Basketball - Day 7 Game Thread Aug. 12th

[Sedale Threatt]

This U.S. didn't prioritize passing when the team was constructed and it really shows - there isn't one above average passer on the whole roster. They really needed at least one of Steph Curry, LeBron James or Chris Paul so they could have someone who can make play for other players.

Having said that, their problem is actually not offence because they're scoring near or above 100 points every game.

This is what is making me scratch my head. Obviously there have been issues on offense. When things bog down we're just going 1 on 1, and that is not ideal. But we still played with tremendous efficiency -- something like 94 points on 76 possessions, which is excellent, issues or not. The biggest problems by far are coming on defense. We played some very sound offensive teams the past two games, but we're also breaking down as well. We thrive on forcing turnovers, so some gambling is to be expected. But we were straight-up terrible for most of the second half. If we play well on that end everything else falls into place, no facilitators of not.

[bakesale]

I'm absolutely patronizing you, because badgering people for not giving the opposing team credit in game threads -- you did it the other night, too -- is ridiculously annoying. Nobody likes the hall monitor.

Badgering? Pointing out one thing is all it takes to be ridiculously annoying? lol so sensitive too it seems.

Heaven forbid I should ask Americans to be humble enough to give some real credit to their opposition.

That's the thing -- I had been, as illustrated by the examples I provided. But instead you parachute into the thread well after the fact, take one post out of context and start whining about credit, like you did the other night with people who were making perfectly legitimate complaints about our weak defense.

If it was only you who did it, I'd have no issue. I don't care if it's just one person, I can assure you I wouldn't have said anything at all in either thread if it was just one person. It's a LOT of American fans who do it.

But look I give credit to Coach Collins well balanced commentating and Marc Stein who said immediately after this game: Serbia gave Team USA a clinic in offensive execution. They call it like it is. I think that's great. Like I said in the previous game thread Australia picked apart the opposition with great offence and by the sounds of what Stein is saying it was much the same thing in this game too. It goes in line with what I saw from Serbia when Australia played against them.

At the end of the day it really isn't that big an issue. Believe it or not I'm not here to annoy you for the sake of annoying you. As I've maintained the whole time I've only asked for more fans (not just you) to give more credit to the opposition. If you want to be all defensive and insult me then what can I say? Peace out dude.

[Sedale Threatt]

At the end of the day it really isn't that big an issue.

There you go! You could have just started there, kept it to yourself and saved us both some trouble. Lesson learned.

[bakesale]

At the end of the day it really isn't that big an issue.

There you go! You could have just started there, kept it to yourself and saved us both some trouble. Lesson learned.

LOL Americans can't take any sort of constructive criticism whatsoever without being defensive or insulting. What a damn shame.

But rest assured I don't give up so easily, I still have hope for you all yet.

[donkki]

Heres my real question.

How the hell arnt half these Serbian or Australian guys in the NBA. Seriously. A bunch of randoms from small countries can take a US all-star team to the wire back to back games?

If Im the Cavs, I terminate the contracts of the entire bench and sign the entire Serbian starting to 5 mill a year contracts and be the entire second unit after Kyrie/Bron/JR/Love/Tristan. If they can play like THAT against our all start, they would manhandle the Orlando Magic bench.

You are absolutely right, many of top players in Euroleague definitely belong to the NBA talent-wise and some could even thrive there.

[donkki]

I am sure France was watching and they are prepared to upset USA this Sunday. France did beat Serbia before in the tournament and seemed to be executing at a high level vs Venezuela, beating them by 40 points.

[richboy]

It would be nice if Durant would step up and assert himself. Melo should not be the alpha on this team at his age, Durant is a top 3 player in the NBA in his prime he should be taking over these games especially late. He has embarrassed himself these last 2 games.

Remember how he took over games at the 2010 World Championships? It's not like he's unfamiliar to the international stage. Let's see what happens in the next games.

