ATHENS – Boos filled the Olympic Indoor Hall for most of the afternoon, meaning it was starting to sound, and look, the way so many recent Olympic basketball afternoons have sounded and looked.

The Americans were salting away their victory, a bitter pill for the Spanish basketball party, which had gone 5-0 in preliminary-round play and for its efforts drew the United States in the medal round. Spain’s coach, Mario Pesquera, estimated the Americans “played at about 40 percent capacity” in their early-round games.

For some reason, Larry Brown, the U.S. coach, decided this would be the perfect time to call a timeout. There were 23 seconds left in the game. The U.S. had an 11-point lead. The boos rained down harder. And this is where the simmering resentments that seem to percolate almost daily now around this team exploded into a bizarre geyser.

Pesquera, already upset at the way the officials had called the game – “We played under NBA rules,” he would lament later, “not FIBA rules” – began yelling at the American bench. After the final buzzer, Brown went over to talk to Pesquera, who wouldn’t be talked to.

Fingers were pointed. Words exchanged.

“Do you want some of me?” Brown asked.

Beautiful. So this is what it’s going to be from now on with this American basketball team, a never-ending carnival freak show. Just as the American players begin to reclaim forfeited respect, playing a wonderful, intense, all-around game against a difficult opponent, needing every bit of their best effort to dispatch the Spaniards, their coach stepped into the breach and made sure to earn all those boos.

Brown can’t help himself. No matter what he does at these Olympics, he comes off as either boorish or belittling, even in what should have been a moment of great personal satisfaction.

His players no longer allow him to bemoan what underachieving louts they are, so he uncovers a new way to embarrass himself. This was like the continued scene out of the 2000 Olympics, when Brown was spotted chasing a referee off the court following their razor-close escape against Lithuania in the Sydney semifinals. Inexcusable then, inexcusable now.

Understand: Pesquera could have let the gesture pass. There were some sour grapes attached to his anger, no doubt. Still, Brown had no business calling time when he did, with a game already won, a proud opponent already vanquished. This wasn’t Senior Night in Chapel Hill. He lamely explained his motives later, saying he tried to rescind it. But Pesquera correctly pointed out that if this were so, all Brown needed to do was send his players back on the court. Which he did not.

But Brown was only clearing his throat.

Describing the coaches’ postgame confrontation – and with Pesquera sitting just two chairs down from him – Brown sanctimoniously groused, “That was like a disagreement with my son. Sometimes he doesn’t let me explain. I tried to explain, and he didn’t want to hear it.”

The funny thing is that Brown’s message got lost in translation; Pesquera heard it as Brown saying Pesquera was “like a son to him.” But he was still plenty mad, even though he had no idea just what a pompous oaf Brown was really being.

But Pesquera was ready. During Brown’s endless sermon, he was furiously writing down his rebuttal. These men aren’t complete strangers. Pesquera is a disciple of Dean Smith, who is also Brown’s coaching rabbi. Pesquera has studied Smith at North Carolina, and also Roy Williams (one of Brown’s assistants on the U.S. team) when he was at Kansas.

Pesquera knew how to get the last word in.

“Let me say, I had – I stress, had – great respect for Larry Brown,” Pesquera said, before launching into his explanation why the timeout rankled him so much. Brown has been coaching long enough to know why that was bad form. But Pesquera had a little kicker in storage.

“Dean Smith,” he said, “never would’ve done that.”

He may have lost the game, but Pesquera got in the last word, and made sure the Americans were forced to leave another arena with egg splattered on their faces. One more time.