IHT: Olympics: Security worries for the dream team

Four months before the Athens Summer Olympics, the Dream Team roster is incomplete and it is uncertain whether the players will stay in official Olympic housing on the Queen Mary 2, according to officials from the NBA and USA Basketball.

The overarching international concern as the Summer Games approach is security. For basketball officials, the more ambiguity, the better.

Like the divers, submarines and sea-bed detectors set to secure the Mediterranean port of Piraeus, plans behind and beneath the scenes are in place to protect the highest-profile athletes at the Games.

The Athens Organizing Committee is spending more than $1 billion on security, more than triple what was spent at the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, Australia. On Monday, the International Olympic Committee announced that it had secured a $170 million insurance policy for the Games, protecting against cancellation because of terrorism or natural disaster.

The marquee announcing the U.S. men's basketball team at least lists a starting five - Tim Duncan, Tracy McGrady, Allen Iverson, Jermaine O'Neal and Mike Bibby. But USA Basketball is still lacking commitments from four first-team all-NBA players - Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Jason Kidd and Kevin Garnett.
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'No one has said that they're not willing to participate because of security concerns,' Jim Tooley, the executive director of USA Basketball, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. 'We've been in constant communication with players, educating them and training, making sure we can give comfort level they need so they can concentrate on competing.'
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Injury, family commitments, exhaustion - and in Bryant's case, a trial this summer - are the primary reasons players do not want to go to Athens. While no players"