VILNIUS - 2004 could be the year the dream falls apart. After years of dominating the competition, the United States looks as if it may fail to grab the team gold in men's basketball. A lackluster string of exhibition games - a loss to Italy and a mere one-point victory over Germany, which didn't even qualify - and an insatiable hunger among European teams to rob the Americans of the title have many expecting that this Dream Team, America's fourth in international competition, will fold.
On Aug. 8 the team, which largely lacks true NBA superstars (most of whom decided to sit this one out), didn't even make a three-pointer against Tur-key, another non-qualifier, and aptly demonstrated its sassy attitude - earning it two technical fouls.
One sports columnist even quipped that the U.S. team resembles the Harlem Globetrotters more than actual descendents of the 1992 Dream Team that took Barcelona by storm.
Indeed, much of the attention this year on the court will focus on China, whose team features a super-young superstar, an NBA coach and a Lithuanian assistant.
Jonas Kazlauskas, former head coach of the Lietuvos Rytas team and Lithuania's national team at the Atlanta and Sydney games, will serve as assistant coach to the Chinese team in Athens as part of the country's ambitious bid for a medal.
Del Harris, head coach of the NBA's Dallas Mavericks, will lead the Chinese team - a first for the proud Asian country that prefers to stick with its own.
The team, which finished 12th in the 2002 World Championship (the Ameri-cans finished sixth), will feature 16-year-old center Yao Ming, whose all-star status is reaching phenomenal proportions in the world's most populous countries.
The entire team, in fact, is young, and Harris is putting its oldest in the guard positions to ensure that the ball-handling will be in experienced hands.
In the meantime, in an effort to overcome the language barrier he is trying to learn Chinese.
"I know lots and lots of phrases, but it seems like the one I need at the time, I can't think of," Harris was quoted as saying by The New York Times. "It's not terrible - it's just frustrating at times."
Regarding the U.S. team, which will be led by Larry Brown, Harris agreed that it was in trouble.
"I think everyone involved in basketball in the U.S.A. understands now it's much less likely that the Americans are just going to walk through to gold," he told NBC news. "Now it's more like an NCAA tournament - the field is more balanced. You have to have enough talent to get to a certain position, but a lot of it comes down to who gets hot at the right time."
Kazlauskas, who commanded the 2000 Lithuanian team that missed beating the Dream Team at the buzzer, said other teams "understand they can beat the Americans now. Until that moment of our game, nobody thought they would be able to beat the Americans."
Kazlauskas was quoted as saying earlier this year that the Chinese could hope for eighth place in the competition. And given the team's youth, the country's leadership seems to have bigger hopes for the 2008 Olympic Games - which will take place in Beijing.
