They came, they saw … they survived.

Though the “Redeem Team” didn’t close with the grand flourish some had hoped, the American men’s basketball team completed its return to the top of the mountain with a 118–107 triumph over Spain today to win the Olympic gold medal.

This game felt like a coronation after the Americans had pulverized all comers to date, but the Spanish team didn’t seem to get the script and nearly pulled a shocking upset of a team it had lost to by 37 points in Pool play.

Spain hung around for most of the game and cut the lead to two points at one point in the fourth quarter. Things stayed tense until a four-point play by Kobe Bryant that put the Americans up by nine with 3:10 to go and, simultaneously, fouled out Spanish guard Rudy Fernandez. Fernandez played brilliantly, with a 22-point night highlighted by a spectacular dunk over American center Dwight Howard, and did his damage in only 18 minutes due to the fouls.

The main reason Spain didn’t leave the gym wearing gold medals, however, was another awesome effort from Dwayne Wade. Wade was far and away the best player in the tournament, so it was fitting that he capped it off with perhaps his best effort to date — a 27-point tour de force that he accomplished despite taking only 12 shots.

The number that’s most shocking is that Wade made 4-of-7 3-pointers — a shot he rarely takes and even more rarely converts in the NBA. His explosion from downtown led the Americans’ 13-for-28 night from beyond the arc — a sharp departure from previous tournaments where America’s long-range shooting had been its downfall.

This was particularly true in a breathtaking first half that saw the Americans take a 68–61 lead into the locker room. The Americans made 8-of-14 from downtown and 17-of-20 from the stripe, and in the first quarter hung 38 points on Spain with only five empty trips.

For the Spaniards, they’ll go home wondering what might have been had injured point guard Jose Calderon been able to play. The Raptors mainstay injured his groin earlier in Spain’s quarterfinal victory over China and wasn’t available; in his stead, Ricky Rubio scored six points in a team-high 29 minutes and backup Raul Lopez had an unspeakably awful two-minute stint off the bench.

Nonetheless, there was little doubt which team was the best in this tournament. The Americans won every game by double figures and all but one by more than 20 points; if they weren’t quite the Dream Team, they were at the very least a nightmare for their opponents.

But to get to last night’s triumph in Beijing, we have to claw back through the failures. Ultimately, it was those shortfalls that set the stage for Sunday’s heroics in Beijing.

The American basketball program was afflicted with a deep-seated hubris in the early part of the decade, which may have been an inexorable result of the runaway success of the 1992 “Dream Team” and the two gold-medal winning squads that followed. But as the world closed the gap it was no longer possible to just show up with a crew of NBA players and blow everyone else off the floor — as America found out in humiliating fashion in the 2002 World Championships and the 2004 Olympics.

Yet I would argue the real turning point didn’t come until the loss to Greece in the 2006 World Championships. Up until then, the narrative had been that the Americans had merely selected the incorrect players (not enough shooters and specialists, in particular) and hadn’t focused enough on filling the programs with players who truly wanted to be there.

All that was true, yet the Americans still lost that game in Japan to finish third at the World Championships. Afterward, coach Mike Krzyzewski betrayed a complete lack of knowledge of his opponent by referring to the Greek players by their numbers, a glaring signal that the hubris hadn’t been washed out of the program.

That wasn’t the only one — when he took over the job, Coach K said his players would have to give up two of their next three summers — apparently already assuming that his team would win the World Championships and wouldn’t have to go through a qualifying tournament for the Olympics.

I would argue that the loss to Greece may have been the best thing that ever happened to the American program. It was only after that defeat when it all clicked — that the Americans could do everything right and still lose, that they had to actually scout opponents and not just rely on overwhelming with turnovers and transition baskets, and that the international game was just different enough that players would really benefit from extra experience in it.

Fast forward to 2008. Wade, LeBron James, and Carmelo Anthony — each of whom had bee wearing the American jersey since 2004, and one of whom had been teased as “LeBronze” by international fans — were three of the mainstays of this year’s squad. Chris Paul, in his third summer, became the team’s crunch-time point guard after losing minutes to Kirk Freaking Hinrich two years earlier at the World Championships. Yes, adding Kobe didn’t hurt either, but the truth is the experience would have helped him a lot too — he forced NBA-type shots throughout the tournament and had trouble adjusting to the international 3-point line.

Coach K is likely to step aside now, and team czar Jerry Colangelo might ride off into the sunset with him. But after some rough first steps, those two have the program in much better shape moving forward. There are systems in place now for developing talent, for choosing the roster, and yes, for scouting opponents, systems that simply didn’t exist five years ago when we still dreamed of another Dream Team.

Instead, we got to appreciate 12 guys living their own version of the dream. Unlike past teams, these guys went out and enjoyed the experience — the U.S. players were constants at the other Olympic venues and around Beijing and mingled heavily the other athletes, most notably Kobe and LeBron’s new BFF Michael Phelps.

In the end, that may have been what helped get them through. At the end of a month-plus odyssey that started in Las Vegas in July, they had enough gas left in the tank to hold off a game challenge from Spain. Part of me thinks it was because they had so much fun that they forget they were on a business trip.

Whatever the reason, their redemption is complete. After an eight-year drought America is back on top of the basketball world, and its program has never looked better.

jhollinger@nysun.com