- We're in Indianapolis, Indiana.
It's September 5th, 2002 and seconds remain
in a FIBA World Championship quarter final game
between Yugoslavia and the United States.
This is the world's most important international tournament
outside the Olympics,
basketball's version of the World Cup.
And the typically dominant US is losing by three points.
Before they attempt a final shot,
we need to remember how a presumptive basketball superpower
arrived at the brink of disaster,
how these guys came to represent the host country.
And similarly, we need to understand
how this Yugoslavian team got here,
how a changing, conflicted world reshaped sports.
We need to rewind.
(mellow music)
So the first thing I wanna talk about
is American attendance.
It's disappointing.
Conseco Fieldhouse seats 18,000 people,
but has been at well under half-capacity
throughout this tournament,
forcing organizers to cut ticket prices.
5,300 people are here today and as has often been the case,
plenty of them are rooting against the host country.
That probably has something to do with the attendance
on the court.
This is the final possession
of an international elimination game
and the line-up representing earth's
preeminent basketball-playing nation is
Andre Miller, Reggie Miller, Paul Pierce,
Jermaine O'Neal, and Antonio Davis.
On one hand, coach George Karl has given
this Indianapolis crowd some Pacers to watch,
so that's nice.
On the other hand, while these are all good players,
they are far from the best America has to offer.
So yeah, we need to talk through
some USA basketball history.
In 1989, FIBA changed its rules to allow NBA players
to participate in international competition.
This came after years of teams like the Soviet Union
and Yugoslavia skirting the amateurs-only rule.
Those countries found ways to roster professional players,
while American teams were made of college kids.
Very good college kids, but still, actual amateurs.
A rule change permitting all pros
was met with some consternation
from various American interests
who would rather close the loophole for others
than open it for themselves.
Some worried American NBA players wouldn't wanna play.
Conversely, former USOC president Robert Kane said
it would be a sad day for the Olympics
if a team like Kenya had to face
Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
The rule went through, but an NBA to Team USA pipeline
wasn't in place by the 1990 FIBA Championship.
College players like Kenny Anderson and Alonzo Mourning
represented their country in Argentina and won bronze.
But by the '92 Barcelona Olympics,
Team USA hadn't just incorporated the NBA players,
they had stirred up enough interest
to attract the best NBA players.
Larry Bird and Magic Johnson didn't play against Kenya,
but they did kick off the games by beating Angola 116 to 48.
Starting with those Olympics,
professionalized American dream teams
bulldozed everyone everywhere.
They went undefeated for a gold medal in '92,
undefeated, gold medal at the FIBA World Championship
in '94 in Canada,
undefeated and gold at the '96 Olympics in Atlanta.
But the pipeline was beginning to thin.
The 1998 FIBA Championship happened in the middle
of the NBA lock-out, so the US sent a ragtag
bunch of players from other leagues
to scrap out a bronze medal in Greece.
If you can name any of these people,
you really know your basketball.
And even after the lock-out,
the 2000 team wasn't very dreamy.
Shaq and Kobe declined invites.
Tim Duncan and Grant Hill were hurt.
No Iverson, Malone, Webber, the list goes on.
That squad kept the undefeated streak alive
and won gold in Sydney, but way too narrowly.
The Americans had to gut out some tough wins against France
and came one rimmed-out Lithuanian buzzer beater away
from losing in the semifinal.
They were so close to blowing it.
If you think that near miss
sparked a return of NBA superstars to Team USA,
you would be mistaken.
All of these people passed on this FIBA World Championship.
Jason Kidd and Ray Allen pulled out because of injuries.
George Karl's USA roster came down to this.
A good group of players, but I mean,
the best centers are Jermaine O'Neal
who's better at power forward,
and Ben Wallace who offers basically nothing on offense.
Without Allen, the best shooter
is 37-year-old Reggie Miller.
Without Kidd, the best point guards are Andre Miller
and Baron Davis, both light on big game experience.
These guys, Nick Collison and Jay Williams,
have yet to play pro ball at all.
The top scorers are Paul Pierce
who just made his first NBA all-star team
and Michael Finley who's one of nine guys here
who didn't make it this season.
So the US played multiple games in this tournament
in which one could argue
the best player on the floor wasn't American.
Germany's Dirk Nowitzki dropped 34 on them.
China's Yao Ming was a very tough match-up.
But it's not just a lack of star talent, it's chemistry.
Team Argentina employs no NBA players,
at least not here in 2002.
Their leading scorer is some dude the Spurs drafted
in the second round a few years ago
who's been playing in Italy, Manu Ginobili.
But on the final day of group play, just yesterday,
Manu and the gang became the first team ever
to defeat a USA squad composed of NBA players,
ending a run of 58 straight wins since '92.
It was a huge deal for Argentina and their fans
who justifiably celebrated a convincing victory
like they'd won the whole thing.
Ginobili was frank about the advantage his team had.
The Argentinians practiced
and developed alongside one another.
They know each other, they fit together.
The Americans, not so much.
Teamwork defeats star power.
Although I feel like if the US just brought better stars,
that wouldn't be true.
Either way, the loss didn't diminish
the Americans' cockiness.
After that historic defeat, point guard Baron Davis said,
"It's not the medal round.
"We'll be back to win the gold."
Well, here we are in the medal round
and Team USA has been shaky.
Leading scorer Paul Pierce got in foul trouble early on.
Coach Karl has depended on Ben Wallace to score in the post
and as you can see, Ben Wallace is not great at that.
