12 man roster Curry / CP3 Harden / Westbrook Durant / George / Leonard Lebron / Griffin / Green Davis / LMA
Congrats to Chandelier on scrapping it out with the 8 above to maybe squeak past the first cut Honestly you'd have a hard time making a case that he is NOT THE WORST of the 34 players invited I'd takes Barnes, Oladipo & Beal over him in a heartbeat ... all 3 have the star upside of a go-to scorer that DAL would kill to have for that $32M they still owe him Mavs are also desperate for an athletic big to defend the paint, control the glass, and finish at the rim I bet Cuban (like me) would gladly take Plumlee & Faried over him to pair inside with Dirk since no DeAndre or Tyson That leaves 3 guys out of 34 I MIGHT concede as worse than Parsons: Gordon Hayward Closest thing to a CP clone in the NBA currently (well, maybe Dekker) ... except ... Opie is a much better shooter from everywhere, (IMO) a slightly better passer, and I think he's a little more athletic In fact, I cannot come up with even 1 basketball skill/tool in which CP is better than GH He nearly pulled a Steve Francis last year (just missed 20/5/5) and seemed to reach a new level with career high PER (20.2) & WS (8.7) Both of those numbers dwarf anything CP has ever done, plus he's not coming off microfracture VERDICT: GH is a much healthier, slightly more talented version of CP Tobias Harris Another very similar scoring SF, but more of a shooter, and overall game is not as well-rounded as CP They have almost identical PER for both last season (16.7 vs 16.3) and career (16.3 vs 15.3), and also similar WS for 2014-15 (4.8 vs 5.5) Both good rebounders for a SF Both poor defenders as tweener Fs ... too slow to chase wings, too small to bang bigs Harris is the better shooter, and a much better post scorer Parsons is the better ballhandler, penetrator, and playmaker off the dribble VERDICT: PUSH - finally, someone on the USA roster I CAN'T clearly prefer over CP! MCW I'll admit it ... I hate this kid's game, and I probably always will He is Rondo 2.0 without the headaches or the elite finishing at the rim I don't think it speaks well of him that he became the first reigning ROY I can remember to be traded ... and by a rebuilding joke of a team whose only PG alternative became Isiah Canaan His 2014-15 PER actually improved dramatically as a Buck (16.3 vs 12.8 - 14.9 total) and his WS rebounded to his rookie level in only 25 games (1.3 vs -0.5) Unlike the other 4 bottom-feeders in this group, he is actually a better defender than offensive player, but his shooting is so awful he can sometimes rival Rondo and Rubio as the NBA PG teams sag off the most and dare to shoot VERDICT: HOORAY CHANDELIER! You are officially tied with Tobias Harris as only the 33rd-worst player to be invited to Team USA Camp!!! Enjoy your week as Colangelo's prettiest practice dummy getting abused & embarrassed by far better players James Harden should start calling you REEK No worries ... you'll be back to shopping, tanning, and watching the playoffs shortly
Iguodala - 71.7% career FT shooter Dragic - 75.1% career FT shooter Not that much of a difference really between your favorite player and the guy you are dissing for poor FT shooting.
I wonder if any team in the future will look better on paper than the original Dream Team. This one certainly comes close to being 2nd best.
Guards: Stephen Curry (Starter) James Harden (Starter) Kyrie Irving Klay Thompson Wings: Kevin Durant (Starter) LeBron James (Starter) Kawhi Leonard Paul George Carmelo Anthony Big Men: Anthony Davis (Starter) DeMarcus Cousins Blake Griffin What do y'all think? Would love for Paul George to play to get a chance to make up for the incident. KD to redeem himself for bailing out. Anthony for one last hurrah with CP3 and LeBron.
Who does Dwight beat out at C, AD or Cousins? Dwight's limitations on offense and his poor FT shooting could make him a liability Coach K doesn't want to bother with.
He should take Cousin's spot if it's between those two. Dwight is the veteran and has a better attitude. Plus, is there really any question that we're going to win? Limitations don't really matter here with all the talent we'll have. We could throw Joey Dorsey out there and still win.
that actually is an amazing starting lineup. durant, lebron, and davis could all end up as top 10 all-time players and then the bad players in the starting lineup are the mvp and mvp runner-up. and everybody is in their prime (or at least very close in davis' case).
my recollection of 2014 is that, surprisingly, it was our bigs that were our greatest advantage. no one could keep us off the offensive glass. curry struggled shooting for a decent portion of the tourney and i don't remember harden actually shooting that well despite leading the team in scoring. but whereas our bigs mostly just clogged up the offense in the past, they were the garbagemen who teams couldn't compete with. it was kinda weird how easily we won the worlds. granted, we missed out on the traditional close game with spain, but the fact we won every game by 20 with a squad not as good as either of the last 2 olympic teams was weird. it seemed like we rarely outclassed teams for the whole game, but we would just maintain contact or a small lead, have one good quarter, and then never let teams back in. we rarely felt overwhelming, just steadily better with no big lulls to somehow fall behind by a lot to the wrong team.
Spoiler I seriously cannot BELIEVE I left out Chris Paul and Westbrook, wow. I don't know WHAT I was thinking Guards: Stephen Curry (Starter) James Harden (Starter) Chris Paul Russell Westbrook Kyrie Irving Klay Thompson Wings: Kevin Durant (Starter) LeBron James (Starter) Kawhi Leonard Bigs: Anthony Davis (Starter) DeMarcus Cousins Blake Griffin Fixed, sorry dudes.
Team USA is going to win but that has nothing to do with choosing the backup C. Players may be sensing a very special team and want to be a part of it.
