'Black Mamba' showed great maturity in Beijing, despite a ligament injury to the pinkie finger on his shooting hand, racking up 15 points per game including his iconic three-pointer with just over three minutes remaining in the gold-medal game against Spain (followed by his finger over the lips gesture).īryant went on to win two more NBA titles (20) as well as a second Olympic gold at London 2012. When Beijing 2008 came around, Bryant was the reigning NBA MVP although the Lakers came up short in the NBA Finals as they went down in six games to the Boston Celtics.īryant turned that disappointment into motivation inspiring the star-studded U.S. In professional football, the 10 shirt is often worn by the playmaker or best attacking player of the team - think Pele, Maradona, Messi. When his father Joe moved to play for Sebastiani Rieti, young Kobe ended up playing football in the playground. With FIBA rules dictating players can only wear jersey numbers between 4 and 15, Bryant chose number 10 - according to Pro Hoops Journal - as a nod to his time spent in Italy as a child. To avoid a repeat of Athens 2004, USA Basketball had insisted on players committing early for the Games with Bryant one of eight members of that squad in Las Vegas going to China. The guard finally made his Team USA debut in the 2007 FIBA Americas Championship in Las Vegas, leading the team to a 10-0 record and a place at Beijing 2008. He became the youngest man to start an NBA game at 18 years and 158 days, and he and O'Neal led the Lakers, under head coach Phil Jackson, to three consecutive NBA Championships from 2000-2002. One of basketball's all-time greats, Kobe Bryant was born in Philadelphia but spent his entire NBA career at the Los Angeles Lakers.īryant, who went straight to the pro leagues from high school, was actually drafted by the Charlotte Hornets in 1996 at the request of the Lakers who wanted to trade center Vlade Divac so they could make an approach for free agent Shaquille O'Neal. Read on to find out more about the stars of USA's return to the summit of men's basketball. 'The Redeem Team' will be launched worldwide on 7 October exclusively on Netflix. The documentary offers an original and fascinating portrait of team building which heralded the launch of a new era of Team USA men's basketball at the Olympic Games. That triumph has been immortalised in the first collaborative feature documentary film between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Netflix.Įntitled 'The Redeem Team' and executive produced by two key members of the squad who tasted defeat in Athens - LeBron James and Dwyane Wade - it features never-seen-before footage from the Olympic archives as well as new behind-the-scenes material from NBA Entertainment. His first major tournament, the 2006 World Championships, only yielded a bronze medal with the star-studded squad going down to Greece in the semi-finals.īut two years later, with Kobe Bryant captaining the side and no repeat of the late withdrawals which hampered their Athens hopes, USA regained their gold in spectacular fashion. In 2005, Duke Blue Devils head coach Mike Krzyzewski, aka Coach K, was placed in charge of the USA men's basketball team as it tried to claim a first global success since Sydney 2000.
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