bb22 wrote:TheTrooper wrote:https://media.giphy.com/media/l3vQYFygTwUwPV3TW/giphy.gif
Lol look at Cousins and Melo. Terrible
So you point out 2 players.
bb22 wrote:TheTrooper wrote:https://media.giphy.com/media/l3vQYFygTwUwPV3TW/giphy.gif
Lol look at Cousins and Melo. Terrible
90sgoat wrote:To be honest, no team if not forced should choose Cousins or Green, two extremely ill behaved primadonnas who probably stink up the locker room with their bad mentality. I also doubt players like Butler, who is a ball dominant shooting guard, exactly what you don't want in FIBA. Lowry is also very overrated when he can't carry dribble. Deandre should not have been there either.
Here's who I would have added instead:
Hayward
Parsons
Paul Millsap
Mike Conley (Rajon Rondo)
4 smart players who are unselfish and can play fast passing oriented basketball.
nk657 wrote:NBA players are so overestimated nowdays. Its not only tonights game. This is being proven every day in different situations,(take KD decision for example) and things will get rather worse in the next years. Thats because the marketing and the media have been portraying the NBA stars as GODS for years now...
The only GODS were MJ, Magic and Bird. The 80s. Now its mainly hype. Super hype.
Bball0000 wrote:Irving
Klay
Durant
Draymond
DJ or Cousins
Play this lineup 25+ min and USA wins by 30.
Why?
Cohesion and chemistry. Dray knows Klay, and now they will want to include KD because he's their new teammate. They're also familiar with DJ and Irving in high pressure playoff games as an opponent.
Passing. Watch any Warrior game and you will see Klay can pass well, Draymond's great passer, high assists last year.
Defense. Draymond and DJ front court is all-defense. Klay is all-defense.
Shooting . Durant, Klay pure shooters 'nuff said
COACH K needs to stop feeding egos and pecking orders and do whatever to win ball games by a lot.
Playing the 2 biggest volume shooters in the world - MELO AND DURANT - at the same time is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Have one of them come off the bench as a very good 6th man.
donkki wrote:LivingLegend wrote:Heres my real question.
How the hell arnt half these Serbian or Australian guys in the NBA. Seriously. A bunch of randoms from small countries can take a US all-star team to the wire back to back games?
If Im the Cavs, I terminate the contracts of the entire bench and sign the entire Serbian starting to 5 mill a year contracts and be the entire second unit after Kyrie/Bron/JR/Love/Tristan. If they can play like THAT against our all start, they would manhandle the Orlando Magic bench.
You are absolutely right, many of top players in Euroleague definitely belong to the NBA talent-wise and some could even thrive there.
bb22 wrote:Sedale Threatt wrote:ciueli wrote:This U.S. didn't prioritize passing when the team was constructed and it really shows - there isn't one above average passer on the whole roster. They really needed at least one of Steph Curry, LeBron James or Chris Paul so they could have someone who can make play for other players.
Having said that, their problem is actually not offence because they're scoring near or above 100 points every game.
This is what is making me scratch my head. Obviously there have been issues on offense. When things bog down we're just going 1 on 1, and that is not ideal. But we still played with tremendous efficiency -- something like 94 points on 76 possessions, which is excellent, issues or not. The biggest problems by far are coming on defense. We played some very sound offensive teams the past two games, but we're also breaking down as well. We thrive on forcing turnovers, so some gambling is to be expected. But we were straight-up terrible for most of the second half. If we play well on that end everything else falls into place, no facilitators of not.
I'm not sure who is in charge of the defensive schemes, but I strongly detest the "switch everything" game-plan the US is basing its defense on. It instills laziness and leads to way too much confusion and mismatches. If they continue like this, they will have to fall into a zone and hope for the best.
90sgoat wrote:nk657 wrote:NBA players are so overestimated nowdays. Its not only tonights game. This is being proven every day in different situations,(take KD decision for example) and things will get rather worse in the next years. Thats because the marketing and the media have been portraying the NBA stars as GODS for years now...
The only GODS were MJ, Magic and Bird. The 80s. Now its mainly hype. Super hype. The absense of a simple rule like the one which forbids zone deffence in restricted area for more than 3 seconds can make those immortals... look like mortals in Fiba games...
Harsh but true.
I've been saying for years that modern NBA players have no fundamentals. And when I say no fundamentals, I mean NO, ZERO, fundamentals outside 2 on 2 and pick and roll.
This is what basketball looks like when the entire league goes straight from high school (one and done) to the NBA, this is what it looks like when high school coaching is replaced by AAU selfish game.
These guys have all grown up being given absolutely free reign to shake and bake, carry and travel, 1 on 1 all game. They simply do not know how to play as a role on a team.
"The only guy who can hold Michael Jordan under 20 points is Dean Smith"
Dean Smith obviously knew MJ was one of the greatest talents ever, but he made him get in line, play within a system. What makes MJ so great, it's not only his skill, or great athleticism, it was his great fundamentals, MJ almost always made a fundamentally sound move. Even Kobe, being a ball hog as he was, at least understood fundamentals. Lebron never did. The rest certainly don't.
These guys honestly look lost. They don't know how to play the game as a team.
Mr. E wrote:I had the result ruined for me right before I got home to watch the recording. Kind of glad that I missed this one.
Apollo64 wrote:One thing that maybe hasn't been mentioned is that in '10, '12 and '14 the US team usually employed lineups with two PGs that were very fast, someone like Harden for example played a lot of SF. The '16 team looks a lot slower to me with big lineups and only one real PG who is willing to penetrate in Kyrie.
Sedale Threatt wrote:90sgoat wrote:nk657 wrote:NBA players are so overestimated nowdays. Its not only tonights game. This is being proven every day in different situations,(take KD decision for example) and things will get rather worse in the next years. Thats because the marketing and the media have been portraying the NBA stars as GODS for years now...
The only GODS were MJ, Magic and Bird. The 80s. Now its mainly hype. Super hype. The absense of a simple rule like the one which forbids zone deffence in restricted area for more than 3 seconds can make those immortals... look like mortals in Fiba games...
Harsh but true.
I've been saying for years that modern NBA players have no fundamentals. And when I say no fundamentals, I mean NO, ZERO, fundamentals outside 2 on 2 and pick and roll.
This is what basketball looks like when the entire league goes straight from high school (one and done) to the NBA, this is what it looks like when high school coaching is replaced by AAU selfish game.
These guys have all grown up being given absolutely free reign to shake and bake, carry and travel, 1 on 1 all game. They simply do not know how to play as a role on a team.
"The only guy who can hold Michael Jordan under 20 points is Dean Smith"
Dean Smith obviously knew MJ was one of the greatest talents ever, but he made him get in line, play within a system. What makes MJ so great, it's not only his skill, or great athleticism, it was his great fundamentals, MJ almost always made a fundamentally sound move. Even Kobe, being a ball hog as he was, at least understood fundamentals. Lebron never did. The rest certainly don't.
These guys honestly look lost. They don't know how to play the game as a team.
I don't necessarily disagree with a lot of this -- our developmental system in the U.S. generally sucks, and I personally include college in that -- but I wish I had a dollar for every one of these manifestos I've read here over the years.
Also, how in the hell does LeBron James not "understand fundamentals"? He's one of the smartest, best all-around players this game has ever seen. He's exactly what this group is missing.