Sport | Other Sports
US net it in Beijing Olympic Games
Eight years after the United States basketball team's last major win, the star players can call themselves Olympic champions again.
- AP
- Published: 23:28 August 24, 2008
Beijing: Eight years after the United States basketball team's last major win, the star players can call themselves Olympic champions again.
Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade led the US to a closer-than-it-looks 118-107 victory over world champions Spain before a capacity crowd of 18,000 yesterday on the last of the 17 days of the Beijing Games.
The American team's last gold came at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Since then, it lost at the world championships at home in Indianapolis in 2002, only managed bronze and had two losses at the Athens Olympics in 2004, and lost in the semifinals at the 2006 world championships in Japan.
On Sunday, Spain trailed for most of the game but pulled within two points early in the fourth quarter and four with four minutes left before Bryant and Wade made clutch 3-pointers to hold off the threat.
"It is more important and more special than any championship that any of us will ever win," Bryant said.
Wade finished with 27 points and Bryant added 20. Rudy Fernandez had 22 points and Pau Gasol 21 for Spain.
Bryant and Gasol, teammates on the Los Angeles Lakers, gave each other an extended hug at the end of the game.
"I love him like a brother," Bryant said.
"I truthfully wish we were playing someone else in the final." Argentina took the bronze with an 87-75 victory over Lithuania.
Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Dwyane Wade led the US to a closer-than-it-looks 118-107 victory over world champions Spain...
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