USA Basketball

and they would just athletic those euros out of the gym

I respect your hoops opinions more than just about anyone, but this doesn't happen! We've been burned before with this mindset

yeah youre prob right but still it would be fun to see them try

very strange team. i dont get the k love inclusion at all
― pure rim rest (Spottie), Monday, June 28, 2021

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/q-and-a/jalen-rose-on-the-nba-playoffs

You recently said that the Cavs forward Kevin Love was chosen for Team U.S.A. because there was a desire for a team that wasn’t all Black. You then said you misspoke. What do you think now about the way the team is chosen?

So being a multimedia personality, it’s like being a referee. When I blow the whistle, the team that gets the call, they go to the free-throw line and they are happy that they got the whistle in their favor. The team that the call went against, they want to challenge the call.

For me, there’s two different styles of media. There’s the news-style media, for example, that I do on “N.B.A. Countdown.” That’s where you have the stats, right, you have the facts, right, and want to make sure that you’re delivering and you’re sticking the landing. A show like “Jalen & Jacoby,” that’s a variety show. It’s an opinion show. So what you do, as you know, is to try to entertain your audience in a provocative way. You do it, in this case, through sports. So as somebody that has covered and followed the N.B.A. for as long as I have, when I first saw Team U.S.A.’s roster, the first thing that came to mind to me was that Kevin Love, based on his play this year, didn’t deserve to be on that team.

I really hate that it kind of became what it became, because everybody that we speak on—this will be my nineteenth consecutive year covering the N.B.A. on television—each of the players that I cover or talk about, or coaches, I’m one text away from that person at all times. So my first overarching point was if we had to pick twelve players to go represent Team USA, I didn’t think he should have been one of those twelve players. So then it’s, like, O.K., what is the reason that he’s on the team? My conclusion about tokenism was just an opinion; it wasn’t personal. Me saying that in 2020, that it’s O.K. to have an all-Black team, it didn’t mean that I didn’t know that we didn’t have an all-Black team in the past. I clearly do know that. But, also, when you’ve been doing this for so very long, you assess yourself. One of the reasons that I feel that I went wrong is because I’m integrated in the N.B.A. family. If that’s going to be somebody’s opinion, which is a valid opinion that a lot of people are going to have when they see that roster—if that’s going to be said, I deduced that it shouldn’t be said by me.

pretty much, and i think he'd agree with your paraphrase!

Popovich and the Team USA coaching staff running lines at practice: pic.twitter.com/OrdDRnHdCd

— Noah Magaro-George (@N_Magaro) July 9, 2021

lol nice

Kerr absolutely dogging it

was gonna say something about him then remembered the crazy back stuff he had going on recently. whole spine might be fused together.

all fun and games until pop has a coronary

nigerian team is very impressive!

This team will lose

― Matt Armstrong, Monday, June 28, 2021 7:16 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nigeria's eight NBA players on its training camp roster:

Precious Achiuwa (Miami)

Chimezie Metu (Sacramento)

Jordan Nwora (Milwaukee)

Jahlil Okafor (Detroit),

Josh Okogie (Minnesota)

KZ Okpala (Miami)

Miye Oni (Utah)

Gabe Nnamdi Vincent (Miami)

— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) July 9, 2021

uhhh

Team USA has now lost to Australia 91-83, dropping to 0-2 in exhibition play.

— Chris Haynes (@ChrisBHaynes) July 13, 2021

its because they don't have Middleton and Holiday

this is feeling 2004y in the sense that they just loaded up with stars without thinking about roster construction or continuity

Seems bad.

is pop uhh doing a good job over there

sort of feel like international games don’t really matter, they should just award the game to the team with the best players

is pop uhh doing a good job over there

― lag∞n, Monday, July 12, 2021 10:16 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

nope!

is pop uhh doing a good job over there

― lag∞n, Monday, July 12, 2021 9:16 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol i feel like every player says they wanna play for him but never want to get yelled at by him so i kinda feel like his magic is pretty limited in this venue

like if this was 10 years ago he'd be chewing them out for being gutless and not respecting their competition and not sharing the ball, but this is a working vacation for these guys

yeah it kinda seems like the players view it more as a some sort of nba bonding retreat rather than a thing where you try to win the games whenever they ask the celtics who were on that last team about it they talk like they had an amazing time lol

yeah the stakes could not possibly be lower

xp that's well said, i think usa basketball is a pretty flawed concept until they get embarrassed and then next time everybody gets pissed off and they try hard for one event. it will never happen but i wonder what it would look like if they took a harder stance on participation, like right now it seems like anyone who's a big enough name who wants to play gets to play and they're scared to say no since that would alienate that guy forever. but that is not a sound method of team building.

lol

.@BasketballAus Welcome.

pic.twitter.com/oYoah7R6uA

— D’Tigers | Nigeria Basketball (@NigeriaBasket) July 13, 2021

if you look back at the last three teams we were sending guys like... KD, lebron, kobe, wade, harden, cp3, melo, brow, kyrie, dwight howard all in their primes.

