Men's Olympic Basketball

[Stuhoo 78,425]

A tough last exhibition today against a pretty good, medal-worthy German team. 

USA wins by four. In the fourth quarter the game was taken over by the 39 year old (!) US Captain, LeBron James. In a game of stars he was clearly the best player on either team down the stretch.

US needs to stop turning the ball over 12-18 times per game. If we can fix that we're looking at gold; if we cannot we're looking at an upset loss.

[Loaded Chicken Sandwich 8,520]

Need to quit trying to feed Embiid. He's been really bad in the exhibitions and he can't handle a double team to save his life. Whole team needs to lock in defensively and up their intensity. Need to go out and just absolutely whoop the snot out of teams.

[Stuhoo 78,425]

16 minutes ago, Loaded Chicken Sandwich said:

Whole team needs to lock in defensively and up their intensity. Need to go out and just absolutely whoop the snot out of teams.

True, but far easier said than done.

Some other countries have teams that are flat-out stacked, and no country, including South Sudan gets "out-athleticized" by the USA anymore.

[Hovadipo 54,258]

May be off a number one way or the other, but saw a tweet that said the Dream Team played ~5 NBA players. This year’s team is set to play ~60. This team should still dominate but they have about 3.5 killers on the entire roster. I was rooting for Peter Jok and South Sudan the other day. 

Edit: saw the tweet again. It’s 9 and 61.

[Loaded Chicken Sandwich 8,520]

2 hours ago, Hovadipo said:

May be off a number one way or the other, but saw a tweet that said the Dream Team played ~5 NBA players. This year’s team is set to play ~60. This team should still dominate but they have about 3.5 killers on the entire roster. I was rooting for Peter Jok and South Sudan the other day. 

Edit: saw the tweet again. It’s 9 and 61.

International basketball has definitely gotten way better. But it isn't an excuse. Problems for the USA is the inability to put in a strict offense and defensive intensity. Coach K had it in 2008 and the only game they really had that was close was Spain. That 2008 team played defense and didn't play as much 1 on 1. They also had a dominant big(and insanely underrated and underappreciated) Dwight Howard, who 100% accepted just catching lobs and playing defense. They also took wearing the USA jersey seriously. Not sure the guys now take it as serious anymore. I think they need to really ramp it up defensively. And Embiid needs to go to the back on the line. Start AD and bring in Bam. And rebounding... Lordy the rebounding...