SportsLine.com wire reports
Sept. 11, 2000

MELBOURNE, Australia -- The U.S. Olympic basketball teams made a bizarre pre-dawn exit Tuesday from their beleaguered hotel complex, using a new twist on the backdoor play and gaining the approval of a young man in a mohawk to get past protesters.

With protesters besieging their hotel, which also was the site of the World Economic Forum, the men's and women's teams were virtual prisoners inside. A decision was made late Monday night to get out of Melbourne and head to Sydney, and the teams got onto buses by 6:45 a.m.

About 100 protesters sat in the street and blocked the main exit near the front entrance of the Crown Casino and Hotel. The protesters decided by voice vote that they would not move aside to let the basketball teams leave.

The buses then turned around and headed toward a different exit, where another group of demonstrators had gathered.

Not believing that the buses held Olympic athletes, the protesters initially refused to move. After the police asked them to come inside the concrete barricades and have a look for themselves, a 21-year-old with a punk rock haircut volunteered to do the job.

"I looked in the first bus and it didn't look like a basketball team, but then I looked inside the second bus," said the mohawk man, Yanni Cotis of Adelaide. "We had a quick discussion about whether to let them go through and decided to let them leave."

The players' family members had left a few hours earlier, before most of the protesters arrived at the hotel.

The teams had planned to stay in Melbourne until later this week, but the protests that virtually shut down the hotel forced a hasty change in plans.

The men's team had to cancel practice Monday because of the protests, while the women's team made it out of the hotel on foot before being forced to return by boat.

"I guess this is the price you pay for staying in the kind of hotel we're in," U.S. player Sheryl Swoopes said.

USA Basketball officials had been warned months ago that they could become circumstantial victims of the protests, but decided to stick with their choice of accommodations.