The level of play rose so much you would have thought the Larry O'Brien Trophy was on the line. On one possession, the 6-11, 265-pound Dwight Howard had a sure layup but the 6-3, 205-pound Deron Williams stopped him from putting it on the board by wrapping his arms around Howard's so strong that a boa constrictor would be proud.

Then at the end of the third mini game, with Blue already leading 2-1 overall because it shut White out in the second game, Kevin Durant scored a turnaround in the lane to win the mini game 2-1 and give Blue a commanding 3-1 lead overall, only the score keepers had the score at 1-1. This caused LeBron to leap from his chair on the sidelines onto the court and adamantly remind everybody that Howard scored on the first possession and that Blue won the game.

White bounced back to win the next two mini games to tie the overall score at 3-3 and then LeBron took over again, scoring a three to make it 1-0, assisting on a Chandler layup to make it 2-0, baiting Kobe into a tough fadeaway on the baseline ("Come here bad boy, come here Kob!") and then finishing the onslaught with a breakaway hammer dunk to complete the 3-0 shut out thus, giving Blue two points, and a 5-3 overall victory.

Blue seemed to have the momentum, having won both the truncated scrimmage and the game D'Antoni suggested, when all of the sudden 10 more minutes were put up on the clock, the refs came on the court to make it official, and the White team dominated the final scrimmage of the day, winning 41-28 and blowing open a 19-15 game by going on a 15-0 run fueled by Stoudemire makes and Anthony misses.

Even after practice was over and the team rallied around captain Carmelo's cry "Good first day! USA on three ... 1...2...3...USA!" the competitiveness spilled over into shooting competitions between Melo, LeBron and Deron Williams on one basket and J.J. Redick and Kobe Bryant on another.

"I'm a competitor and I'm sure all these guys out here are competitors. These are the best players in the world, and I think we take pride in that," Williams said. "Even these little games. We want to come out and beat them."

Billups preached the mentality it takes to compete that hard against one another. It's all self-inflicted. "The pressure comes from within, that's the pressure that we're putting on ourselves," he said. "We're not worried about the pressure that the media or the country is putting on us to get back, that's pressure that we're putting on ourselves. So when you're putting it on yourself, you don't feel like it's pressure, because it becomes an expectation. And we don't feel like it's a far-fetched expectation at all, because we believe in what we can do."

Anthony and James were the top performers for the Blue and Stoudemire and Bosh stood out for the White, but several other players made their mark. During a shooting drill before the scrimmages started Billups found Durant in the corner for an NBA three, excitedly yelling, "Stick it young fella!" as Durant calmly swished it. Coach K saw the exchange and came over with a huge smile on his face, almost a look of admiration, when he said to Chauncey, "He can really shoot it, can't he?" Durant went on to hit most of his looks during the scrimmages, including back-to-back threes late in the final one with Blue down big to make the score end up being somewhat respectable.

"The coaches told us to spread the floor out and not to try to clog everything up in the lane and with penetrators like Carmelo, LeBron and Kirk Hinrich on my team I just moved around the perimeter and found open shots and knocked them down," Durant told me.

"This morning Coach K came up to me at breakfast and said, 'Just don't be nervous. It's a learning experience, just go have fun,' and that kind of calmed me down a little bit. When I went out there, I just kind of had fun, and I can't wait until the next practice to get better."

Mike Miller was very aggressive, shooting whenever he got a look, but also going to the hole. Shane Battier caused a lot of deflections and was a threat from deep as well.

Michael Redd struggled with his shot and finished the day sitting out of the last scrimmage and working out with Marion and Wade.

No matter if they had a great practice or a poor one, every player was preaching the same thing afterwards: We're here on a mission, let's go get that gold.

"We're not trying to showboat, we're just trying to play hard and represent the Red, White and Blue in the best way we can," LeBron said when asked what Sunday's scrimmage would be like.

Deron Williams, who admitted to emulating Jason Kidd growing up realizes how special this opportunity is, but also is well aware of the task at hand. "We're going to go hard," Williams said. "The USA hasn't won in a while, people are down on the U.S. right now and we need a gold medal. That's what we're focused on. Everyone here wants to win a gold."

Dwight Howard echoed his remarks. "It's just a great blend," Howard said. "We just want to keep working extremely hard and hopefully the outcome will be a lot different than last year."