the guys on this team who are in their primes are like... lillard, brad beal, zach lavine. maybe the younger guys like tatum and bam are close. booker, middleton... but they're not even there.

anyway it's just a totally different tier of player than we've been sending lately. i'm not sure it's a roster construction problem as much as it is a talent problem, relative to the expectation

tbh just seems like they're in a transition period between eras, which is pretty much what 2004 was. most of the best american players are older now, the guys who will be the next superstar class (zion, lamelo, trae, ja, tatum etc) are still a bit younger, not to mention guys like cade cunningham, jalen suggs, chet

Feel like US shouldn't need several future HOFers in their prime to beat any other nation. Other teams have some decent players but they play MUCH better at a team. It's such an American mindset to think you can just throw a bunch of talent or Raytheon missiles at another nation and they'll be so shocked and awed that you won't even need to plan any strategery.

Pop shoulda retired w Duncan imo

cant blame him, the post-duncan spurs were in title contention, then they werent. i keep thinking that he sticks around bc he wants to leave the spurs in a more stable spot before peacing out. he was too proud to retire when kawhi forced his way out, and i think that plus his wife passing has put him in a spot where its like...what else does he have left?

Yah, just kinda sad all around. Wonder if he’s be good at calling games

Other teams have some decent players but they play MUCH better at a team. It's such an American mindset to think you can just throw a bunch of talent or Raytheon missiles at another nation and they'll be so shocked and awed that you won't even need to plan any strategery.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Tuesday, July 13, 2021 1:02 AM (forty-one minutes ago)

well, it's endemic to the US having an enormous surplus of qualified olympian basketball players, there's going to be more players in the pool, less continuity etc. the other countries who play well together typically have a small group of NBA caliber players who have played in international competition for a decade bcuz they have to in order for the country to be competitive on the international level. this australian team is basically the same one that played in the FIBA world cup in 2019 and very similar to their 2016 olympic team, and patty mills, joe ingless, dellavedova all played in the 2012 olympics. the only player on the USA 2019 FIBA team (which didn't even medal) that played tonight was tatum, and there wasn't a single person from the 2016 olympic team who played in the FIBA world cup, and only KD and draymond were both on the 2016 and 2020 teams, and KD is the only guy from the 2012 team, so the chain has been broken several times over.

i guess the solution would be to require 4 or 6 year commitments out of players but we know that something like that would only drive away the best american players who want to take summers off to rest their bodies for the basketball that actually matters, so i can't blame either team USA or the players for not working something like that out. also even then, you're often dealing w/ other international teams that have guys who have been playing together for like 10 years.

when the US has its best players out there, and those players have played a few times before -- like the lebron, wade, kobe, melo, cp3 era teams -- they have proven unbeatable, altho even the 2016 team got pushed by an argentina team that had been together for a long time. there's going to be parts of the cycle where the guys who have accomplished everything you could possibly accomplish at the international level drop out, and the replacements don't have the talent/continuity combo to beat some of the international teams that have been at it forever. tho it should be noted this team hasn't actually lost anything aside from exhibition games which exist to foster the continuity so we'll see how it goes

and i think this year even if guys like lebron, harden, kyrie, AD, donovan mitchell had agreed to play they all would've dropped out after being injured in the playoffs

pic.twitter.com/cBgllDhh6R

— jason c. (@netw3rk) July 13, 2021

No smooth sailing for Team USA under Gregg Popovich so far 👀

What's the problem? 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/ktGr5SQynX

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPointsApp) July 13, 2021

Jordan they have not been “proven unbeatable”

They barely beat Spain in 2012, even 2008 was pretty close. And as you said Argentina was close in 2016. Stop living in the 90s.

yeah the redeem team game vs spain was really close and intense. got it down to like 4-5 points with a few minutes to go and bailed us out with 4 point play

and that was wade, lbj, cp, melo, dwight and kobe all in their primes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eHxLqT21r8

forget they got it back to 4 again after the kobe play with a couple mins left

pretty cool that these cohesive teams take out the usa super teams, familiarity with international rules/officiating etc obvs a factor too

seeing a lot of stuff on twitter today about how bad the ref baiting has gotten and watching the US players trying that stuff here and not getting the whistles . which... is awesome. make the game more pure please.

3 point line is about 2 feet closer iirc. i didn't see the game but my son said nigeria just bombed three after three.

also playing the likes of beal and lavine together is no good. not enough two-way players on this roster.

xp yeah they were 20/42 lol

any tournament with single elimination games can get pretty loose

coach k's college approach i.e. "your team is stacked, just don't lose to a worse team" might transfer better to international ball than whatever pop is used to

Also K could coach without worrying too much about politics cos he never had to worry about his rep as a nba coach or possibly coaching any of these guys in the future

he need not filter his emojis

AP source: USA Basketball guard Bradley Beal has entered the health and safety protocols in Las Vegas, raising the possibility that he may not be able to attend the Tokyo Games. There is nothing definitive about that at this point.

— Tim Reynolds (@ByTimReynolds) July 15, 2021