Superstar players don’t want to be shut out of future Olympics

Men’s basketball » Proposal making Olympic tournament an under-23 affair draws scorn.

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Beyond that, Bryant said, the Americans can’t expect to compete against the rest of the world if they use only younger players. It was an amateur team’s failure to win gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics in Korea, after all, that led to the creation of the Dream Team, and everybody agrees that other countries have only grown stronger since then.

"We’ll be in trouble," Bryant said. "Guys playing against us will be grown men and we’ll be in trouble. If you just look at the Olympics as a whole, it’s about putting your best athletes to the front to showcase. That’s what it’s about. If an athlete doesn’t want to play, that’s his decision. If a team feels some type of way [about] him performing, it’s the team’s responsibility to have those conversations with the athlete. That’s how it should be.

"I don’t see why it’s even a topic of discussion," he said.

mcl@sltrib.com

Twitter: @MCLTribune

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