Convinced Team USA will win hoops gold convincingly

If you need stats, I've got them. Anecdotal evidence? I've got that, too.

But if you're like me, you don't need any of that stuff. It's nice to have, but only because it reinforces what you already think. What you already know.

Carmelo, Kobe and LeBron: With a trio like that, these guys cannot lose. (AP)

The Dream Team is back.

Which means the United States is about to reclaim its rightful place in international basketball.

And that place is on the gold medal stand in Beijing.

This isn't a blindly patriotic story. At least, I don't think it is. During the Olympics that begin later this week, Jamaica's Usain Bolt will beat American Tyson Gay in the 100-meter dash. Only one of the nine U.S. boxers, Rau'shee Warren, will win a gold medal. We completely suck in archery, badminton and canoeing. I'm American, and I want an American to win every heat, meet and medal, but I know that won't happen.

But it will in men's basketball.

The 2008 U.S. team isn't just going to win. It's going to win big -- back-to-the-future big, like the Dream Teams of 1992 and '96 that obliterated everything in their path. Certainly this 2008 team is more like the original Dream Teams than the cheap imitations that followed, the 2000 U.S. Olympians who meekly won gold and the 2004 bunch that bumbled to bronze.

Since the 2000 Olympics, the United States hasn't won a major basketball competition. In 2002 we finished sixth in the World Championships. In 2004 there was the Olympic bronze. The 2006 World Championships saw us win another bronze.

The world has caught up? Hard to say. The world hasn't seen our best since 1996, when we had Stockton and Malone, plus Charles Barkley, David Robinson and Scottie Pippen. And Shaquille O'Neal. Hakeem Olajuwon. Reggie Miller. That's eight obvious Hall of Famers. Only five can start at any one time. No wonder that team went undefeated in 1996, winning by an average margin of 32.3 points per game.

Poll How many games will the USA Basketball men's team lose in the Olympics? 15% One   6% Two   76% None   4% Three   Total Votes: 9544

This 2008 team could do that. It has won five tuneup games by an average margin of 32 points. Its last three exhibitions have come against Olympic qualifiers Lithuania, Russia and Australia, and the Americans won by an average margin of 22.7 points. Australia and Russia hung tough, but the best team in that trio was Lithuania -- so the United States got good and fired up and won 120-84.

As for our game with the Russians on Sunday, the wire story picked up by CBSSports.com described a "defensive struggle" and noted that "Russia contained the speedsters (and) controlled the backboard -- everything a team needs to do to beat the United States."

And the United States won by 21.

We're back, people.

The best two players in the world are Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Or LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. Pick either order. I don't care. They're both playing for the United States. So is the third-best all-around player in the world, Chris Paul. Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade might not be No. 4 and No. 5 in the world, but they're somewhere in the top 10. Dwight Howard is getting close to that level himself. So is Deron Williams.

That's seven amazing players, all in their primes, and all playing for the Americans, a change from the last Olympics when our best players couldn't be bothered. Of course with Larry Brown as my coach, I probably couldn't be bothered either.

Some of those guys were on the 2004 team -- LeBron, Carmelo, Wade -- but they hadn't emerged as the dominant players they are today. And their coach was a complete jackass. Brown was determined to win his way, with his guys, his veterans. Rather than turn the team over to the fabulous young talent on roster, he entrusted it to selfish pigs Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury, and we all know how that worked out.

Mike Krzyzewski is no idiot. He puts his best players on the floor, and he lets them play. He does it at Duke, and he's doing it here. He doesn't get in the way with tons of offensive sets and pre-programmed plays called from the sideline. He gives players freedom, with one caveat: Share the ball.

Through the first four games, nobody attempted more than 37 shots. That's less than 10 shots per game for guys named LeBron and Kobe and Carmelo and D-Wade. Bryant, the world's most prolific scorer since Michael Jordan, is fourth on the team in scoring. But he has emerged as the team's best and most enthusiastic defender.

Faster than I thought possible, this team has bought what Krzyzewski is selling. He has his chemistry-building tricks, like starting veteran Jason Kidd but giving the most important minutes at point guard to Paul and Williams. He also is big on publicly singling out unsung players, like Sunday when he sat down after the destruction of Russia and immediately announced that "Chris Bosh played a great game." Krzyzewski went out of his way -- because nobody was asking him about Chris Bosh -- to mention Bosh three more times.

Bosh had three points in 17 minutes. No rebounds. He took no shots from the floor.

Krzyzewski never mentioned Kobe or Wade, who combined for 35 points. He mentioned LeBron and Carmelo, but only once, and only because he was asked about using them as big men in small lineups. Those guys are the team's stars. They don't need Krzyzewski applauding them in the press. Certainly they don't need it as much as, say, Chris Bosh.

He's good, Coach K.

And his team is scary good. The roster cannot lie. These 2008 U.S. Olympians have earned a combined 15 first-team All-NBA spots, as many as the 2000 and 2004 U.S. teams put together. This team has more NBA MVPs than the 2000 team that won gold. More individual scoring titles. More All-Star Game appearances. Even more players (three) who have won an NBA championship.

Notice I'm comparing this U.S. team to past U.S. teams, and not to the international teams it will face in Beijing. Why? Because those teams are irrelevant. Germany? Lithuania? China? Immaterial.

At our best, the United States cannot lose in basketball. I firmly believe that.

And this year we're loaded.