After that, however, there was no repeat of Lithuania's near miracle in the semifinals. Vince Carter had a double-pump dunk with 1:40 left and the U.S. team scored nine of the game's final 12 points to defeat France 85-75 Sunday.
It was the 12th gold medal in 14 Olympic basketball competitions for the United States, but this one will be remembered as the Olympics when the rest of the world caught up.
The final victory margin of 10 points was the lowest ever for the United States in a gold-medal victory. It was the fifth time in these Olympics that the Americans won by 15 or fewer points, quite a difference from 1996 and 1992 when the U.S. teams won every game by at least 22 points and often had victory margins of 40 points or more.
"What this Olympics demonstrated is that the competitive level of international basketball has improved -- more so than casual observers of the game understood," NBA commissioner David Stern said.
That competitiveness didn't manifest itself in the gold medal game, at least not to the degree it had in the semifinals.
France led only twice, 2-0 after scoring the first basket of the game and 7-6 on two free throws by Stephane Risacher following a technical foul on Gary Payton for getting in the face of a French player during a stoppage in play.
Still, the Americans found themselves leading just 76-72 after Antoine Rigaudeau hit a 3-pointer with 4:26 left to complete a 16-4 run that turned a slow-paced, foul-plagued game into an interesting one.
Kevin Garnett followed with a put-back after the U.S. team grabbed two offensive rebounds, Alonzo Mourning hit two foul shots and Garnett scored on a bank shot to restore a 10-point lead and end any thoughts France might have had of duplicating Lithuania's feat of two days earlier.
"Just wanted to keep it going," Carter said. "Didn't want to make it this far to quit. If we were going to lose, we were going to go down fighting."
After he put an exclamation point on the victory with his showtime dunk, the U.S. coaching staff started hugging each other on the sideline.
When the final buzzer sounded, the American men walked over and exchanged high-fives with the women's team, who won their gold medal earlier.
Carter had another impressive dunk with 31 seconds left, slamming in an alley-oop pass that Payton bounced off the backboard. But the referees waved it off in one of several questionable calls that occurred throughout the tournament and caused the U.S. team repeated grief.
There was a lesson in it, though, a lesson that the Americans learned well in the past two weeks: Strange things happen in international basketball games, stranger things than anyone could have imagined just a short time ago.
The U.S. team scored 95.0 points per game and won by an average margin of 21.6 points -- a number that was inflated by a 47-point win over China and a 46-point victory over New Zealand.
All the other games were closer than anything the Americans had seen at the 1992 and 1996 Olympics -- with the exception of the 1996 gold medal game against Yugoslavia.
The Americans went more than nine minutes without a field goal in the first half as the officials were busy calling 36 fouls -- 18 on each team.
The tedious pace silenced the sellout crowd and made the game seem somewhat boring, although that was likely a welcome relief for the Americans after having to fight for their Olympic lives in their previous game.
French center Frederic Weis went to the bench with his third foul less than five minutes into the game -- just as the Americans were starting a 13-2 run to assert control.
Carter, who tied Allen for team-high scoring honors with 13 points, ended the run with a pair of 3-pointers for a 20-9 lead.
An 11-2 run followed with seven of the U.S. team's points coming from the foul line, and the Americans made 17 free throws before ending their nine-minute field goal drought on a corner jumper by Antonio McDyess that made it 43-30.
Alonzo Mourning picked up a technical early in the second half for arguing a foul call, and Weis clanged the ensuing free throw attempt high and hard off the backboard to leave France trailing by 14.
Soon it would be a different game as France made its run, but the Americans responded as if they had gotten used to it, which indeed they learned how to do during these Olympics.
Olympic Basketball
