In the alley behind his home on 22nd Street in Hungry Hill, on the south side of Chicago, someone tossed 7-year-old Jerry Colangelo a basketball. “Just the smell of that ball meant so much to me,” he says of that moment in 1946. “It was the beginning of a love affair. Been that way ever since.”
Boulder CIty High basketball players Joey Felsenfeld, Chris Leach and Ryan Bowen worked the last three days as ball boys for the U.S. national team during its mini-camp in Las Vegas.
It wasn’t just a middle-of-the-summer pick-up basketball game with some friends and a few acquaintances to Rudy Gay. Saturday night at the Thomas & Mack Center, the former Connecticut star and forward for the Memphis Grizzlies showed how much he wants to be part of the U.S. senior national team.
Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski and Kobe Bryant and LeBron James made wearing the red, white and blue cool again, and it helped that those colors have been trimmed in gold since August. Colangelo assembled the U.S. national basketball squad, coached by Duke boss Mike Krzyzewski, that defeated Spain for the title at the Olympics last year in Beijing. It took a few years, but young elite players are now clamoring to be a part of Team USA and play with Bryant, James, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony.
Anthony Randolph Jr. got the call to serve his country the other day and quickly called his parents. Anthony Sr. and Crystal served in the U.S. Army. “They both cried,” said Junior, who parlayed a blistering NBA Summer League performance into a spot on the U.S. national basketball team.
Boulder City High assistant basketball coach John Balistere has worked Duke's summer camp the last eight years. His relationship with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski opened the door for Boulder City players to work as ball boys last summer for the Krzyzewski-coached national team when they trained at Valley High.
Jerry Colangelo left a Phoenix barbershop Thursday afternoon with a spring in his step, but not because he was just a tad lighter. The architect of USA Basketball has been gliding since Team USA captured Olympic gold in China last summer.
Odds are that Jerry Colangelo will return to manage the U.S. national basketball team and that Team USA will continue to use Las Vegas as its summer training site.
A guy walked by the high-roller lounge at Wynn the other night, with his four kids in tow, and stopped in his tracks when he saw who was playing blackjack at the $500-minimum table.
Greece, Spain, Yugoslavia, Argentina, Lithuania and Puerto Rico are not the words around Team USA, despite beating the Americans in recent major international tournaments. No, the dirty words are the ones in pick-and-roll.
Our Olympic basketball team is going to play Canada at the Thomas & Mack Center on Friday night in an exhibition game that might be interesting only if the Canadians were allowed to play on skates and Wayne Gretzky weren’t busy.
Doesn’t FIBA watch its own sport? The international governing body of basketball lists the United States atop its latest world rankings. To whom it may concern in Switzerland: The Americans are mired in their worst international slump.
Kobe Bryant leaves the Thomas & Mack Center court after a FIBA Americas basketball game and speaks Spanish to his wife, Vanessa, whom he calls Mamacita, and two young daughters.
For the first time, the Americans have not played in three consecutive international finals. With that in mind, who should be a part of Team USA at the Beijing Olymics in August? The Sun offers its own 12-man roster.