The U.S. national team has embraced media’s role while training in Las Vegas

Thursday, Aug. 3, 2006 | 8 a.m.

It was March 1991, when Duke was still mostly known for losing the NCAA Championship game instead of cutting down the nets after it. A couple of Sun reporters had arrived a day early for the Final Four in Indianapolis and were running out of time to fill the 80 column inches or so we had been promised. Or had promised to our editors.

There were no practices scheduled that day. No press conferences. Downtown Indianapolis was deader than the bounce pass. Nobody hanging out in the lobby - not so much as a single Division II coach - looking for a job. Just two reporters, desperate for a story, waiting for the Duke bus to arrive.

We were hoping Mike Krzyzewski would give us something to write about.

He did. If memory serves, he provided some notebook fodder, too.

"Christian, Bobby - there's a couple of writers from Vegas in the lobby. Give 'em what they need - but not too much," Coach K had said, or something to that effect.

I had almost forgotten that anecdote until Monday, when I dropped in on Coach K's new team, the USA Men's Senior National Team, which will try to show the rest of the world that it still knows a thing or two about defending the 3-point jump shot during next month's World Basketball Championships in Japan.

Team USA will take its first refresher course tonight against Puerto Rico in an exhibition game at the Thomas & Mack Center.

The NBA multimillionaires have spent the past two weeks practicing at Cox Pavilion and the Thomas & Mack Center. Restoring world basketball order is such a top priority that all but the last half-hour of practice during training camp is closed. As in to the public, the media, the players' wives and girlfriends, Paris Hilton and anybody who looks like they might have a second cousin living in Argentina.

When they opened the doors and let us in, it was eerily quiet. Other than the squeak-squeak-squeak of guys moving their feet on defense and an occasional "Woo! Woo!" from Carmelo Anthony, indicating that he was open on the wing and somebody had better pass him the ball, it was indeed, all business.

LeBron James wasn't shooting 70-foot jump shots, like in that sports drink commercial. Dwyane Wade wasn't being measured for an NBA championship ring. The Duke guys, Shane Battier and Elton Brand, weren't giving the North Carolina guy, Antawn Jamison, a hard time.

And I didn't detect a single posse, save for a couple of middle-aged guys with beer bellies who were tagging along behind George Karl, a former USA coach.

Yet afterward, every one of the NBA multimillionaires made us feel, well, if not wanted, then at least like they knew that we have a job to do, too.

I don't know if that was Coach K's edict. Or that of Jerry Colangelo, the Phoenix Suns' CEO and new managing director of the national team, who makes it a point to learn your name and call you by it. Or maybe it was those multiple comeuppances to Argentina, and losing to Puerto Rico, and coming up short against any other soccer-playing nation that knows there is no "I" in team but four in "multimillionaire."

Whatever the reason, this is a kinder, gentler and much more humble Team USA. The Hummers are back in the four-car garage. It's as if 15 guys pulled up to valet parking at Wynn Las Vegas and tumbled out of a single Volkswagen.

Initially, we were told there would be limited access to the players. Somewhere during the process, "limited" became "total."

Starting with Coach K and going right on down to Steve Wojciechowski, his former point guard and current gofer (what is it with Duke and these guys with hard-to-spell surnames?), every inquiry is given a thoughtful response.

To wit, when I asked Krzyzewski a routine question about defending the 3-point shot, he answered like I was Dick Cavett.

He lit up like his school's lacrosse team at an all-night kegger when somebody suggested that Team USA had checked its perceived attitude at the door to the practice gym.

"I've really sensed that these guys know that it seems like our country is looking for a team to support, do you know what I mean?" Krzyzewski said.

Yeah, coach, we do.

Now all you gotta do is beat Argentina.