Pierce: Olympic team needs to win gold

Now that the Boston Celtics are once again NBA champions, American basketball's next great championship hope falls to the men's Olympic team. "They need it worse than the Celtics needed a championship this year," Paul Pierce said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. "The U.S. has been a perennial basketball power and they just need to establish that once again. I think this is the team to do it." The 30-year-old forward, who won the NBA finals MVP after leading the Celtics to their first championship in 22 years, believes the Americans go into next month's Beijing Games having learned from recent failures. U.S. basketball changed the selection process and emphasized team building rather than individual skills since going without gold at a major championship since the 2000 Sydney Games. "We'll see if it works... [read full story]