I don't think its a coincidence that all the deep playoff run players are struggling. Kyrie is the only one looking good and he played a short season. I thought Durant look tired at the end of the year. Nothing has changed now.

[Promezclan]

At the end of the day it really isn't that big an issue.

There you go! You could have just started there, kept it to yourself and saved us both some trouble. Lesson learned.

LOL Americans can't take any sort of constructive criticism whatsoever without being defensive or insulting. What a damn shame.

But rest assured I don't give up so easily, I still have hope for you all yet.

Yes, Americans have strayed from the vaunted ideal of non-partisan sports fans...

[SunKing]

Honestly the vibe I got from this Team USA is not great.

I bet people now take consideration in how great was The Redeem Team that beat everyone by 20 besides arguably prime GOAT international team Spain (while being ahead all game long) in one of the best bball game of all-time which is better than any team competing in those Olympics by light years.

Don't get me wrong, USA is the best basketball nation by a country mile and will probably win those Olympics with that talent, but as soon as you don't get full cohesion as much as on-court as off-court, things will always be harder for them.

You gotta to give props to LeBron, Kobe, D-Wade etc... that while not only being twice to five times the players that some are on that team fully went into it.

[bb22]

This U.S. didn't prioritize passing when the team was constructed and it really shows - there isn't one above average passer on the whole roster. They really needed at least one of Steph Curry, LeBron James or Chris Paul so they could have someone who can make play for other players.

Having said that, their problem is actually not offence because they're scoring near or above 100 points every game.

This is what is making me scratch my head. Obviously there have been issues on offense. When things bog down we're just going 1 on 1, and that is not ideal. But we still played with tremendous efficiency -- something like 94 points on 76 possessions, which is excellent, issues or not. The biggest problems by far are coming on defense. We played some very sound offensive teams the past two games, but we're also breaking down as well. We thrive on forcing turnovers, so some gambling is to be expected. But we were straight-up terrible for most of the second half. If we play well on that end everything else falls into place, no facilitators of not.

I'm not sure who is in charge of the defensive schemes, but I strongly detest the "switch everything" game-plan the US is basing its defense on. It instills laziness and leads to way too much confusion and mismatches. If they continue like this, they will have to fall into a zone and hope for the best.

[TheTrooper]

https://media.giphy.com/media/l3vQYFygTwUwPV3TW/giphy.gif

[Separatista]

I've recently watched the last 2 games of usa vs aus and serbia.

Aside from the quick and accurate passing of those 2 teams, it's the US' switching defense that kept them from cruising these last games.

Everybody switches on defense even if its not a PnR. I see that it confuses alot of them, especially players guarding the paint. When a player cuts thru the sideline, the Jordan or Cousins switch on that guard leaving their man. From there the quick passes happen and some of the players forgets to switch and an open shot happen.

And I see coach K using a lineup of KD, melo, Green or paul on the front court thinking their quickness helps with the switch. It doesn't help at all because they get confuse and they often revert to their man on man defense.

the USA team just have low bball iq on defense. On offense, they have redundant players like Klay and Derozan. Adding a pure point guard would greatly benefit this team

[bb22]

https://media.giphy.com/media/l3vQYFygTwUwPV3TW/giphy.gif

Lol look at Cousins and Melo. Terrible

[bb22]

I've recently watched the last 2 games of usa vs aus and serbia.

Aside from the quick and accurate passing of those 2 teams, it's the US' switching defense that kept them from cruising these last games.

Everybody switches on defense even if its not a PnR. I see that it confuses alot of them, especially players guarding the paint. When a player cuts thru the sideline, the Jordan or Cousins switch on that guard leaving their man. From there the quick passes happen and some of the players forgets to switch and an open shot happen.

And I see coach K using a lineup of KD, melo, Green or paul on the front court thinking their quickness helps with the switch. It doesn't help at all because they get confuse and they often revert to their man on man defense.

the USA team just have low bball iq on defense. On offense, they have redundant players like Klay and Derozan. Adding a pure point guard would greatly benefit this team

Haha nice. Same time. So I'm not the only one.

