The Redeem Team had one goal at the 2008 Olympics. Its final reward awaits in the Hall of Fame

Jerry Colangelo still remembers all the meetings. They were in 2005 and 2006, sit-down sessions, often over breakfast, with the likes of Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and more. Colangelo would lay out his vision for how the U.S. Olympic team would look for the Beijing Games in 2008, then sit back and wait for a response.

The basketball world knows what happened next.

“We accomplished and achieved everything we set out to do,” Colangelo said.

That 2008 team — the Redeem Team, as it will be forever known — gets honored again this weekend, taking its place in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. It went 8-0 in those Beijing Olympics, winning gold and righting a ship that had gone a bit wayward after losses in the 2004 Athens Olympics and the 2006 world c