Team USA poses low-profiled at basketball worlds
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With Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and the rest of the gold-winning "redeemed dream team" at the 2008 Olympics taking this summer off, the talent and leadership void will be filled by the guys with the biggest gifts and smallest ego in the undersized US roster for the Turkey world basketball championship.
The mission of extending US basketball's momentum from its dominant gold-medal performance in Beijing, and avenging past disappointments at the FIBA world championships, falls on the slender shoulders and immense talents like Kevin Durant and Rajon Rando.
For 21-year-old, 6-9 Durant, it's a journey exciting for his first international appearance, but dare not try any overconfidence for the so-called shrank "Dream Team" at the world stage.
"I have the confidence to do fine at the world championship, but it's not overconfidence. You know the difference between confidence and overconfidence," said Durant at the Radio City Music Hall of New York on Thursday at the first international basketball festival opening-up.
"You never know what will happen. We will go and start playing, and we'll see. We have the talent; we have the good guys here fitting to our system. We will look forward to playing there and we'll see," added he.
Durant downplayed the stay-away of star players in the US team. "We got a lot of guys of athletics. We got a lot of great shooters, that will help us for loss of size. I think we're all anxious for the start to play (world championships). I'm confident, we can go over there and play our game and play it right way. We have to play hard and play together, you know we'll be fine."
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