Caribsports said:

Maybe they played them soft by design?

Anything’s possible in sports anymore . But if that is true the coaching staff should be reprimanded. 

I watched most the game.

No expert but it did not look like we played them soft.

I have several issues with how we do international play.

1. I think international play shows how flawed the NBA game is in my opinion. We have the greatest athletes by far but all we do is 1 and 1 guard play. You could have went down and gave the ball to embid and Davis EVERY SINGLE time and beat them by 40 if you wanted to but we refuse to play that way and its a very much take your turn offense and we have guards that just don't shoot as well as other international teams.

2. I hear all the time the three point line is moved in we should shoot a higher percentage. I don't think this ever plays out though. The USA players and NBA players are very much three point shots or layups (This is just basketball now) so moving the three pointer in makes it a midrange shot for our guys and they aren't good at it. We consistently get out shot from 3 by every international team and it happened again yesterday.

We will probably win the gold medal but it won't be easy.

AJ , can we assume that it is poor coaching of this team’s strengths? Because I believe we should play a style of basketball that best destroys the competition every game .

I don't know what it is. I just feel like even though we have won the last 3 or 4 gold medals I feel like we ALWAYS underperform in international play.

We always have the better athletes but to me the game seems just different enough that we underperform.

I'm not smart enough to watch and say its coaching but I truly believe our average fringe NBA players would perform better than our ALL star NBA players. Dru Holliday to me is a great national player. Capable of scoring really good shut down defender. I think Embid SHOULD NEVER come out of the paint in international play. I get that he is capable of making the shot and in the NBA he can float outside and take a possession off.

There is just something missing for me with the all star line up we have and the international play. I'm not smart enough to figure it out (People don't pay me to figure it out) But we consistently underperform and I wouldn't put my money on the USA with a spread bigger than 20 in the olympics.

That three point line will be the ultimate equalizer for international teams I believe. Because we will always fall in love with the three and they will almost always shoot it better than us.

I think when your building the olympic roster a plyer like Brunson would be very valuable.

You have astute observations AJ . It’s going to be interesting watching USA vs Serbia next .

There’s a part of me who wants to see us lose for not adapting and/or allowing our fundamentals to go to the wayside over the years…because we won’t change until we lose…we’re just that ignorant it seems…one and done, player development being some of the key contributors to our decay imo…while the Euro countries work on the details, we’re all flash…if we look at the NBA, we can see what players from which countries who are dominating…& they don’t hold USA passports…

Forgive my ignorance regarding the Olympics but is it an elimination tournament like the NCAA ?
Or is it possible to lay an egg and lose a game and still win the gold?
TIA

It's pool play. You're in a 4 team group and you play the other 3 teams. The two best teams from each pool advance to a single elimination tournament with 8 teams. So basically go 2-1 and you advance. So you can have one bad game if it's early.

bobpm121 said:

It's pool play. You're in a 4 team group and you play the other 3 teams. The two best teams from each pool advance to a single elimination tournament with 8 teams. So basically go 2-1 and you advance. So you can have one bad game if it's early.

Thank you Sir!