Jerry Colangelo recalls having a number of emotions upon assuming his position as managing director of the USA men’s basketball program in April 2005.
The former Phoenix Suns team owner was upset not only because Team USA took a bronze medal at the 2004 Olympics in Greece, but also because of how the players were viewed globally.
“It was not a very good performance on and off the court by our American athletes,” Colangelo said. “That led me to want to change. That’s when I was approached to take control and I was willing to do it because I cared. Basketball has been pretty good for me.”
So when Team USA won gold four years later at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Colangelo was proud to have a role in bringing the Americans back to the top of the basketball world.
“I have great, great affection for that team because it was our first,” he said.
Netflix is reliving that journey with its documentary, “The Redeem Team,” which premieres Friday.
“I’m interested in seeing it because what year is this, 2022?” said Suns point guard Chris Paul, who was on the teams that won the gold medal at the U.S. Olympics in 2008 and 2012. “In 2006, we lost the World Championship, so 2008 was probably a One of the best teams I’ve been to in my life.”
The late great Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony led the 2008 team to gold with Paul as a key reserve who closed out games for the team.
“He was just a bright-eyed, wide-eyed kind of kid at the time,” Colangelo said of Paul. “He was so refreshing. As innocent as they come. I was just starting out and you fall in love with him, which I did. I wanted it so much. I thought enough of him and wanted him to be a part of it.”
Colangelo’s first decision in creating Team USA was to hire then-Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski.
After that, he sought to meet “face to face” with the players to establish what was expected of them.
“We had to change the culture,” he said. “We had to go back into fashion to represent your country because that got lost in the shuffle.”
Colangelo remembers Carmelo Anthony, who was on the 2004 team along with James and Wade, being the first player he met in person in the fall of 2005.
“I was heading east, I was going to be in Washington DC and he was with Denver at the time,” Colangelo said as the Nuggets played the Wizards on Nov. 22, 2005. “I had breakfast with him.”
Colangelo felt that James, Wade and Anthony had not earned their spot to be on the Olympic team as all three had just finished their rookie seasons in the NBA before playing in the 2004 Summer Games.
“I’m not pointing fingers, but some people in higher authority saw it as an opportunity because they couldn’t get any of the veterans to commit or some of them backed down, they went with some young up-and-comers. players in those roles,” Colangelo said. “That’s not hitting them. At that time, they had done nothing to truly earn it. They were just getting started. So you can’t blame them for anything that happened.”
Colangelo had a heart-to-heart with Anthony, telling him there were people around the league who told him not to waste his time with the young star who won the 2003 national championship as a freshman in Syracuse.
“I told (Anthony), ‘I’ll tell you what, I’m going to flush that down the toilet,’” Colangelo said. “I told him, ‘If you’re willing to commit that you want this, then you have a chance. I’m building this team and I’ll be watching them very carefully as this (2005-06 NBA) season unfolds.’”
Later, Colangelo got a hotel suite in Chicago to have meetings with the players since the teams always passed through the city. He remembers Michael Redd driving from Milwaukee after practice to talk to him.
Redd was a star shooting guard for the Bucks.
“He was in a sweatshirt and had a bag of clothes with him,” Colangelo said. “He came to my suite and asked to use the men’s room and put on a suit and tie to sit down and have the meeting.”
Awesome. Redd made the team.
“Little things they like were huge,” Colangelo said.
82-years-young: Colangelo keeps rolling with HOF golf outing, Integrity Summit
The next day, Colangelo said he met James at the Ritz-Carlton in Chicago.
“I had meetings on the second or third floor,” he said. “There was a seating area near the elevator. At exactly 9 o’clock in the morning, we opened and LeBron came in and we sat down and talked.”
Colangelo then met Paul in Oklahoma City, as that was the first year the Hornets played in OKC after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans on August 29, 2005.
Three years later, the two were in Beijing and needed to have their credentials “modified,” as Colangelo put it. So, Colangelo said he and Paul had a memorable conversation while riding in a small bus to fix credentials.
“We talked about him and his future and I said, ‘You know, at your age Chris, things are going well, you might be able to do it three or four times,'” Colangelo said. “And he was really excited about it. He was on hook, line and sinker for sure. He loved every minute of it.”
Paul was a team finalist at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics which was played in 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more: What we learned from the Suns’ preseason comeback about the Lakers
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