I mean, whatever both Brown and White have played for Team USA and they already said White was first alternate if (lol, if, I mean when) Kawhi drops out. If you need a second best player, I'll take Brown, if you need a 12th man on a star studded team, the case for White is pretty solid. If Durant drops out I assume Brown is probably next. Brunson - I don't see a smaller offense-geared perimeter player being that useful to the roster even though he's arguably a top 10 player in the NBA
I'd rather them put together an actual cohesive team instead of the "island of misfit mascots" thing they've repeatedly tried.
I mean, you need a balance - last year's team was way too many role players, this years seems mostly fine, the games are short enough so that 1 Curry/Durant/Embiid/whoever run of not missing a single shot for a few minutes will probably create enough separation that you can win most games with defense after that. If you wanted to you could basically play 4 recentl all defensive team - Bam- Davis - White - Holiday - and then have Jayson Tatum, LeBron, Durant or Edwards as your " weakest ' defender
Holy crap that's a great idea. Take the All-Defensive (Americans) team as your 2nd unit. 10 minutes into the game, sub them all in and see what happens. I love international soccer, I struggle to care about international hoops, pretty much since the original Dream Team X2
A gold medal is a huge deal for player careers. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t think Nike has a hand in this. Jaylen Brown is a superstar.
ok, i guess it's underarmour that got Embiid to get US citizenship and New Balance that got Kawhi on the team, and Nike kept Brown off. Seems like a lame effort by Brown to try to blame Nike when he's actually disparging his own teammate in White. The basketball reasons here are pretty sound, but whatever, believe what you want.
Except the difference here is that Nike sponsors team USA and actually has the pull to do this. Your examples don’t match up. But whatever, keeping hating on a young black star champion who stands up to corruption.
How is it corrupt? Even if true, he is only saying something for selfish reasons. Also, it's not that serious.
OK so why didn't Nike block always-injured Kawhi (NB) and the two UnderArmour guys in the starting Lineup (Curry, Embiid) and all of the other non-Nike players? Why isn't Zion on the team? Why isn't Paul George? How did Anthony Edwards make the team? If there's a Nike purge it wasn't handled very well.
Embiid out here looking like a trojan horse for Team USA…his interior defense has been a joke, he’s not even trying
I watched a highlight package... There's not much to go on, but it did seem like the team spammed three-pointers while Australia's highlights were diverse. They also turned the ball over a lot. Don't be surprised to see a lot of nervous moments between them and teams they can't simply overwhelm with their talent because it looks like that's their only clear advantage again. Looking at the roster, it becomes clear they need some big bodies willing to set screens and Durant to play. They can't close games with Curry, Edwards, Tatum, LeBron, and Embiid. That lineup looks like a planet eater, but White, Curry, Edwards (or Booker), Durant (or Tatum or Bam), and Davis would be more effective. LeBron and Embiid should be ceremonial starters and nothing more.
