and held on to win by 2 against Spain the following night. An 18-point win over Australia sent them into the knockouts as the team was beginning to come together. The quarterfinals pitted Team USA against a stingy Italian squad. Italy led by 3 at the half but the Americans came together and held on for a 3 point win. Up next was Russia.

Russia was a tournament favorite and would lose just twice all tournament, both times to Yugoslavia — once by 2 and once in overtime. The Russians featured star Serguei Babkov and he steamrolled the Americans for 30 points in the semifinal. Team USA had just one player in double digits, Gerard King with 10. They scored just 64 points, the lowest total in American international history and lost by 2.

Team USA had been eliminated.

A few days later the Americans closed out their tournament in style with a dominant 84–61 win over host nation Greece and secured the bronze medal, a fine effort for a team of semi-pros and journeymen.

Team USA never broke 100 points the entire tournament but went 7–2 anyway, their pair of defeats by just two points each.

The Americans — this ragtag band of Americans — finished just six points away from gold. They returned to the United States proud of their accomplishment, even if few back home had noticed.

Four years later, a team of NBA stars returned to the World Championships, led by Paul Pierce and Reggie Miller. There they lost three times and finished a disappointing 6th. Two years after that, Team USA led by Allen Iverson and Tim Duncan was defeated for the first time in almost two decades at the Olympics. They won the bronze, only the third American team ever not to capture gold at the Olympics.

Today we remember the early 2000s as the dark ages of Team USA basketball, the period we dare not return to. It’s worth remembering that just a few years earlier, a ragtag Dirty Dozen banded together and gave us a bronze to remember.

A bronze that was good as gold.

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