Just 23.7 seconds remained in Team USA’s basketball victory over Spain Thursday when Larry Brown, his team leading by 11, called a timeout.
This incensed the crowd at Olympic Indoor Hall, which expressed its disapproval with a torrent of derisive whistles. Spanish guard Jose Calderon clapped mockingly toward the U.S. bench. Some of his teammates followed his lead, and Spanish coach Mario Pesquera got up, shouting and wagging his finger toward Brown.
Led by Stephon Marbury’s 31 points, which set a U.S. men’s Olympic record, the U.S. was on its way to a 102-94 victory and into Friday’s semifinal against Argentina.
But the incident didn’t end when the game ended. The crowd of 14,500 jeered the U.S. as it left the court, and Pesquera, still riled, got into the face of U.S. assistant Roy Williams, then assistant Gregg Popovich.
Brown joined the group as Pesquera lectured Popovich, and the Spanish coach turned on him, his finger again wagging in Brown’s direction. Finally, after long seconds of listening, Brown lunged in Pesquera’s direction and had to be pulled back by Popovich and assistant Oliver Purnell.
“That was like a disagreement with my son when he doesn’t want to give me a chance to explain,” Brown said. “I tried to explain, but he didn’t want to hear my explanation. I tried to apologize, but he didn’t want to hear it.”
Brown said he had called time with Spain in possession after the U.S. had committed two turnovers. But when he realized the clock had wound down to only 23 seconds and the Americans led by 11, Brown said he tried to rescind the timeout, but the scorer wouldn’t let him. As that was translated into Spanish, Pesquera offered a dismissive nod.
“I had, and I stress had, a lot of respect for Larry Brown,” he said through a translator after Brown had left the room.
“But when you do something wrong, and we all do something wrong, you can’t always say you’re sorry. If he wanted [the timeout] annulled, there was something he could do. He could have sent his players right back out.”
Brown didn’t. Instead, he lectured them through the full timeout. Only then did they go out to finish this first game of the medal round, which they had entered with two losses and as an underdog. Spain was 5-0, big, confident and not intimidated, and that made the game crackle from the start.
It unfolded unexpectedly. Unlike most European teams, Spain was not blessed with a plethora of outside shooters. So it went to work inside, where Pau Gasol of the Memphis Grizzlies got most of his 29 points.
The U.S., shooting a tournament-worst 24 percent on three-pointers entering the game, suddenly found its touch. So it went to work outside, finishing 12-for-22 (55 percent) on three-pointers and 36-for-71 (51 percent) overall.
That’s how the Americans produced countless surges, building leads of as much as nine points. But Spain kept reeling them back, trailing by just one early in the third quarter.
That’s when the notoriously streaky Marbury went off, burying two three-pointers within a minute. That helped push the U.S. lead to six, and then came a pivotal moment.
Gasol went to work down low against Tim Duncan, already saddled with three fouls, but Duncan didn’t back off and forced him to adjust his shot. It missed. Gasol went down, looked up, begged for a foul, didn’t get it, then made his way down the court and fouled Carlos Boozer as Boozer made an easy shot in the paint.
“I think we played under NBA rules, not FIBA rules,” Pesquera complained. “It is very difficult for us to combat that.”
Boozer’s basket pushed the lead to eight, and then Marbury ran off 11 points in 3 1/2 minutes.
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“When I came to the Olympics I didn’t think about scoring,” Marbury said after a 10-for-15 shooting night, including 6-for-9 on his threes. “But then I realized I had to hit the open shots I was getting, so I started working on my shot before practice and after. And as anyone who knows basketball knows, shooting is all about repetition.”
Spain trailed by only four when Rodolfo Fernandez collected a Dwyane Wade miss and set off on a two-on-one break with Calderon. Then came the last pivotal moment: Marbury stole Fernandez’s pass to Calderon, pushed it back up the court and buried his final three-pointer with 3:45 to play.
Never again did Spain get closer than five, but the U.S. victory generated only a cacophony of boos, hoots and whistles.
“We’ve won so much, they want us to lose,” Brown said. “So I look at it as a compliment. We’re the big guys on the block right now, and I would hope they would cheer for the underdog.”
Defiant in defeat, Pesquera said: “They say the public supports the weaker team. Today they supported the stronger team. We were the stronger team. It is time to tell the truth about this.”
Said Gasol: “I’m hurt. This was a big chance for our team to make a statement. We had the opportunity to beat the U.S. and to get a lot of respect.”