High-roller Le Bron is gambling on gold and Uncle Sam's honour

Not two hundred feet from the roulette and blackjack, James, 23, was working out for nothing more tangible than Uncle Sam's honour and a piece of cheap metal masquerading as gold which the winners of the Olympic basketball tournament will receive.

American dreamer: James leads by example

The Cleveland Cavaliers forward has staked his reputation as the NBA's highest-paid player on keeping a public promise he made last month, guaranteeing that he would win the gold medal which would salvage his country's pride.

Last night, in the 12,000-seat sold-out arena of the Venetian Resort Hotel, James and the United States Olympic team were warming up with a game against another Olympic qualifier, Lithuania, one of three countries to beat the U.S.A. in Athens when a mere bronze maintained the Americans' record of winning a basketball medal at every Olympic Games they have entered.

NBA players became eligible for the 1992 Olympic Games and their winning record stood at 24-0 - until Athens. Then they lost to Puerto Rico, Lithuania and, in the semi-finals, eventual winners Argentina. It was the only time in the game's history that the U.S. had lost to any of those countries and their overall ratio at the Olympics is now W114 L5.

James was in that squad four years ago but at 19, the youngest in a U.S. Olympic team in 36 years, his inexperience was glaring. He committed himself to the new twoyear programme in 2006 to make amends. 'I guarantee we will win gold,' he told Time magazine.

'I hope he's right,' said head coach Mike Krzyzewski. 'I don't have the ability to back it up. He has the ability to back it up. If he said it, that's our goal.'

Kobe Bryant is in superb form

These men earn salaries that make Cristiano Ronaldo look like a 'wage slave'. Kobe Bryant, David Beckham's football-loving friend at the LA Lakers, picks up £16m a year and has three NBA championship rings to his name, but he was speaking for his fellow 'temporary amateurs' when he said: 'Playing in an NBA Championships, you are playing for a brand.

'You put on a U.S.A. uniform and you're playing for something that's bigger than all of that. A gold medal is different because you're playing for your country. There is more at stake. It's one country up against the other to prove who's best. To me, that holds more weight. A gold would surpass anything I've done in the game.'

There is something in it here for the NBA. This game and the next in Shanghai will feed China's hunger for the sport on TV. More than a thousand people abandoned the tables to line the hotel corridors when players walked between their rooms and the locker room, squealing as they passed.

Touts are selling tickets for the sold-out opening China v U.S.A. Olympic game in Beijing on August 10 at 12-times face value and it is not only their own beloved NBA star, Yao Min, they want to see.

No Westerner is more famous behind the Bamboo Curtain than these players. Distinguished from his fellow- giants in the red, white and blue by his white headband, James was on court longer than any of the Olympic starting five.

He and Bryant, last NBA season's Most Valuable Player, led by example and the team is in a different class to the one that failed in Athens. Revenge last night was sweet, vicious and overwhelming.

The U.S. led 31-15 after the first quarter and never let up. They won 120-84, with Miami Heat's Dwayne Wade scoring 19 points, Orlando Magic's Dwight Howard 17, James 15 and Bryant 13.

Olympic basketball, on a smaller court than NBA, is more physical and more European, and every four years the Americans have to reeducate themselves.

The Athens team never learned but these successors to the first Dream Team of 1992 are well-schooled. All they have to do, as Howard said, is: 'Not get complacent, stay humble.'

Four weeks unpaid should make any millionaire humble. Ronaldo should try it.