"Guys didn’t care who scored, how much they scored, they just wanted to win" - Jim Boeheim praises the unselfishness of the Redeem Team, says the NBA stars were all in

The 2008 US men’s basketball team will always be celebrated. It had the best set of NBA players in every position. Headlined by Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony, they were famously called the "Redeem Team." After only winning a bronze at the Athens Olympics, there were high expectations from the men's team in Beijing.

They looked dominant right from the very go. They eventually won the gold by defeating a strong Spanish team in the final. Jim Boeheim was the assistant coach of the US men's basketball team in Beijing. In a recent interview with Sirius XM NBA Radio, the legendary coach revealed how professional the team was.

"We didn't know what to expect, we were getting a lot of negative stuff and when we got there and once we got underway, the NBA players were absolutely 100% in and no issues and no problems.

The Redeem team had a lot of firepower. However, head coach Mike Krzyzewski, also known as Coach K, was unrattled by the difficulties of managing a star-studden lineup. According to Boeheim, Coach K liked to hold a lot of meetings. This proved to help in the long run as they had no problems with their chemistry.

"Coach K has a lot of meetings. Morning meetings, pre-practice meetings, after-practice meetings, and film sessions. So you're talking two-three meetings a day everyday for well 36 days, that's a lot of meetings and nobody missed, nobody was late, everybody was there, everybody was engaged."

Another big reason behind the success of the Redeem Team was the unselfishness shown by the superstars. With a wide array of stars in the team, not everyone got to start every night. However, Boeheim highlighted that players were only focused on winning.

"When you have Dwyane Wade, who was the player of the year I think or close to second runner up maybe saying, " Yeah I'll come off the bench, it's no problem." Offcourse he was our leading scorer off the bench by the way, Chris Paul came of the bench on that team. Guys didn't care who scored or how much they scored, they just wanted to win." said Boeheim when talking about the Redeem Team.

The fantastic journey of the Redeem Team to win the gold

The Redeem Team had some special players [Image Credits: SI]

The US men's basketball team has always been the one to watch out for in global tournaments. They have always set high standards considering the quality of players that they have at their disposal, all of whom come from the NBA. Due to these reasons, a bronze win at the Athens Olympics proved to be a big disappointment for the nation.

The Redeem Team was assembled with the aim of helping the US Men's Basketball Team regain its dominance in basketball. It had the biggest NBA stars, but that wasn't enough to convince everyone that they had enough to win the gold.

Blocking out all the noise, the Redeem Team locked in on their goal to win the gold right from the preliminary round. There were sacrifices that needed to be made, but no one hesitated from doing so.

After dominating the preliminary stage, USA had to go through some of the best teams in the world to get to the gold. However, the players were well versed with playing in tough situations and they showed that by easily getting past Australia and Argentina.

In the gold medal match, the US Men's team was up against a talented Spanish team. Led by Pau Gasol, they were as dominant as the Redeem Team to get to the gold medal game.

The US Men's team started strongly. They had a grip on the game as they went into halftime with a solid 8-point lead. However, the Spaniards were not going to go down that easily. They fought back strongly in the second half to make things interesting.

The scores were 91-82 going into the fourth quarter. The Spanish team needed something massive to get to a win. However, riding on the brilliance of Dwyane Wade, the Redeem Team cruised to a stellar 118-107 win. The Flash scored 27 points on a memorable night his team bagged the coveted gold.