Team USA recently held its first full-contact practice in nearly three weeks.

Something needed to change after having close calls in three consecutive Olympic games and it was time to fix what was wrong.

The Solution

The practice session was the perfect time to raise the team's intensity level before playing Argentina in the quarterfinals. The end result was a blowout win against Argentina – with a bit of revenge for beating Team USA in the 2002 FIBA World Championship.

American small forward Paul George spoke to reporters about the practice and agreed that it was time to pick up the pace.

“We’re not going to see better athletes than playing against each other, so we really got after it. We picked it up. We hadn’t had a contact practice in a long time, since we left Chicago (after a July 29 exhibition game)… We hadn’t been the same since we’ve been going live against each other. So it was good. It was good to kind of get everything out, go up against each other, get after each other a little bit today. It should pan out for us.”

Once Argentina was defeated, the next hill to climb was Spain. Team USA managed to come out of that semifinal game victorious, showing that the team's renewed sense of urgency in the quarterfinals was not a fluke.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski believes the practice helped the team focus. The team doesn't take the competition lightly, but after playing up to nine grueling months of NBA basketball, there is a pace to maintain that keeps wear and tear to a minimum, and that includes too much practice.

This certainly isn't the Dream Team, and the international competition is much improved since those days. Team USA has to carefully plan its strategy against much more dangerous competition.

Coach K's gold-medal game outlook

Sunday, Team USA will face the ultimate test when they play in the gold-medal game against Serbia – a team that only lost to the Americans by three points in pool play.

Coach Krzyzewski knows it will take everything they just rediscovered to win the match.

“The Dream Team, they just were not concerned about the competition. They felt that they were going to win. We’re a little bit more concerned about the competition — in fact, a lot more concerned.

Serbia came within a whisker of beating us in our pool play, so we absolutely respect them. We know how good they are. They’re so well coached, Sasha (Djordjevic) does an amazing job with them. They have great camaraderie; they’re an outstanding passing team; an outstanding defensive team as was shown in the Australia game (an 87-61 win in the semifinal). And they’re led by one of the all-time great players internationally in (Milos) Teodosic. So they’ll be very, very difficult for us.”

One more win, and the struggles will all be forgotten.