BASKETBALL; This U.S. Team Is Younger but Much More Brash
Published: August 04, 1994  They have come to proclaim
themselves the new lords of the basketball universe, masters of
the collapsible rim, their existential credo being: I dunk,
therefore I am.  Oh, and those celebrated gold medalists who
pioneered the National Basketball Association's penetration to
the interior of international competition two summers ago? They
may as well accept their places in ancient history with George
Mikan and the peach basket that Shaquille O'Neal would dearly
love to break into a thousand fragments.  "As for the Dream
Team, I think we'd beat them easily," O'Neal crowed today on the
eve of the 1994 world basketball championships, after he and
some of his teammates tried to tear down a few rims as practice
wound down. "Our legs are a lot younger."  By today's flaccid
standards, young legs and as-yet undistinguished careers
nonetheless actuate huge bank accounts and enormous egos. Coach
Don Nelson will send Dream Team II, as t