Mike Krzyzewski said James complained about Bryant’s shot selection during the competition and forced him to set up a one-on-one meeting with the Lakers.
The U.S. suffered a loss to Aregntina in the semifinals of the 2004 Athens Olympics and put together a super team to reclaim the gold medal at the next edition held in Beijing four years later. Among the big names were Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, which gave Mike Krzyzewski a headache.
The selected team’s technical director recalled a moment in which Angelina’s face was taking some bad hits and received the King’s complaint. « We were winning and in the first half, Kobe started shooting like he did in the Lakers, something that had not happened. LeBron looked at me and he already knew that we had a real problem », he expressed in dialogue with the podcast. The tapes of the dream team.
It was not an easy situation for Coach K. He and the rest of his coaching staff stayed up all night figuring out how to pose the problem to Bryant. « So we stayed up all night trying to figure out how to handle this. I told them to give me the stats on a computer and I had a one-on-one meeting with Kobe, » he explained.
Despite the coach’s concern about having to ask one of the sport’s greatest figures to stop making so many individual decisions on the team, the Lakers legend didn’t take it personally. « So I brought him in and I said, look, I want to talk to you about shot selection. Let’s take a look at these shots and I said, ‘these are bulls**t. You can’t do that when you have Carmelo and LeBron. It erodes what we do. » said Krzyzewski.
That fear of what Kobe’s response might generate automatically disappeared with Kobe’s response, « I didn’t know what I was going to accomplish, but what I got was a gift from God. won’t do that. ‘. What else? » . The problem ended there and the United States won the gold medal to the joy of both.
