U.S. 92, Canada 66
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Mission accomplished, and now it's off to Sydney.The U.S. men's basketball team finished its Olympic qualifying tournament in the expected fashion Sunday, winning the gold medal with an easy 92-66 victory over Canada.
The team won't regroup again until late next summer when it will have three new faces and one simple goal: to win the gold medal at the 2000 Olympics.
"The group we've put together is a very formidable bunch, and I'm looking forward to it very much," coach Larry Brown said.
Canada also qualified for the 2000 Olympics by reaching the gold medal game, which wasn't much of a contest after the U.S. team used a 15-0 run to turn an eight-point lead into a 23-point bulge.
Gary Payton had seven points in the pivotal run and finished with 19, giving him a team-leading average of 16 points in the tournament.
Tim Hardaway added 14 points, Tim Duncan had 12, Steve Smith 11 and Jason Kidd, Tom Gugliotta and Kevin Garnett 10 apiece. Kidd and Payton each had three of the Americans' 11 steals, and Garnett had six blocks.
"We can go home," Smith said. "If we hadn't qualified, we wouldn't have been able to go back to the United States."
It was the 40th victory without a loss for the four Dream Teams comprised of NBA players that have competed in the 1992 and '96 Olympics, the 1994 World Championships and this Olympic qualifying tournament.
The United States won its 10 games in Puerto Rico by an average of 31.6 points, down slightly from the 1996 Olympians' average margin of 32.3.
This, however, was the best defensive team of the bunch, limiting opponents to 66.2 points per game -- more than four points lower than the 1996 team's 70.3 points against average.
And it was defense that turned the gold medal game.
Things were a little too close for the Americans early in the second half as Canada pulled within 48-40. But the United States quickly ended any thought of an upset, using a trapping, gambling defense to intercept several passes that led to eight fast-break points in a 15-0 run that put the Americans back in complete control.
"Alley-oop dunks don't win games. What won these games for us was defense -- we got steals and easy baskets," Payton said. "We were out here to shut people down, and that's what we did."
"You've got to understand," said Garnett, who took a bow from the podium while accepting his gold medal, "that we've got a lot of defensive players on this team -- Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, Tim Duncan.
"We had a lot of instant offense, but we were able to trap and do things defensively that the Dream Teams before us didn't do."
In the bronze medal game, Argentina edged Puerto Rico 103-101.
Like most of their games over the past two weeks, the Americans played confidently at all times and aggressively when necessary.
They never trailed against Canada, opening their first 10-point lead just over five minutes into the game, going on cruise control for the rest of the first half and turning up their energy when they needed it.
The 15-0 run gave the United States a 63-40 lead, and the margin grew to 28 on a 3-pointer by Hardaway that made it 83-55 with 3:56 left. Smith scored the final points of the tournament on a 15-foot hook shot with 1 second left.
"We came to try to play well, play together and play the right way, and I think the team did that every single night," Brown said. "It wasn't an easy format, and I think we're all very pleased with the outcome and anxious to go on to Sydney."
Among the few sore spots Sunday for the Americans were the non-appearance of Richard Hamilton, who sat out the entire tournament after spraining his ankle in the team's first practice in Puerto Rico, the second technical foul for Payton, who threw the ball a little too hard at one of the referees following an out-of-bounds call, and the bloodying of Tom Gugliotta's nose after he was inadvertently elbowed by teammate Wally Szczerbiak late in the second half.
For Canada, the lone bright spot Sunday was the play of center Todd MacCulloch, a second-round draft pick of the Philadelphia 76ers who had game-high totals of 22 points and 16 rebounds.
Steve Nash of the Dallas Mavericks was held to 11 points and one assist.
ARGENTINA 103, PUERTO RICO 101: Reserve Emanuel Ginobili scored 25 points and Hugo Sconochini added 24 for Argentina, offsetting a productive night from Jose Ortiz in his final international game for the host team.
Ortiz, who played briefly in the NBA for the Utah Jazz, had 24 points, 10 rebounds, five assists, two steals and two blocks. But it wasn't enough to prevent Puerto Rico from losing its third game in as many nights -- a big disappointment given the team's bold predictions going into its final second-round game against the United States.