USA Basketball Announces 30 Finalists For 2016 U.S. Olympic Men’s Team

there were only a few fastbreak fouls. most of them were in the halfcourt on 1-on-1 drives or just fighting for high-post position on plays where the US had nothing going. they were poor fouls because they were giving a stagnant halfcourt offense free throws on plays 20 feet from the basket. giving up a ton of free throws to 80% free throw shooters on purpose would be a terrible strategy unless you were stopping a sure fastbreak. i can't imagine serbia was trying to give up 17 free throws in the 3rd quarter to stall the offense when the offense had been stalled since the 1st quarter. serbia's careless fouling and the refs extremely tight calling of the game in the second half hugely helped team USA.

 

It actually seemed to me the refs helped the US more in both halves. Very significantly too. (Yes, I am aware Serbia did foul some to slow down the pace.)

Team USA should consider themselves extremely lucky for getting out of this one. This team is so flawed. So flawed.

 

there is almost no such thing though. anyone can go cold and in those moments you need someone with more weapons than a jumpshot. I mean klay thomspon sucks balls.

this team is just underperforming and needs to clamp down harder on defense instead of clowning with a lead.

 

Watching Team USA reminded me of a timeout during the WCF as Kerr and Donovan were miked up. Donovan in his timeout was going in depth to his team about what to do on offense. Kerr kept it simple. All he kept saying repeatedly was "move the ball, move the ball".

Now you would think the team that moves the ball better than any other team in the NBA(all due respect to the Spurs) wouldn't need to be told repeatedly in the WCF that they need to move the ball as they would remember to do so but yet there was Kerr reaffirming it to them.

It reminded me that just because these are NBA players they don't need to be told that repeatedly...otherwise they'll go back to "your shot, my shot, your shot, my shot" (as KD, Kyrie and I guess Melo are used to).

 

ok, sure. rduljica gets 4 fairly obvious calls in his favor in one half of basketball (the offensive foul posting up jordan was the only one the replay didn't give a good look at) and team USA gets 2 technicals and an unsportsmanlike foul for 6 free throws in one half, but serbia was the team getting calls against them in the first half. i'm not sure team USA had 3 technicals/unsportsmanlike fouls in all of the last olympics so 3 of them in one half is pretty out of the norm. now the second half team USA got a lot of free throws but i think the US got to the penalty in both quarters so it's not like they swallowed their whistles. in fact, i think both teams were in the penalty in all 4 quarters, and they are only 10 minute quarters. that's how many fouls the refs called. 67 combined free throws, which would be about 80 in a 48 minute nba game.

 

well obviously some players are more likely to go cold than others. maybe it's not pure shooting, but players you trust with a big shot. the 2012 team probably didn't have much better pure shooters, but this team is putting guys like lowry and derozan and butler and cousins out there in big moments or at least for big amounts of minutes. i sure don't trust those guys. and even if draymond might be a good player, i certainly don't want him shooting. and right now, i don't want him dribbling or passing either with the way he is playing.

with thompson missing everything and george playing horribly, it suddenly feels like irving and anthony, and maybe durant, are about the only guys i want near the ball in the closing minutes.

throw in the fact they are playing D at 2004/2006 levels, especially in terms of not communicating and playing the PnR terribly, and this is troubling.

 

Anyone knows where I can watch longer highlights of the game

 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC53v-IW_YVYcMu_oqnTR4bw/search?query=basketball