Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:
The simple answer here is "no, they did not take their best players". While you could probably get a similar answer from looking at your suggested metrics, two much quicker to determine facts about the 2004 roster: Of the 12 players who easily won the last major tournament the USA competed in, the 2003 Tournament of the Americas , only 3 of them went to the Olympics. Yes, you may expect some roster turnover in a year but not that much. One of the highest allocades in the NBA is the All-NBA Team ; only one player (Tim Duncan) from that year's All-NBA team went to the Olympics despite 12 out of the 15 players on the All-NBA Team being American.
Full answer by Philip Kendall: https://sports.stackexchange.com/a/29732 (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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