There's a bit of a parallel between the US men's basketball team and the US 4 by 100 meter relay teams. Given the fairly late date for the US track and field qualifiers, you get the sense that the relays teams didn't have much time to run together. So while they didn't have to go through a couple dozen sprinters to get the team, they did try to do what hoops did - win gold without as much team preparation as they may have wanted.

There was a relay camp in Munich leading up to the Games, but clearly the exchanges could have used more work. Clearly, we don't have the same margin we used to in these relays.