Post#2370 » by limbo » Tue Sep 10, 2019 7:56 pm
Imo, the #1 problem why this Serbia team failed is that, from top to bottom, they just didn't know what they wanted to do out there. They had no blueprint on how they wanted to play basketball. One of the biggest questions was how to use Jokic. First he's starting games, next thing you know, the game after that, he's coming on 5 minutes after the tip, he plays the C for three minutes but then he's sliding into the 4 position, with Milutinov at the 5. While all this is happening, they are trying to figure out how much does Jokic facilitate the offense compared to their actual PG's. So they try and go with Jokic, but he doesn't quite have the space, movement, familiarity he gets with the Nuggets, so they go back to the PG's, but they both kinda suck, well, here's Bogdan lighting it up from everywhere, so why not just give him the ball and let him score. Wait, we brought Boban too. Throw him in randomly every couple of minutes and see if it does anything. Well, Bjelica is an NBA player too, give him the ball and see if he can do anything... It was just a complete mess. And even then, their offense had enough talent that it wasn't bad, but defensively they just dropped the ball.
I always tell people. It's harder to fit talent into one team and be successful than most folks think. A lot of players are simply not going to be comfortable in different roles. This is especially true for a team like the USA, who have multiple players that are use to having the ball in their hands for every other night for 80-100 games in a season. It's hard to make that adjustment in a couple of weeks, especially if you are coming from the NBA which can be a completely different basketball game than under FIBA rules.