Basketball - Day 7 Game Thread Aug. 12th

[Rotten Apple]

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

Lol look at Cousins and Melo. Terrible

So you point out 2 players.

[Popovich]

I spent last half and hour reading this thread. I see USA fans are concern and they should be but USA team is still big shark here on this tournament. I think they will take the gold i think but if they think they already have it they are wrong. Gold will not come easily and how time passes it will become even more difficult task in the future.

Here is where I saw problems in USA team. Without Irving they don't have quality ball-handler on PG spot. Jordan is an animal but total disaster for FIBA in the paint play. Also I would hack him all day with his 30% FT why do you need such a timber-jack in your squad? Also actually I thought he is better on D.

I'm amateur bettor and I know this is not a betting site but i wrote big comment and gave great picks for this game on one popular European betting website. I was only wrong about Raduljica who scored over my prediction and over the given line. I though Jordan would wait back and just block him but apparently old school type of centers does not suit him well. Thanks to him I lost a lot on one betting coupon. Serbia takes with proud it's second position on the world behind USA and I'm glad you saw guys how we run offence, you saw our style our passion and our team but keep in mind this is not the best team of Serbia. We should have Bjelica instead of Macvan, Marjanovic instead of Stimac and maybe even Erceg to replace Bircevic.

Hightlights from the game here https://www.vidio.com/watch/419757-usa-vs-serbia-full-game-highlights-men-s-basketball-rio-olympics-ximo-pierto-hd

[Popovich]

Brasil vs Argentina will be next great game to watch, atmosphere will be hot hot hot. !!! Argentinian fans are so far on the tournament best fans that I have heard.

[Bball0000]

To be honest, no team if not forced should choose Cousins or Green, two extremely ill behaved primadonnas who probably stink up the locker room with their bad mentality. I also doubt players like Butler, who is a ball dominant shooting guard, exactly what you don't want in FIBA. Lowry is also very overrated when he can't carry dribble. Deandre should not have been there either.

Here's who I would have added instead:

Hayward
Parsons
Paul Millsap
Mike Conley (Rajon Rondo)

4 smart players who are unselfish and can play fast passing oriented basketball.

except Draymond's the only decent passer on this team lol

[young11a]

they should cut green and thompson

these scrubs look out of place

and start jordan hes better than cousins

[Bball0000]

Irving
Klay
Durant
Draymond
DJ or Cousins

Play this lineup 25+ min and USA wins by 30.
Why?
Cohesion and chemistry. Dray knows Klay, and now they will want to include KD because he's their new teammate. They're also familiar with DJ and Irving in high pressure playoff games as an opponent.
Passing. Watch any Warrior game and you will see Klay can pass well, Draymond's great passer, high assists last year.
Defense. Draymond and DJ front court is all-defense. Klay is all-defense.
Shooting . Durant, Klay pure shooters 'nuff said

COACH K needs to stop feeding egos and pecking orders and do whatever to win ball games by a lot.
Playing the 2 biggest volume shooters in the world - MELO AND DURANT - at the same time is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Have one of them come off the bench as a very good 6th man.

[chudak]

"In [the NBA], there's movement, obviously. But with these guys, it's constant. You don't ever sit still. In our game, there's moments when you sit still, you can have a rest period. There might be an action that guys just run on one side. [Here] you're constantly moving from side to side and it's like they don't get tired. And that's new to us. That's very new to us." Kevin Durant

http://www.nba.com/2016/news/features/john_schuhmann/08/12/u-s-getting-by-with-superior-talent-vs-superior-teamwork/index.html?cid=nbacomsocial_fb_sf33264271

Wow.

First of all - I think that Team USA defence is their major problem and the constant switching can make them look terrible in that department, but it should be noted that they did not score a bucket in the last 2 minutes of this game. Not because of how Serbian defence was amazing, but because they played without any idea what they want to do on offence.

But what shocked me here is the idea of international players, with a weaker bench and less athleticism, while USA should be 12 man deep, are tiring out the americans by moving.

Running should be their game on offence and defence.

[bender235]

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.

Not to mention in the 80s a nickel got you into the movies, all girls were perky, and it was always snowy on Christmas.

Clueless millennial detected, confirmed.

