A few more years of Olympic failure and we'll see Dream Team III starring Zion, Cunningham, Chet Holmgren, Green, and Emoni Bates in 2028 ... Be patient
harden was injured, they definitely would win with a healthy james. Hardens entire package was based on manu ginobili.. his skills in the 2014 fiba world championships when coach k made him team captain and team usa rolled through the tournament by an average of 29 points per contest the thing im seeing with the current team usa roster, is that they have no guard able to control the pace and tempo of the game( which is essential in FIBA). Guards of the past like cp3, billups, jason kidd, and obviously stockton and magic were the best i have seen. But harden has that same kind of game similar to luka which is perfect for fiba. LeBron as a forward has that ability too so basically if team usa doesnt shoot the lights out, they are playing at the tempo and pace of their opponents. The kid of france nando de colo didnt have a good shooting game, but played an excellent floor game
what fournier said should be a surprise to nobody. That's why with a roster construction, balance is always the #1 key. The FIBA game is a different animal and a ton of these guys are used to being bailed out by refs with touch fouls and gimmicks in the states. Way too many players who just overlap one another
Yeah i hate Hardens character but his skill package is basically built for fiba. Thats why Doncic has a lot of similiarities and Doncic is probably goat fiba player
Guessing to shoot a 3, there is a different feeling to it. Their 3 pt accuracy was sucked into a basketball. Let's take France or Spain. Those guys were playing together since the dawn of their time.
Just watched the replay. Pop is the problem. Why was Middleton on the bench? Should have put Christian Wood on the the team. Let JVG coach USA
It’s stupid Popovich running the Spurs offense! It’s the FIBA officiating! ("Several players on Team USA are still adjusting to FIBA officiating, per @ChrisBHaynes. "Throughout the games, multiple players, from Jayson Tatum to Bradley Beal, have been staring down the officials following no-calls as they’re accustomed to receiving touch fouls.") It was selecting Keldon Johnson & JaVale McGee (over ________)! There’s no chemistry! Holiday, Middleton & Booker just got there! This excuse! and that excuse!
Od course hes running spurs offense what did they expect to play against fiba defense and court dimensions
Here’s the origin Athletic article, if anyone has access, tia https://theathletic.com/2728963/202...s-france-popovich/?source=user_shared_article
SAITAMA, Japan — Gregg Popovich is exactly right. There is no “surprise” when it comes to the Americans losing basketball games. Not anymore. “I don’t know what there was to be surprised about,” Popovich said to a reporter who’s covered him in San Antonio for years and flew halfway around the world to watch the team he coaches lose 83-76 to France in Game 1 of the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday. Nope, no sense of shock here, even though the loss snapped a 25-game winning streak in the Olympics for Team USA. What was on display Sunday night is precisely who the Americans have been under two … shocking (since “surprising” is not a word to be used) summers under Popovich’s direction. In games that count, the Americans are 6-3 in Popovich’s tenure. They’ve lost to the French twice, Sunday and in the quarterfinals of the 2019 FIBA World Cup, in nearly identical fashion. Again, they blew a seven-point lead in the fourth quarter by coughing up 3s and yakking all over themselves when they had the ball. Those are Team USA’s killer qualities in each of their six losses (in 16 games) under Popovich, counting exhibition games. There was a laughable — if that’s the word — sequence, starting with about 40 seconds to go and the Americans down two. Kevin Durant missed an open 3, Bam Adebayo missed the putback. Zach LaVine missed a jumper. France turned the ball over, but Durant and Jrue Holiday missed 3s. Then Damian Lillard slipped while dribbling the ball and turned it over on the next possession. “There is nothing to be surprised about,” Popovich went on. “They knocked down some 3s down the stretch and we made some mistakes. As Draymond (Green) said, we had (a seven-point lead) late in the game and we gave up 3s, so those are mistakes by players. Those things happen. But if we can be more consistent during the game, we wouldn’t have been in that position. When you lose a game, you’re not surprised. You’re disappointed.” That’s