National Team
On March 5, 2006, Billups was selected to be a part of the 2006–2008 USA Men's Senior National Team program developed to restore Team USA back to the top of the basketball world after disappointments in the 2002 FIBA World Championship and the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. After missing out in the 2006 FIBA World Championship due to personal reasons, on August 20, 2007, Billups was selected to be a part of Team USA that competed at the 2007 FIBA Americas Championship, a qualifying tournament for the Beijing Olympics. Coming off the bench, he along with the other new members of the team including All Star Kobe Bryant helped USA go unbeaten at the tournament held in Las Vegas and earn a spot at next Summer Olympics. On June 17, 2008, Billups announced he would not compete for a spot to be on the Olympic squad stating family reasons though he did say "they'll be fine. And when they win the gold, I'll feel like I had a big hand in regaining our dominance because of what we did last summer." During the tournament, Team USA went unbeaten on their way to their first gold medal since the 2000 Olympics, defeating Spain in the final.
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Famous quotes containing the words national and/or team:
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“I also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and bad dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.”
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