Adrian Wojnarowski has an excellent piece at ESPN.com on basketball star Allen Iverson and U.S.A. Basketball:

The most telling moment of all was in the minutes after the United States' loss to Argentina in the semifinals, when the possibility for gold and glory were gone. When the coach stayed on his self-serving course of blaming USA Basketball, his players and the officials, Iverson stayed with his message in these games: It was an honor to represent his country, and his team had an immense obligation to treat the bronze medal game as though it was playing for gold.

Read it all.

Coach Larry Brown spent six years in Philadelphia refusing to call Iverson by name. He was always 'the little kid,' and Brown, famous for breaking young players (like Jalen Rose in Indiana and Larry Hughes in Philadelphia), never missed an opportunity to blame his star.

Many point to Iverson's history of missed practices under Brown, but he was the only projected star ever to develop under Brown (Brown's history is in taking other men's teams and making them better by emphasizing fundamentals, never in developing individual talent of his own, and there's a litany of soured relationships on his resume), and I would argue that Iverson's unwillingness to be broken by Brown has meant more than Brown's tutelage. And people always ignore Brown's bizarre double-standards, that would allow the likes of Derrick Coleman to set his own schedule while Iverson's every misstep was promptly aired by 'Coach' before the press.