Except when the physicality is only allowed against the USA team. France is all over USA with very few fouls. Whereas KD is on the bench with 4 touch fouls.
The USA does not seem to have the shooters to settle for all these jump shots. France keeps in the 2 bigs and gets all the rebounds and stops all shots around the basket. USA is not creative enough.
If USA loses, it will be due to many things, not the least of which were KD's shooting and Adebayo missing 2 FTs in the last minute.
Problem is that so many of these players are just playing too average. Tatum was a no show and otherwise decent players like Lillard seem to be going half speed.
Call me a homer, but weren't Billy Donovan's USA Basketball Men's U18 National Team and his FIBA Americas U18 undefeated... Better choice for international ball?
KD missed 3 wide open 3s in a row in one possession at the end of that game, which would have given us the lead. No excuse.
At some point you have to be a bit hungry to win at the Olympics. You have to scrap, dive for loose balls and be physical until these FIBA refs call it a foul. These are wealthy, pampered offensive players used to NBA rules protecting them from physicality and injury. The parade to the foul line doesn’t occur here. They play lousy defense both because they are not used to playing together and the NBA game doesn’t ask for it. USA should beat Iran and Czech Republic to get to the metal round but after that they need to want to win to medal
Amen. Hungry Shaq is the greatest basketball player of all time. We only got 6-8 years of hungry Shaq in a 19 year career. He was still pretty good, but not the best ever. Team USA only has a handful of hungry Olympians on the basketball team. Every player on the teams they are facing is a hungry Olympian. This Team USA is pretty good, but not the best ever. And they don't have a talent gap to keep them from losing games they aren't hustling to win. It doesn't help that Popovich is still trying to coach them up against NBA strategies in international competition. They should have brought in Donovan. Maybe he didn't want it because he was still getting his feet under him in Chicago, but he has shown more success in the international game than Popovich.
An era ended tonight. Spain was ranked number 2 in the world. Has been for many years. Lost to a terrific Slovenia team in a close game the other night and drew the USA today. Mark and Pau Gasol, Ricky Rubio, et. at., are all older now. This was probably their last international competition. As a tribute to them, below is a link to the 2008 Gold Medal game in Beijing against a Team USA group with Kobe Bryant, Lebron James, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh, Melo, Dwayne Wade, Jason Kidd, Carlos Boozer an more. The highest level international game ever played. The Spanish players above plus Juan Carlos Navarro, Rudy Fernandez and others give the second Dream Team a great game, but get Mamba'ed in the 4th quarter. As the tape ends, the crowd roars in tribute to the great performance Spain turned in. Great basketball.
