Post#1358 » by cupcakesnake » Sun Sep 10, 2023 1:13 pm
Everyone trying to come up with a cool reason the USA lost (B team, cohesiveness, wrong stars, choking etc.) there's really one simple thing here. Defense.
USA had zero problems on offense. They let the tournament in scoring and put up over 100 on all their strong opponents. No one stopped this team. They generated plenty of assists and threes. You can't realistically expect more from a team, offensively, in a tournament setting like this. This was a powerful, unstoppable offense, with a ton of variety. They could have taken care of the ball a little bit better, but turnovers weren't an awful problem (they were middle of the pack
But the USA also gave up 110 points to Lithuania, 113 to Germany, and 127 to Canada. They wanted to play a tiny switching defense that allowed them to stay fast and skilled on offense. But the switching scheme was very lazy, the players didn't play with a ton of effort, and the personnel was wrong for that scheme. Opponents with good ball handlers (Canada and Germany especially) got to pick their matchup with 1 screen. You want Austin Reaves or Haliburton? Have at him! They'd also allow their only source of rim protection get switched onto the perimeter, so there was never strong help behind the point of attack. If the US wants to be lazy and switch like that, they need a secondary rim protector on the court as much as possible. You can't just give the opponent whatever they want all the time and expect them not to score a ton on you. This tournament was complete neglect of that side of the ball.