[SlowPaced]

U.S. team is more talented than all other teams in the Olympics combined. But that's not the bottomline. The reason they struggle is because they don't have the chemistry and the tenacity of the other teams. Australia, Serbia et al are incredibly coherent teams. They absolutely maximize what they have, whereas U.S. is pretty much riding on talent and not getting full potential from anybody.

Now, this wasn't always the case, 2008 and 2012 teams were able to play coherent basketball. Whenever they slacked up on that, they too struggled.

I think the lack of leadership is really showing. Melo as the most experienced player is the only player who looks like he's taking this s**t seriously.

U.S. will still win the gold, but this group of guys would be in for a rude awakening if they came up against a team like 2008 or 2012 Spain.

[Separatista]

Haha nice. Same time. So I'm not the only one.

Yeah, it's quite obvious after I saw the game.

[SlowPaced]

Saw a lot comments saying Teodosic is an NBA level player. Well duh. He's the one that's not keen on going there because he doesn't want a limited role.

It's just not gonna happen because Teo is too inconsistent to be handed the keys to a team in the NBA like he wants. He'd easily be a Top 3 PG in terms of court vision if he went there, though.

[90sgoat]

NBA players are so overestimated nowdays. Its not only tonights game. This is being proven every day in different situations,(take KD decision for example) and things will get rather worse in the next years. Thats because the marketing and the media have been portraying the NBA stars as GODS for years now...

The only GODS were MJ, Magic and Bird. The 80s. Now its mainly hype. Super hype. The absense of a simple rule like the one which forbids zone deffence in restricted area for more than 3 seconds can make those immortals... look like mortals in Fiba games...

Harsh but true.

I've been saying for years that modern NBA players have no fundamentals. And when I say no fundamentals, I mean NO, ZERO, fundamentals outside 2 on 2 and pick and roll.

This is what basketball looks like when the entire league goes straight from high school (one and done) to the NBA, this is what it looks like when high school coaching is replaced by AAU selfish game.

These guys have all grown up being given absolutely free reign to shake and bake, carry and travel, 1 on 1 all game. They simply do not know how to play as a role on a team.

"The only guy who can hold Michael Jordan under 20 points is Dean Smith"

Dean Smith obviously knew MJ was one of the greatest talents ever, but he made him get in line, play within a system. What makes MJ so great, it's not only his skill, or great athleticism, it was his great fundamentals, MJ almost always made a fundamentally sound move. Even Kobe, being a ball hog as he was, at least understood fundamentals. Lebron never did. The rest certainly don't.

These guys honestly look lost. They don't know how to play the game as a team.

[Popovich]

I am sure France was watching and they are prepared to upset USA this Sunday. France did beat Serbia just before in the tournament and seemed to be executing at a high level vs Venezuela, beating them by 40 points.

France beat Serbia on the tournament(Serbia calculating there) but lost 3 consecutive times before the tournament .

[BodyCount]

I've watched Australia and Serbia game and USA team is still far far better then the rest. And I'm saying that as a European
What I wonder is why the hell USA just doesn't send majority of some top NBA team, cause it's clear as a daylight that team chemistry in this usa team is close to 0. And I wonder if they even practice or if there's even a point of having that mascott of a coach there.

Coach is absolute disaster. The crap this team is doing on D and the way they play offense is laughable. And they got no one assigned as a leader either. They're trying to play as a team and share even where they shouldn't be. I can't remember I've seen a single screen set in the whole game either. They kept pushing in the paint whole time, even if it was obvious Serbia condensed D in the paint. The way they used Cousins vs Serbia was a joke, while him alone is good enough to win the damn game for USA.

They didn't use any of their individual strenghts at all. Pace control was a joke.

Painfull to watch.