Boys Against Men

**Richard Jefferson (forward, Team USA): **My whole time in Greece depends on one thing. I'm not here to be an ambassador. I'm not here to go see sights or travel around. I'm here to try and win a gold medal.

**Alexander Avramovski (fan, Macedonia): **Before the Olympics, we were watching U.S. play Serbia. We got excited, because the U.S. team are not connected with each other.

**David Stern (commissioner, NBA): **I don't use the words Dream Team, okay? There was one Dream Team and only one Dream Team.

**Tom Tolbert (color commentator, ESPN): **In our first game, Puerto Rico whacked us by nineteen. After that, I think teams stopped being intimidated. It was almost like Rocky hitting Drago over the left eye and Rocky's trainer saying, "See? He's just a man!"

****Carlos Arroyo (guard, Team Puerto Rico): ****The first half, we ended up by twenty-two points. If we were on the other side, we would be frustrated too. We made history that night.

**Carsten Mayer (reporter, Stuttgarter Nachrichten, Germany): **I can't understand why they are so bad. Why are they so bad?

**Jose Ortiz (center, Team Puerto Rico): **Tim Duncan shook my hand and said we deserved to win. Nobody else shook my hand. Eight years ago, we would have been taking pictures with the U.S.A. players. Now we beating them.

**Chuck Daly (coach, 1992 Dream Team): **I was talking to one of the Puerto Rican players—he was 40 years old! Plus, he could play! We are now playing boys against men. Maybe four [players on the 2004 Olympic team] should have been still in college. And some in high school.

**Peter Vecsey (columnist, New York Post): **You could have sent the [NBA expansion team] Bobcats, who've never played, and you should have won this championship. Come on! It's a joke! Puerto Rico. Who'd they have?

The Dream Will Never Die: An Oral History of the Dream Team Magic. Bird. Jordan. Legends at every position on the floor. Hall of Famers filling the bench. They were the greatest team ever assembled—in any sport—and twenty years ago in Barcelona, they put on a show the world will never forget

Deuce Is Big

**Aaron Goodwin (LeBron James's agent): **The Queen Mary 2 [where Team USA stayed during the Games] is a real nice boat.

**Dwyane Wade (guard, Team USA): **Every time I said boat, they corrected me and said ship. It was like another world on that ship.

**Koustautinos Tsorukoglou (guest, Queen Mary 2): **Carmelo Anthony would call the Queen Mary 2 Deuce. He said, "Deuce is big."

**David Gevanthor (vice president, Cunard Line): **The Queen Mary 2 is 1,132 feet long and has fourteen decks. It's the world's largest ocean liner. There is an onboard art collection worth in excess of $5 million. The largest collection of wine bottles at sea, over 50,000 bottles. The only planetarium at sea. A Canyon Ranch spa. Couples therapy. The cost, normally, on a first-class transatlantic crossing is $27,000 per person.

**Tsorukoglou: **I saw Carmelo get lost. He walked past me, then walked past again twenty minutes later.

**Carmelo Anthony (forward, Team USA): **I was down there with the workers, and they were wondering what I was doing. I didn't know where I was at. I thought I had left off the boat.

**Shawn Mario (forward, Team USA): **There was this huge navy battleship sitting in the water next to us. The guns were drawn. Allen Iverson keeps saying this is the safest place in the world right now. Ain't nobody messing with those guns.

**Carl Marasigan (housekeeper, Queen Mary 2): **I helped Tim Duncan take bags to his room. He gave me two bucks for a tip. I can't believe it—he had pretty big stuff. Coach Brown tipped someone $20, and he left 100 euros for the housekeeper.