Jeremy Lin 7 wrote:Tony Parker couldn't come out of retirement to play backup?
The funny thing is that France's NT has been much better ever since Parker stopped playing on it. France got noticeably better as soon as Parker retired from their national team.
lambchop wrote:Mamba81p wrote:Sedale Threatt wrote:
We were the overwhelming favorites, and we won. Expecting us to completely roll the field hasn't really been a thing for a good 20 years now. Even the dominant 2008 and 2012 teams, with elite top-level talent, won coin flip games that could have gone either way against a great Spanish team. I guess because we're so good some people are always going to want to grade us on a curve, but as somebody who has been watching these competitions religiously since the 2006 World Cup, it's a totally different game. There's never going to be another Dream Team and international play has improved by light years.
I think the international play regressed in the last 7-8 years. There is no team as good as that Spanish team from 2006-2015. Serbia is the only one that has the potential to become as good as they were.
This. To me the countries that are actually good at basketball had more formidable teams years ago, like Greece, Argentina and Spain. Those were their golden generation teams. Now there might be better individual players who can emerge as actual NBA stars (speaking of international ball in general), but those teams arent nearly as strong overall.
And, yea, a full Serbian squad can definitely be compared to those teams.
Actually not. Those 2000s Spain, Greece, Argentina teams were the best non-USA national teams of all time. US sports media is always talking about USSR and Yugoslavia national teams, as part of the propaganda gimmicks, but those 2000s Argentina, Greece, Spain teams were easily the best international teams ever.
Any of those 3 teams would have went undefeated and won the gold at this tournament. I don't think a full Serbia is as good as those teams were. Those teams were really special and unique in terms of FIBA history. People don't really appreciate how great those teams were, because they often had to compete against each other. If it was just one team like that at that time, any one of the three would be considered the best non USA team ever. Because they all happened at the same time, a lot of people just don't grasp how great those teams were.
It's odd that they all happened at the same time. A full Serbia is theoretically great, but still not as good as those teams were.