Venue

Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium

Location

Wukeson Culture and Sports Centre

No. of Gold medals

2

Schedule

August 9-24

Basketball was on the Olympic programme in 1904, but the event was contested by only a few American club teams and actually served as the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union of the USA) Championship for that year. Thus the event is usually considered only an exhibition. The winning team, incidentally, was the Buffalo German club, which was so dominant in those days that they were inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame as a team. The sport became an Olympic event in 1936, with the women's event added in 1976. The United States has dominated international basketball. The USA won all the Olympic titles until 1972 when they were defeated by the Soviet Union. The Soviet women were originally the top team on the female side, winning gold in 1976, 1980 and 1992, but the US women have now surpassed them, winning gold medals in 1984, 1988, 1996 and 2000. In 1992, for the first time, NBA players were allowed to represent the USA and all other countries in national team competition.
The 1992 US Team, dubbed the "Dream Team" by the world's media, was certainly the greatest basketball team ever assembled and it dominated the 1992 Olympic tournament. Full professional participation is now allowed for both men and women in basketball at the Olympics. With the United States allowed to use NBA professionals, they have reasserted their dominance at the international level. But the gap with rest of the world seems to be decreasing, as was witnessed during the Sydney Olympics, in which the USA was tested several times on the way to the gold medal.

Medal Winners at Athens Games 2004