Can someone who watched the game tell me whether the defense improved? Who is still horrible? How is Lebron doing? Does Melo play better than James?
italy whips the US and then loses to Holland. US barely beats Germany and (loses/wins barely) at serbia. the sleep team still doesn't have the grasp of the international game. They only have three more games before it counts and I doubt they will have learned anything by then.
Team USA won't cakewalk to the Gold, but "there is no way that US can win the gold". Give me a break. The emotion that they showed on the game winner bodes well for the team. They understand that it won't be easy, and won't take anything for granted. Defensive effort will be the determining factor in whether Team USA will win the Gold or not, and I think they will definitely racket things up right away.
The zone defense just kills them, they need more work on that also did anyone catch Ulrich rooting for the US in the stands, interesting, very interesting
I should not have said that US has no chance of winning the gold medal. I do believe, however, that the chance is not good. Remember that this Germany team did not even qualify for the Olympics and it's missing the whole starting backcourt when they played the US. And Italy lost to Holland this afternoon. US is the only team that they beat in the tourney.
Well, I hope those doubting the US are here when they're standing on a podium, receiving some medals, Bill Simmons too. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/040804 Now they have to make some changes, like getting Marbury less PT, (never liked him neither does Simmons so I do agree with him on that) focusing the offense on two, maybe three players, and make defense and rebounding top priorities. It's going to be fun, win or lose, Brown, Pop, and Williams are too good to have a team this talented and watch it bomb.
US are always making excuses that they don't have their best players playing. I mean give me a break and look at the international team and see how many NBA players they have going for them? Give the other teams some credits for godsake. I mean even Detroit could've beaten this US Olympic squad. It's a team game not individual.
No excuses, this team should win the gold no doubt about it. I think they will. They just need to ratchet up the defensive intensity and funnel all action to the shotblockers (Duncan blocked and changed a lot of shots today). Run, every chance they get and try to get inside on the zone instead of settling for jumpers.
a) friggin amazing! b) someone needs to never work in television again. whether it's the producer or camera man or whoever. we miss an anthony free throw because they can't get the camera back to see the shot, we basically miss his second free throw because the under the basket angle was so terrible. then, we freakin' miss the game winner. lets see, the camera we were using to see dirk's 3 seemed fine to me. but hell no, lets switch to a camera showing nothing in particular, then lets switch to one that's even worse and just pretend we're listening to the radio as the last shot is called. overproducing at it's crappiest. keep the camera on the game dumbass. i hope you get fired. c) international referees are supposed to call the game by the book? apparently their book doesn't include the chapter on over the back fouls. if tim duncan wasn't such a calm guy i would've been waiting for him to explode at some point. d) did the ball go out of bounds and get awarded to us once? inside position and it's slapped out from behind by germany? out on us. we slap the ball from behind, out on us. they hit it off anthony, out on us. we slap it off their leg and it goes out, out on us. we've got enough problems with our team without having the refs step in. e) friggin amazing! i kinda get the sense the players are almost embarrassed and feel like playing super hard means they're admitting they have to play hard to beat bad teams, but maybe this and all that emotion afterwards will get rid of that sense. f) why the hell can't guys who can shoot, shoot? i realize there are plenty of guys on the team who can't shoot (great job Stu) but stephon marbury has been torching us since he was at minnesota. no matter what we do, he hits shots. blanketing him, wide open, runners, everything. but now he's getting all the open shots he wants and he can't hit a damn thing. it's amazing that iverson (who's open jumper is underrated) is our best outside shooter (though carmelo is pretty good, we just need to convince him he's playing UT in the final four and everything will work out). g) i would think we have very little shot at a medal (at least gold) based on this game but i'll still be rooting for them like crazy (even that spur tim duncan). h) stop flopping dirk!!! did karl malone and reggie miller give him some pointers before the game?
Hey, but those foreigners all suck, because otherwise they would ALL be in the NBA - codell and SamFisher said so!
I'm not sure what to think about this. On whole, I don't like the balance and makeup of the team, especially the lack of outside shooters, yet a big part of me believes that regardless, a team of NBA stars should destroy any international team it faces, especially a team that didn't even qualify for the Olympics like Germany. Yet I am now beginning to wonder if the rest of the world has really caught up or even passed us in terms of how the game should be played, fundamentally. Maybe we are at the point now where our players must rely on more their athleticism to win games? It's like the world all hired Pete Carrill to be their advisors and applied the fundamentals of soccer to basketball as well -- moving without the ball, spacing, truly playing as a team.
This German team has played together for three weeks, just like team USA. I thought that we could have beat them by a larger margin, even on their home court.
How can you expect these kids who never played in college to have great fundamentals? Only Tim Duncan is a fundamentalist among the group of star players. Players like Browny, Amare rely pure on athleticism to power over opponents. Compare this team with the true dream team of 92 on fundamentals, it's like night and day. But most NBA fans prefer to see a guy who has no range to dunk over some sharp shooter draining boring 3s. Take a look at the ESPN highlights, they routinely only show circus shots and dunks. And that system produces great athlete like SF3 who has no clue how to run a fast break.
In the camerman's defense: I think the crowd got to the main cameraman after the excitement of Dirk's game-tying trey, and pushed him off his angle. ESPN does indeed suck, but it wasn't their fault this time. Doesn't take away from the AMAZING finish, though.
Some might suck as individual players but they know how to win as a team. The US are a team with talents but stack up their IQ with the more educated and fundamental European players they are no match. If they are to play like 20 games, the US might destroy the field. But we are talking about 7 to 10 games with no margin for errors. THe US should win it all but it won't be a blowout. I think it's about time they should have US vs World for all star game or a best out of 3 Cup.
