Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame
8/9/2021 11:43 AM
It's unclear to me how anybody paying attention would suggest this.
Yes, the US just won the gold medal. By 5 points. The team included one of the 3 best players alive in Kevin Durant, and if it didn't, there's a very good chance they lose that game.
We're 2 years removed from a 7th place finish at the FIBA World Cup, which included losses to Serbia and a double digit loss to France.
The team assembled was young and lacked any continuity from the prior Olympic team. The notion that international basketball will only be interesting if the US rolls out a team of college, high schoolers, and NBA rookies seems to completely ignore the fact that a team of 7 NBA all stars and a bunch of solid career NBA guys got beat soundly two years earlier.
We're not too far off from a world where the two best players in the world are European (Giannis and Luka). The world's best prospect is a teenager from France. The talent gap's closing, and a team of the best college and high school players would get straight up destroyed at the Olympic level. Our under 21 team just won the gold medal of the U21 FIBA World Cup by 2 points against France. None of the members of France's under 21 team made their Olympic roster. I think people vastly over-estimate how far ahead of the rest of the world we are.
But those are the very best possible rosters that France could put together (I'm assuming, again could be very wrong). I'm not sure a starting 5 of Booker (CP3?), KD, LeBron, Anthony Davis, and maybe Karl-Anthony Towns is that close to France. That team would probably give up 140 points a game but would more than likely score 150 a game.
Apologies, but I'm not quite following the logic here. The argument being made is that we should be sending worse players to increase competitiveness; I'm pointing out that the last two major international tournaments were quite competitive. We finished 7th in one, and 1st with a 5 point victory in the second.
I think the point above about continuity is really important. Top teams from other countries play together for decades; there's a huge advantage in that. We win based on talent and athleticism advantages, but the margin's now slim enough that we need the most talented players to go. The notion that we can both a) not have continuity, and b) send more junior, less experienced players seems pretty misguided.
Our margin for error is very, very slim.
In the scenario where the best possible team opted in, we may dominate. It hasn't actually played out, and the result has been competitive basketball. I think the best team would look something like this:
PG: Curry, CP3, Jrue Holiday (mainly for defense)
Wings: LeBron, Kawhi, Durant, Beal, + a 3 and D guy like Jaylen Brown, or Mikal Bridges
Bigs: AD, Adebayo, Towns, maybe one other big body like Lopez
That's a very, very good team, of course. They'd win the gold medal, and if they committed to playing for a full cycle and practiced together as "the team" they'd dominate. But the reality is that there's a 50 player pool, and people opt in inconsistently and the teams get pretty sparse pretty quickly. Without experience playing together, losing is very much in play without top players.
Last Edited: 8/9/2021 12:48:10 PM by Bobcat Love's Sense of Shame