Jerry Colangelo to step down as Team USA boss, will retain role with Men's hoops and 76ers

Jerry Colangelo’s seven-year run at the top of Team USA Basketball is over, as the chairman announced he would step down after two terms running the successful, NBA-driven outfit.

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Colangelo will still retain his position as Special Adviser of the Philadelphia 76ers, a title he assumed partway through the team’s dreary 2015-16 season. He will continue to have a role within the Men’s Basketball organization:

Via a press release, Team USA announced that “a new team Chairman will be elected by the USA Basketball Board of Directors at its annual meeting on November 14.”

Colangelo assumed the role of managing director of Team USA in 2005, following the Men’s Basketball Team’s embarrassing bronze medal showing in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. That performance came two years after Team USA failed to medal during the World Championships in Indianapolis, with the confluence of improving international competition, poor coaching and scouting, and the absence of major stars helping push Team USA to the fringes after years of international dominance.

Asking for a long commitment from stars in order to help establish team chemistry, Colangelo presided over a similarly-embarrassing defeat (with then-overmatched new coach Mike Krzyzewski at the helm) in the 2006 World Championships before a return to a gold medal showing in the 2008 Olympics.

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The championship run, which included Colangelo assuming duties as Team USA Chairman in 2009, has continued unabated in the years since. Team USA rolled to gold medals in 2012 and 2016 under Krzyzewski (who will make way for coach Gregg Popovich during the 2020 Olympics), in spite of facing the same chemistry, cohesion and star-power concerns that dogged the frustrating turns in 2002, 2004 and 2006. The same rate of success sustains through the Women’s Team’s dominant work, along with Team USA’s younger clubs.

In declining a third term as Chairman, Colangelo will still act a part of Team USA’s global outreach (which includes significant sponsor pairings with a prominent shoe company, driving worldwide sales) as director of the Men’s team moneymaker, and he will stick to his role in taking advantage of the significant assets he inherited as 76ers prez. Colangelo has hired his son and former NBA Executive of the Year Bryan Colangelo to act as Sixers general manager.

As for Colangelo’s replacement:

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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!

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