[young11a]

Irving
Klay
Durant
Draymond
DJ or Cousins

Play this lineup 25+ min and USA wins by 30.
Why?
Cohesion and chemistry. Dray knows Klay, and now they will want to include KD because he's their new teammate. They're also familiar with DJ and Irving in high pressure playoff games as an opponent.
Passing. Watch any Warrior game and you will see Klay can pass well, Draymond's great passer, high assists last year.
Defense. Draymond and DJ front court is all-defense. Klay is all-defense.
Shooting . Durant, Klay pure shooters 'nuff said

COACH K needs to stop feeding egos and pecking orders and do whatever to win ball games by a lot.
Playing the 2 biggest volume shooters in the world - MELO AND DURANT - at the same time is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Have one of them come off the bench as a very good 6th man.

other than Dj the other 5 guys have been usas worst players

coach K is a clown and needs to forget about big names and play guys that are playing the best

[DickGrayson]

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.

FIBA is different from NBA. Some of those Serbian guys dont produce as well in the NBA.

[Dr Music]

The one that sticks out is that the format needs to be changed. It's obvious that the teams from Europe are far better than the ones from Africa and Asia and some of South America. No offense to any of the teams, but this equates to affirmative action. They either need to expand the field to allow more competitive teams in or stop this regional selection. Seeing how close teams like Serbia compete while Venezuela gets bombed shows that teams like Greece, Italy, Russia, Turkey should have been playing. Or basing most of the qualifications on the World Championships which are 2 years removed might need to change. Some rosters can be completely different two years down the road. Except for the hosts and defending champions, make everyone qualify in a tourney before the games and.or expand from 12 teams to at least 16 or 20.

[Apollo64]

One thing that maybe hasn't been mentioned is that in '10, '12 and '14 the US team usually employed lineups with two PGs that were very fast, someone like Harden for example played a lot of SF. The '16 team looks a lot slower to me with big lineups and only one real PG who is willing to penetrate in Kyrie.

[chudak]

No look pass by Teodosic

https://vine.co/v/5hBUtXFLZLY

[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.

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.

We've been playing this style for a while now. I don't know if it's exactly schematically the same as past cycles, but the general aim of trying to overwhelm opponents with athleticism and force turnovers leading to easy run outs has been a Team USA hallmark under Coach K. I'm guessing it's because we've got so many new guys who haven't played in this system -- that does make a pretty big difference, talent or not -- and some weak links like Cousins that's causing issues. Whatever it is, Australia and Serbia really made us look bad at times.

[Sedale Threatt]

No look pass by Teodosic

https://vine.co/v/5hBUtXFLZLY

That's one of the best passes I've seen in a long, long time. It would have been one thing if his teammates was right behind him, but that was a 20-plus footer out to the 3-point line. Amazing...

[Mr. E]

I had the result ruined for me right before I got home to watch the recording. Kind of glad that I missed this one.

[Sedale Threatt]

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.

I don't necessarily disagree with a lot of this -- our developmental system in the U.S. generally sucks, and I personally include college in that -- but I wish I had a dollar for every one of these manifestos I've read here over the years.

Also, how in the hell does LeBron James not "understand fundamentals"? He's one of the smartest, best all-around players this game has ever seen. He's exactly what this group is missing.

[Sedale Threatt]

I had the result ruined for me right before I got home to watch the recording. Kind of glad that I missed this one.

Indeed. Other than the first eight minutes or so it was a very frustrating game to watch.

[dalton749]

One thing that maybe hasn't been mentioned is that in '10, '12 and '14 the US team usually employed lineups with two PGs that were very fast, someone like Harden for example played a lot of SF. The '16 team looks a lot slower to me with big lineups and only one real PG who is willing to penetrate in Kyrie.

Kyrie is just proving he's a sg not a pg in this tournament. Getting lbj back to clevland is the greatest thing to happen to his career.

His attempt to run the offense in the final few minutes was embarrassing, they need Lowry on the floor in those situations to provide leadership, defense, and better ball movement.

Kyrie assists per 40: 7.9
Lowry assists per 40: 12.3

[bb22]

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.

I don't necessarily disagree with a lot of this -- our developmental system in the U.S. generally sucks, and I personally include college in that -- but I wish I had a dollar for every one of these manifestos I've read here over the years.

Also, how in the hell does LeBron James not "understand fundamentals"? He's one of the smartest, best all-around players this game has ever seen. He's exactly what this group is missing.

I'm sorry but saying that our development system generally sucks is absurd. The talent/maturity/physicality gap between American middle/highschoolers and the European kids is still enormous. The developmental programs and techniques used in Europe/US are all based on the same core principles. We just like to cater more towards the talent rich/athletically gifted end of the spectrum as the kids get older, because it has proven to be a recipe for success in every single league.
And to the person that said NBA players have zero fundamentals, that is absolutely laughable. Please define what you mean by fundamentals. The Aussies and Serbians have two very cohesive groups that played patiently and moved the ball well. This is more of a coaching (and player selection + chemistry) issue than an example of a gap in fundamentals.