Olympic Legends - Starbury’s great Olympic game

London (Olympics) - Stephon Marbury has enjoyed a lot of spectacular games in his career but in a USA jersey, there’s one that stands above all the others.

At the 2004 Olympics, a hot-shooting Marbury led the United States to a 102-94 victory over Spain in the Quarter-Finals.

In a battle of evenly-matched teams, the native New Yorker was the difference and no one would have expected that to be the case beforehand.

In his first five performances at the Athens Games, Marbury had scored a combined 21 points on four-of-14 shooting from the floor.

But against Spain, he hit 10 of his 15 shots from the floor, including six of nine from three-point range, and walked off the court with a USA Olympic single-game scoring record 31 points.

"When we came here,” Marbury said after the game, “the coach (Larry Brown) said to me I should only score by accident.

"I should go out to play and not to score.

"I need to be a leader on the court and play as hard as I can so that we can go for the gold.

"So I came into this tournament not thinking about shots.”

So how did he do it?

"I went to the gym on my own to practice my open shots, and as you know in basketball, repetition is the key," Marbury said.

Even more impressive about the victory for Team USA is that it came against a Spain team that had looked destined for the podium.

They had won all five of their Preliminary Round games while the Americans had fallen to Puerto Rico in their opener and also lost to Lithuania.

Pau Gasol, Juan Carlos Navarro and Jose Manuel Calderon all were on top form for Spain, too.

Gasol, who was blossoming into one of the best players in international basketball, had 29 points against the USA while Calderon contributed 19 and Navarro 17.

"We tried to do everything we could in our defense but today,” Calderon said after the setback, “the Americans were amazing in shooting.”

FIBA