There's just no love from the ``The Glove''.

Gary Payton, the only player from the 1996 United States Olympic basketball gold medal ``Dream Team'' returning for the Sydney Games figures to make life miserable for top scorers from around the world.

Payton picked up his hand-covering nickname because that's how tight he fits ``on'' opponents - like a glove.

Few Olympic rivals have ever seen defenders with Payton's combination of defensive tenacity and quickness at stealing the ball or disrupting an offense.

Payton and 11 other National Basketball Association standouts will try to bring their homeland its 12th Olympic basketball gold medal, the third in a row since NBA players began their domination of the Olympics back in 1992.

Payton, Alonzo Mourning, Kevin Garnett and Vince Carter will lead a US team that lacks the legendary status of the original Dream squad, which featured Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Charles Barkley.

``Everyone always asks, 'Could this team beat Dream Team I?''' Payton admitted.

``You can't say that. We may win all our games by 25 or 30 points. It just doesn't have the aura of the team that made it great.''

But top NBA talent does add to the greatness of the Olympic event, just as the Games can provide moments for NBA stars they would never otherwise know.

One such experience for Payton came at halftime of the gold medal final in Atlanta when 1960 Olympic boxing champion Muhammad Ali was given a replacement gold medal for one he threw into the Mississippi after being refused entrance to a whites-only restaurant.

``When you see Muhammad Ali and Carl Lewis in there, bending their heads and shoulders down and getting a gold medal put around their necks, that's something you tell your kids, that you were there, that you played in the Olympics,'' Payton said.

Collegians represented US Olympic hopes for more than half a century, losing only in the 1972 final when the Soviet Union won on a third try at a last-second victory due to repeated clock malfunctions. US silver medals remain unclaimed to this day.

But in 1988 at Seoul, the Soviets beat the US team in the semi-finals.

The US team faltered at the world championships and even Brazil and Cuba denied US collegians Pan American gold.

So in came the NBA talent. Payton, 32, has spent his entire 10-year NBA career with Seattle.

The nearest he came to an NBA crown was when Jordan and the Chicago Bulls beat Seattle in the 1996 NBA Finals.

Payton and Olympic teammate Jason Kidd, a guard for the Phoenix Suns, both grew up in Oakland, California, and were coached by Payton's father Al.

``If it wasn't for Oakland and my father, we wouldn't be here now,'' Payton said.

``Nobody ever imagined us coming out of the neighborhoods and winning a gold medal at the Olympics in Australia.''

But it would not be a first. Oakland native Bill Russell led a US team to Olympic gold at Melbourne in 1956, then went on to spark the Boston Celtics to 11 NBA crowns from 1957 to 1969.