SAN JUAN -- There will never be complete vindication -- and everyone associated with last September's fiasco in Indianapolis understands that. No one more so than Jermaine O'Neal, the All-Star of the Indiana Pacers who came up woefully inadequate in front of his hometown fans when it mattered most.

	Jermaine O'Neal had plenty to smile about in rematch with Argentina.

He was rarely a factor on a USA Basketball World Championships team seemingly always at odds with each other. He posted unremarkable numbers, missed one game with an injury, and was an outright disaster at the free-throw line. His uneven play seemed to epitomize the whole underachieving effort of the Yanks, who lost to Argentina, Yugoslavia and Spain and finished a mortifying sixth, necessitating a trip here to even the score, restore some credibility and, of course, to qualify for Athens.

Those losses are on the books, for all time, and the wounds still fester. Just listen to Gregg Popovich, an assistant on the 2002 and 2003 teams, describe the feeling:

"It was embarrassing. It was humiliating. It was depressing. We just won a championship (in San Antonio) and I think more about (the loss to Argentina) than I do about the championship because I'm a sick coach.''

Thus, it seemed somehow proper and fitting that another guy who felt the humiliation first hand -- and he also mentioned it still stings -- was there when it mattered in the first rematch against the enviable Argentines. The U.S. went to O'Neal out of the box. They went to him down the stretch. At the end of a 94-86 victory Tuesday night, O'Neal had 22 points, 10 rebounds, 1 monster rejection and the U.S. had some minor payback.

O'Neal may well have made the signature play of the game, although there were many possibilities. But with the U.S. clinging to a four-point lead with around 2 minutes remaining, it was O'Neal who swallowed up a shot by Argentina's Fabricio Oberto, a rejection which led to a Vince Carter dunk and eventually to a game-deciding, 6-0 American run. If O'Neal doesn't make that play, it's a two-point game and, well, no one wants to go there again.

Afterwards, O'Neal was asked if this win could in any way eliminate the crushing feeling he had last Sept. 4, after Argentina's 87-80 win had snapped a 58-game unbeaten streak the United States had compiled while using NBA players in international competition.

"No,'' he said, matter of factly. "Not until we get a gold medal. I don't think that will ever wear off. When people look back on the first (U.S.) team that lost, I'm still going to be on that team. But I also want to be on the team which wins the (Olympic) gold medal.''

O'Neal, Popovich and Elton Brand are the sole holdovers from Indianapolis. Brand saw minimal action against the Argentines, mainly because O'Neal and Tim Duncan were playing so well. (The way they play together makes you wonder if the Spurs should have gone at warp speed after O'Neal instead of Jason Kidd last month.) Popovich has been on the team since the start of its brief training camp about the necessity to play together and not revisit those painful moments from Conseco Fieldhouse.

"We're going to repeat it until they puke,'' Popovich said. "It's programming, reprogramming, reprogramming. It's got to be done. It's nothing magical.''

No one needed to give O'Neal a pep talk, however.

"We knew coming in that it would be a tight game and a physical game,'' he said. "They knew from last year that they could beat a U.S. team. This team (the USA) is still a question mark, so they wanted to come out and show the world they could beat us.''

And they almost did. The U.S. was without Tracy McGrady, whose back injury could well force him to miss the remaining games. Duncan played the final 7 minutes of the game on the brink of fouling out. The Argentines' crisp screens and sharp passes, which thoroughly befuddled the Yanks last year, were again in evidence as they hung around to the very end.

O'Neal had 7 of his 22 points in the fourth quarter, including a pretty alley-ooper off a feed from -- of all people -- Duncan. His two free throws – he's actually making a few of them this time around -- with 3:09 left gave the U.S. an eight-point lead, a lead which quickly was cut in half by the eminently resourceful Argentines. And when Allen Iverson lost the ball, Argentina had a chance to cut it two points when Oberto, who was 8-of-8 from the field at the time, swooped through the lane for what looked like a sure deuce.

The U.S. had been dominating the inside for most of the night, controlling the boards and forcing all Argentines not named Oberto to score from the outside. O'Neal was ready for Oberto's shot and sent it flying. Iverson picked it up, got it to the streaking Carter, who finished the play, appropriately, with a two-handed dunk. (OK, maybe for Vince, the appropriate finish is a one-handed dunk, but we're not about to quibble. It was a dunk.)

"Obviously,'' O'Neal said, "we have a lot of offensive firepower. But that play (the blocked shot) really reflects how the coaches are coaching our team and what the players are trying to do with our team. And we have to do what it takes to win.''

They didn't have a clue a year ago. They thought that putting together a Rotisserie team of good players was going to be sufficient. It wasn't. This year, the U.S. sent most of its best, minus, of course, the one major difference- maker in the game: Shaquille O'Neal. But the "other'' O'Neal proved more than worthy to the challenge, a challenge he took a lot more personally than most of his teammates.

Those fellows were not on the floor last September to see the Argentines do a celebratory dance, to hear the Argentine fans go wild, and to walk off that floor wondering what had just them. This time around, the Argentine fans were still going wild; chanting that what happened last year was no accident. This year, the Argentine players huddled afterwards, did a brief dance, and then acknowledged those same fans with applause.

This time around, Jermaine O'Neal left the floor seeing many of the same things he saw last September – with one major difference: the outcome. And he left that floor knowing that he had played a major role in that outcome, one that won't completely erase the sting from last year, but one that will go a long way to complete what the healing process in Athens.