After Team USA massively underperformed in the 2004 Olympics and ended up winning just a bronze medal despite being loaded with elite talent, the national team redeemed itself in the 2008 Olympics. The Redeem Team — as folks like to call it — went on to win gold, and who knows if Team USA would have re-established its dominance in the Olympics if guard Kobe Bryant didn’t decide to represent the country.
[Los Angeles Lakers](https://lakersdaily.com/) forward LeBron James — who was a member of the Redeem Team — recently spoke on how important it was that Bryant joined Team USA for that year’s Olympics.
> “I think it was just the missing link that we needed in order to regain the dominance with Team USA,” James said. “He brought a sense of seriousness to the team. He made us lock in, and we knew once he joined and he was going to be committed that we couldn’t be doing nothing half a–. Kob wasn’t going for that. So, it made myself, CP (Chris Paul), D-Wade (Dwyane Wade), Melo (Carmelo Anthony) — we all locked in even more because we wanted to show him that we can get to that level as well.
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> “So, it was just an honor to be out there with him. I was 23 years old, and being out on the floor with him, he had already won championships before and things of that nature. So, it was levels that I was trying to get to, and D-Wade had already won one. And so we just wanted to get to his level and make him proud. And by the end of that trip when we was hoisting that gold medal on top of that podium, we for sure made him proud.”
Team USA went 8_–_0 over the course of the 2008 Olympics, and Bryant was one of the team’s best players on its path to a gold medal. He averaged 15.0 points, 2.8 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game. Bryant shot 46.2 percent from the field as well.
Bryant may have had some extra motivation to win a gold medal in those Olympics in light of how the 2008 NBA Finals panned out for him and his Lakers. Los Angeles came up just two wins short of a title that year, as it lost to the [Boston Celtics](https://ahnfiredigital.com/category/nba/celtics/) in the championship series four games to two. Bryant was still looking to win his first title since Shaquille O’Neal got traded away from the Lakers at the time.
However, after Bryant helped Team USA win a gold medal in the 2008 Olympics, he finally got over the hump with the Lakers without O’Neal as his partner in crime. Los Angeles repeated as champions in 2009 and 2010 and even got its revenge against Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and the Celtics in the championship series. The Lakers beat the Celtics in seven games in the 2010 championship series, and Bryant took home Finals MVP honors for Los Angeles at the series’ conclusion.
All in all, Bryant’s run in the 2008 Olympics was nothing short of iconic, and he parlayed his Olympic stint into an incredible amount of collective and individual success with the Lakers in the coming years. Lakers fans aren’t likely to forget the 2008 Olympics anytime soon.