Re: USA Basketball Tokyo Olympics
Posted: Sun Jul 25, 2021 4:40 pm
I watched the whole game and didn't get the chance to post because the game ended at 11pm here. It was just like old times watching the NBA stateside.
I'll start with everyone's favorite hot take, Greg Popovich. Head coach of the USA Men's National Team is the most difficult basketball job in America. If you don't believe me, consider the 11-player roster (sorry JaVale McGee) will earn roughly a combined $305 million next season and think about how it was possible for them to command such high salaries. I'll give a hint, they didn't earn it by being 3rd or 4th option role players for their NBA teams. Maybe some will say the player's collective salary is counter evidence to my claim that the head coaching job is difficult, but to that I'd wonder if those people even understand how the game is played.
In 2004, Team USA had a ball movement problem that was a plague on NBA basketball at the time. (We all well know what happened in the 2004-05 season that changed everything.) The 2021 team doesn't lack ball movement, in fact they try to move the ball too much. It's ball movement for the sake of ball movement, and it wouldn't fool a well coached college team let alone an Olympic opponent.
Both the 2004 and 2021 teams lack cohesion, and most importantly, they lack a hierarchy. In a locker room of alphas, who's the alpha-alpha? Who's the alpha who knows how to be an alpha in their auxiliary role? Stuff like that doesn't just Pop into place, it takes weeks (months?) of physical and mental conditioning together.
Team USA was too easy too defend against France because they were too predicable. Hunting three-pointers. Ballhandlers not attacking the rim off of screens. Over passing. Part of that is coaching for sure, but defense is also part of coaching and Team USA defended well for most of the game. They had a few defensive mistakes in the second half and they lost the overall battle for 50/50 balls, but I didn't see anyone flat out dogging it on the defensive side and I think that is a credit to the coaching staff.
Also remember that it's a coaching staff, so if someone is going to put blame on Popovich, they also need to put blame on Steve Kerr, Lloyd Pierce (eh, OK..), and Jay Wright. We're not talking about Earl Watson and Igor Kokoskov, the coaches on that bench have won everything at their respective levels. So if Greg Popovich is the wrong guy to lead the team, fine. Then tell me who should lead the coaching staff and exactly how they're going to be significantly better at managing their NBA team and an ever turbulent Team USA roster. This is a classic situation of the back-up quarterback being the fan favorite despite never taking a single snap in a real game just because we've never had the chance to see them fail.
Onto the minutia of the game. The way I saw it, Team USA won 2.5 quarters to 1.5 for France. Team USA was defensively sound and shot well for the first half. That changed in the third quarter when France put two 7-footers on the court together and Durant picked up a fourth foul in the first couple of minutes. Jrue Holiday steadied the ship brilliantly as he appeared to be the only guy willing to take a shot at the rim, and it looked like Team USA would cruise to a mostly comfortable win.
Team USA turned up the defensive intensity to start the 4th, but then I saw them revert back into their All-Star game offensive form of being too easy to defend, and it still almost worked. I'm sure everyone has seen the sequence of missed shots late in the 4th quarter. Most of those shots were wide open. They just missed. I'm betting it won't happen again for at least the next two games.
So while it's easy to point the blame at this or that, and holy hell do some people love to shit on Team USA for any little reason, they easily could've beaten France by 10 points. But I'm sure there would've been a collective of opinions who would've said it was embarrassing that they didn't win by 20 points.
I'll start with everyone's favorite hot take, Greg Popovich. Head coach of the USA Men's National Team is the most difficult basketball job in America. If you don't believe me, consider the 11-player roster (sorry JaVale McGee) will earn roughly a combined $305 million next season and think about how it was possible for them to command such high salaries. I'll give a hint, they didn't earn it by being 3rd or 4th option role players for their NBA teams. Maybe some will say the player's collective salary is counter evidence to my claim that the head coaching job is difficult, but to that I'd wonder if those people even understand how the game is played.
In 2004, Team USA had a ball movement problem that was a plague on NBA basketball at the time. (We all well know what happened in the 2004-05 season that changed everything.) The 2021 team doesn't lack ball movement, in fact they try to move the ball too much. It's ball movement for the sake of ball movement, and it wouldn't fool a well coached college team let alone an Olympic opponent.
Both the 2004 and 2021 teams lack cohesion, and most importantly, they lack a hierarchy. In a locker room of alphas, who's the alpha-alpha? Who's the alpha who knows how to be an alpha in their auxiliary role? Stuff like that doesn't just Pop into place, it takes weeks (months?) of physical and mental conditioning together.
Team USA was too easy too defend against France because they were too predicable. Hunting three-pointers. Ballhandlers not attacking the rim off of screens. Over passing. Part of that is coaching for sure, but defense is also part of coaching and Team USA defended well for most of the game. They had a few defensive mistakes in the second half and they lost the overall battle for 50/50 balls, but I didn't see anyone flat out dogging it on the defensive side and I think that is a credit to the coaching staff.
Also remember that it's a coaching staff, so if someone is going to put blame on Popovich, they also need to put blame on Steve Kerr, Lloyd Pierce (eh, OK..), and Jay Wright. We're not talking about Earl Watson and Igor Kokoskov, the coaches on that bench have won everything at their respective levels. So if Greg Popovich is the wrong guy to lead the team, fine. Then tell me who should lead the coaching staff and exactly how they're going to be significantly better at managing their NBA team and an ever turbulent Team USA roster. This is a classic situation of the back-up quarterback being the fan favorite despite never taking a single snap in a real game just because we've never had the chance to see them fail.
Onto the minutia of the game. The way I saw it, Team USA won 2.5 quarters to 1.5 for France. Team USA was defensively sound and shot well for the first half. That changed in the third quarter when France put two 7-footers on the court together and Durant picked up a fourth foul in the first couple of minutes. Jrue Holiday steadied the ship brilliantly as he appeared to be the only guy willing to take a shot at the rim, and it looked like Team USA would cruise to a mostly comfortable win.
Team USA turned up the defensive intensity to start the 4th, but then I saw them revert back into their All-Star game offensive form of being too easy to defend, and it still almost worked. I'm sure everyone has seen the sequence of missed shots late in the 4th quarter. Most of those shots were wide open. They just missed. I'm betting it won't happen again for at least the next two games.
So while it's easy to point the blame at this or that, and holy hell do some people love to shit on Team USA for any little reason, they easily could've beaten France by 10 points. But I'm sure there would've been a collective of opinions who would've said it was embarrassing that they didn't win by 20 points.