The US keeps wasting foul shots, especially Jermaine O'Neal
who air-balled one of his four straight missed free throws
in the fourth quarter.
Honestly, this game should already be out of reach,
but Andre Miller hit a contested bail-out three
with 38 seconds left, then tossed a gorgeous pass
to hometown hero/oldest player on the team by a long shot,
Reggie Miller, who was cutting backdoor.
And even after all that, defeat looms.
If these guys can't tie the game with a three,
the US won't win any medal, let alone a gold.
After 10 years undefeated,
USA basketball could lose twice in two days.
But remember, even against kind of a JV American team,
every country in this tournament except Argentina
has come up way short.
So to understand this score, we've got to dig deeper
into these players representing Yugoslavia,
which means something very different than it used to.
Throughout the '70s and '80s, Yugoslavia was right up there
with the US and Soviet Union
in contention for international basketball medals.
In the 1990 World Championship,
that last American team of college players
fell in the semifinal to a stacked roster of pros
from Yugoslavia, including a couple who'd become NBA stars.
One of those stars, Vlade Divac, is here today,
12 years later and owned the Americans in the first half.
At 34, Divac is much older than any of his teammates
and just months removed from his Sacramento Kings
heartbreaking Western Conference Final loss to the Lakers.
But Divac is a big part of this team
and taking this tournament so seriously
that he's given up smoking for the week.
That's a big deal for Vlade.
Divac torched the American big men,
muscling against Wallace,
drawing contact against Antonio Davis,
and putting the moves on Elton Brand
for 16 points in the first half,
not to mention his usual slick passing to cutters.
But look around and you'll see no one else
from the 1990 Yugoslavian squad.
Yes, a lot of time has passed,
but that's not the only reason.
After winning that '90 FIBA gold,
that team and the nation that produced it would fracture.
The Yugoslav wars, a series of independence movements
and ethnic conflicts way too complicated
for me to explain in an episode of Rewinder,
led to the breakup of a long-standing nation
that had competed in international basketball
since the 1940s.
Even while winning gold at EuroBasket 1991 in Rome,
the ethnically diverse team experienced tension
with one eye on the conflict at home.
The war directly affected them
when Jurij Zdovc withdrew from the team before the semifinal
to appease the Slavonian independence movement.
Instead of one collective team, the '92 Olympics
included teams representing some of now-independent
former Yugoslavian constituents.
Only Croatia, home to stars like Drazen Petrovic
and Toni Kukoc, competed in basketball,
winning silver to the original dream team's gold.
Notably absent in Barcelona were the Serbians
and Montenegrins from that old Yugoslavian team.
Their nations had formed
a new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
and were banned from international competition
because of UN sanctions in response to the war.
They missed several consecutive international tournaments
including a '94 World Championship
they were originally supposed to host in Belgrade.
The ban lasted up until the Dayton Accords in 1995,
which made that year's EuroBasket
the official return of quote-unquote Yugoslavia,
really just Serbia and Montenegro,
to international basketball.
It was a triumphant return.
With some new blood joining the holdover veterans,
Yugoslavia won EuroBasket '95
in an all-time great final versus Lithuania,
then two of the next three EuroBasket golds.
They won World Championship gold in 1998
and mixed in an impressive silver medal run
at the '96 Olympics.
And the second half today has been all about
the new generation, the guys who never played
for the original Yugoslavian team.
Dejan Bodiroga, who helped pioneer the dribble move
Americans most closely associate with
Providence College legend God Shammgod,
has busted out that very move here in Indy.
A double-digit American lead in the fourth quarter
evaporated thanks to threes from Milan Gurovic.
Marko Jaric, who just signed with the LA Clippers,
has hit all four of his clutch-free throws down the stretch.
But Yugoslavia's clear star is a player
NBA fans now know well, 25-year-old Peja Stojakovic.
The Kings drafted Stojakovic in 1996
and brought him over from Europe in '98,
the same year they signed Divac.
After a couple years on the bench,
Stojakovic broke out in 2001
as one of the best three-point shooters in the league.
This season, he made his first all-star game,
became the first European player to win
the NBA's Three-Point Contest,
and yeah, might've won a Championship
if not for the brutal, contentious finish
to that Conference Final against the Lakers.
In this second half, Peja has hit a couple of big threes,
finished off a gorgeous feed from his Kings teammate,
and canned a couple important free throws down the stretch.
Peja's leading the way, but all of these guys
will be national heroes if they can get a stop here.
So who are they stopping?
It's looking like one of the Millers.
Reggie is one of the greatest three-point shooters ever
and in front of an Indiana crowd,
would be the perfect hero to send this to OT.
He's also 37 and dragging a sore ankle.
The 26-year-old Andre, no relation,
is best known as a passer,
but he's been the US' best all-around offensive player today
for lack of a better option.
And that really is the theme of this ordeal, win or lose.
When they were still the only basketball superpower
obeying the amateur rule, the Americans lost now and then.
When that rule came down, they completely took over.
But NBA players aren't showing up like they used to.
And this underwhelming American squad
has already suffered defeat.
Now, it could happen again
versus a team that bears the same name an '80s powerhouse,
but draws from a much smaller,
although still impressively deep, pool of talent.
It's gonna come down to a Miller.
The beloved but old Reggie looks like
he's gonna pass this off to the overachieving Andre
who needs a bucket to save the US from humiliation.
Let's see what happens.
Welcome to a moment in history.
(crowd cheers)
(announcing in a foreign language)
(crowd cheers)
(click)