Kobe Bryant and the U.S. basketball team, shown against Australia, have much to prove in the Olympics.

AP / Eugene Hoshiko

The Olympics begin this weekend, and perhaps no team has more pressure on it than the United States basketball squad.

Kobe. LeBron. Dwyane Wade. Jason Kidd. Carmelo Anthony. Coach K.

All of them.

They have everything to lose, not just the gold medal.

They are supposed to be the best players in the world. They also live in that intersection where fame meets celebrity, thus they are not just basketball players, as financially rewarding as that might be. They are cultural icons, the reason they are in endless commercials and have the kind of cachet that makes them known around the world.

They also are supposed to be the best American players in the American game, right?

The game that not only was invented here, but the game that we’ve brought to the rest of the world for decades now.

But this is not 1992, and this is not the Dream Team, back when Bird, Magic, Michael and the rest of the gang went to Barcelona and played glorified exhibition games against teams that all but genuflected before them, and then wanted autographs afterward.

Those days are as gone as Bird’s career.

Basketball is no longer as American as Thanksgiving, and we no longer dominate it the way we once did. The 2000 Olympics, eight years after the Dream Team, was the first clue. The U.S. Team, composed of NBA players, beat Lithuania by only two points and then topped France by 10 in the finals in a close game.

Lithuania?

France?

What exactly in the name of James Naismith was going on?

The basketball world was changing, that’s what.

The first cataclysmic sign of that happened two years later — in Indianapolis, of all places — when the U.S. Team came in sixth in the World Championships. Sixth. That ignominious performance was followed by the Olympics in Athens in 2004, in which we got crushed by Puerto Rico in the opening round, then were eliminated in the semifinals by Argentina and came home with the bronze medal.

Say it wasn’t so, Bill Russell.

Once upon a time, we sent college kids to the Olympics and won gold medals. Now we were sending glorified all-star teams to compete against national teams that had played together for years, so Jerry Colangelo was hired by USA Basketball to oversee our Olympic Team. The first thing he did was ask for a three-year commitment, one that began in 2006 with the World Championships.

The goal was to build a national team, but that’s easier said than done, of course. The U.S. team, composed of many of the same players now, lost in the semifinals to Greece in the World Championships two years ago.

That’s the back story, and it’s interesting in the sense that the overriding perception is that we are going to cruise to the gold simply because Kobe and LeBron and ’Melo and D-Wade are on the team.

It doesn’t figure to be that easy.

Tuesday night, ESPN showed the last exhibition game before the Olympics, the U.S. team struggling against Australia, eventually winning by 11. But a couple of things were significant. One was that the Australians ran a better halfcourt offense, the Americans routinely settling for shots off the first pass.

Why not?

Isn’t that how the NBA game is played — give the ball to LeBron and get out of his way?

The other was the lack of awe the Australians had for the U.S. team, so different than the Dream Team 16 years ago. Basketball truly is the global village now, with European players all over college and NBA rosters, and innumerable Americans playing overseas.

Then there is the way the game has evolved in the NBA — a game of stars, showmanship and the cult of the individual. All in a league in which the rules have become blurred, and street ball is one of the main influences on how basketball in this country has evolved. That’s been Mike Krzyzewski’s main message in what’s essentially been three summers now that these guys have been a team, not just a group of independent basketball contractors.

Sisyphus might have had an easier task.

Or how do you have all of these stars and have only one ball?

How do you change the way they perceive the game?

You could see that in Tuesday night’s game, with its quick shots, with the sense that, for all the words to the contrary, it’s still an all-star team — you shoot, I shoot. The reason Australia was in the game.

Krzyzewski has stressed pressure defense and to get out and run. If they can do that, the U.S. team should win.

But the pressure is all on them. They are the rock stars. They are the names everyone knows. They are supposed to win the gold. If they don’t, they will return home in basketball disgrace. American basketball tarnished.

That is the weight that now sits on their shoulders, right there with all of the fame and all of the celebrity.

Tuesday night’s game was followed on ESPN by the AndI Tour, the glorification of street ball, the thing that purists often point to as the devil itself, the symbol of why we no longer dominate basketball the way we once did, even if it’s all more complicated than that.

Coincidence?

Or foreshadowing?

We’re going to find out.

breynold@projo.com