I was saying it before any exhibition games were played: this team is flawed. Too many athletic finishers, not enough shooters. Marbury is the team's best outside shooter, yet its his role to pass. Iverson is overpassing. Melo played pretty well. Duncan cannot lead the team to victory in this format without shooters. Hell, even Ginobolli could knock down more threes than this squad.
Look, on a scale of 1-10, Team USA consistently recruits teams with: Overall Athleticism: 10+ Shooting: 3 if you play an international team with a few good ballhandlers to break pressure, play a pack-it-in 2-3 zone, and have 3-4 Eric Piatkowski's scattered throughout the rotation, Team USA is in deep sh*t. So, even if you took 3-4 of the 10+ athletes off of Team USA and replaced them with role shooters used to 6-7 shots a game, you're doing yourself a favor and end up with something like: Overall Athleticism: 9 Shooting: 7 Rudimentary, I know, but none of those Italians has the athleticism of an NBA starter.
Sure because Kobe, TMac, and KG are much better shooters than Marbury, Iverson and Marion. And Shaq busts three guys in the lane every night, anyway.
Most people realized that the USA squad is pretty flawed. But they kept thinking as long as they have Duncan, they can still win -- NOT! Duncan cannot win without good shooters surrounding him. BTW, this game is not the worst. The worst is still yet to come...
Let's not bury the team yet! the state of US basketball internationally sucks yes,but international players must come here to prove how really good they are. If the US dedicated as much time to an olympic team as much as the rest of the world does it wouldn't be close at all. hopefully the US b-ball federation will get their heads out of their @$$es and realize that practice and dedication will overcome and beat anything and anyone.
I would rather have Kobe than VC.................and also Shaq but man they just got embarrassed and some.............well now back to streetball...........
My olympic starting lineup would have been: Duncan JOneal KG Tmac Kobe Kidd eveyone there excluding kidd has a dependable jumper along with their inside games. All of them can play inside and out. All of them could defend also.
IMO, in 1992 Team USA brought it's best players(Jordan,Magic,Bird,etc) and in the recent years the majority of it's best players choose to sit and home.
I know, Pike sucks, can't get off the bench, can't guard NBA players. Odom gives you handles, rebounding, length. In the Olympics, Pike doesn't need to guard NBA athleticism. Imo, you don't miss Odom's skills when you have Marion/Stoudamire/Boozer/Duncan anyway. Give each guy 10 shots from the corner. Who do you put your paycheck on? I'd put my $ on Pike.
I think VC does particularly well in these type of games/rules... they need players who are unselfish as well... guys that are willing to play a team game... I'm not sure how Kobe and Tmac would work out. I just remember the 2000 olympics when VC basically carrried the team to gold. He also played great during the qualifying as well.
this is one huge problem, and when you combine it with the fact the players don't fit together thanks to all the no-shows, and then further combine that with less practice time, then further combined it with different rules* and officiating, we're playing against a stacked deck. adding on to Peudlfor's post, i'm sure they'd also find guarding kobe bryant and tracy mcgrady a little harder than shawn marion and dwyane wade, not to mention kobe and tmac can shoot well. i think it's obvious we'd do much better simply sending an nba team instead of what we send. send the pistons, or the lakers (before they blew up), send the spurs, the wolves, the kings, the pacers, then you'd have a group of guys used to playing with each other who also complement each other instead of a group of guys thrown together b/c of decommits. and not just a group of guys, but about the only guys they can get to go, young athletic guys who don't have much shooting ability. if the europeans and argentinians were really so much better than us, if they're shooting and passing and "fundamentals" really allow them to outperform our athleticism, then why aren't they over here showing us how it's done? i mean clearly, if they're beating us, they must be more effective even w/o athleticism and they would dominate and help NBA teams play basketball "the way it's meant to be played," right? shouldn't they're players be dominating the nba's "and1" players w/ no fundamentals? but of course, they're not. because international ball is extremely unrepresentative of actual basketball (and thus nba) ability. sure, there are quite a few international players over here already, but we still have the 7 or 8 most dominant players (down to wherever you rank peja and dirk) and we still dominate overall. it's just that international ball with our D team that doesn't practice much together doesn't mean much in the overall basketball scope of things. *why exactly do we have to play by international rules? this isn't an america rules the world, everyone should do what we do complaint, it's a logical argument. we invented the game, we dominated it for a century, we have the best league in the world, yet for some reason when we play international games we have to play by international rules. if other countries wanna tweak the rules, fine by me. if they wanna play each other with those rules, fine by me. but if the US is playing, it should be by US rules no discussion allowed. it would be akin to us showing up at the world cup and saying "hey guys, we know we don't play the sport as well as y'all, and yeah your leagues rule the soccer world, and for the most part we don't ever care about soccer, but we got some new rules for ya" and then everybody having to actually play by those rules once every 4 years. wouldn't that seem just a little weird. i seriously don't understand why we have to go adjust to their rules and not the other way around (hell, the good players are going to come to the nba anyway and play by US rules, why not start it earlier for them). anyway, if someone has any sort of logical explanation for it, i'd love to hear it.
Look at all the criminal type players we've had in the past. Maybe we need some arrogants sob's to get the title back american style. Barkley (Borderline criminal) Pippen (selfish) Malone (cheap shot artist) Bird (racist) Jordan (arrogant gambler) Stockton (Cheater) Mullin (Drunk) Ewing (Hookers) Laettner (*******) Robinson (Cheated Navy) Magic (womanizer) Drexler (nice dude)