probably as close to “ripping his players” as Popovich has come as Team USA’s coach, counting the seventh-place finish at the 2019 World Cup in China, the 2-2 exhibition season in Las Vegas that just passed, and now this. Evan Fournier, the NBA free-agent-to-be, again destroyed his American colleagues, this time with 28 points and four 3s. His 3 with 57 seconds left put the French ahead 76-74, and they never gave back the lead. Nicolas Batum banged a 3 and Fournier a long 2 to help France dig out of that 74-67 hole. Rudy Gobert wasn’t quite as dominant as he was in the 2019 French win, but he still had 14 points and nine boards. The French trailed by as many as 10. The Americans’ best player was Holiday, he of NBA Finals fame, who along with Khris Middleton and Devin Booker, flew across the Pacific just days after the Bucks finished off the Suns to win a title, arriving in Tokyo on Saturday night. Holiday, who attended a championship parade in Milwaukee on Thursday, scored 18 points with seven boards and four assists off the bench. Adebayo added 12 points. The other guys who have been with Team USA the whole time, or close, didn’t do so hot. Lillard and Durant combined to shoot 7-for-22 from the field, and Durant battled foul trouble all night. Booker, understandably, looked sluggish in 18 minutes — he scored four points but shot 1-for-6. Middleton had nothing in just five minutes of work. “We all just, I think, just trying too hard … instead of just being who we are — the best players in the NBA,” Lillard said. “Shots just didn’t fall. We had opportunities down the stretch, just didn’t make them.” Being the “best in the NBA” just doesn’t matter as much as it used to, when Kobe and LeBron and, yes, Durant, were out there blowing out most of their opponents and otherwise not losing a game. This is the Americans’ first Olympic loss of any kind since 2004 and first pool-play loss since that same summer in Greece, when they lost twice — to Puerto Rico and Lithuania. So that’s how bad this is, although the French have several solid NBA players and a star in Gobert. Never since NBA players started to fill Team USA’s roster has there been a stretch like this — losses in three of the last four games that count, and five of the last eight overall. What’s the excuse? That Team USA throws together rosters late in the process, while these other competitive countries don’t experience nearly the same turnover? That Holiday, Booker and Middleton are tapped from a grueling Finals that ended not a week before the Olympics started, which is unprecedented? That the international game is different, foreign role players on NBA teams become stars when they put on their country’s jersey? Where in there is the explanation for why the “best players in the NBA” routinely make boneheaded plays down the stretches of these close losses? Beating Team USA isn’t even a big deal anymore, certainly not for the French or Australians, who each has a two-game winning streak over the Americans. The Iranians probably won’t be so lucky on Wednesday, but that is beside the point. Team USA is one loss shy of packing its bags after pool play is over, and the Czech Republic is certainly capable of beating the Americans on an off night. To be clear, Popovich is horrified by his own record coaching this team. He dwells on it and hates the losing. The players are frustrated, too, grumbling on their way back to the locker room about “running the San Antonio offense” when apparently they feel like there are better ideas. Pop has said, because of the truncated nature of Team USA’s training camp, the offense would be based on “concepts” instead of set plays. In the present, trying to determine what is wrong with USA Basketball is a fool’s errand. The coach insists the rest of the world has narrowed the gap so drastically that no loss is a surprise. His players likely only agree with him to a point but have to perform better anyway if they want to have a chance to compete for a medal. Any color would do. “I think we are more than capable of doing it,” Lillard said. “I think we have a history of dominance and maybe not always blowing people out, but we have a history of winning. And it’s not often that you see Team USA go out there and lose, especially to start. I think that’s why a lot of people will make it seem like the end of the world, but our job as professionals and this team and representing our country at the Olympics, we’ve got to do what’s necessary and we still can accomplish what we came here to accomplish, and we’ve got to make sure we keep that in mind.”
