As I'm sure everyone is aware of team USA's lost to France the other day. I wanted to take a quick look back at some of the failure's the team has had that caused this and other failures. I was on twitter and was reading a thread about why they lost, so I'll also talk about the points that were made in the twitter thread because I thought it was accurate.
First, the main point that was made was that the USA has just been sending the best group of players they have without the chemistry it takes to win these types of tournaments. For years that was enough to easily beat teams, but now its not. Not to mention that other countries teams have been getting better therefore chemistry becomes a lot more meaningful. So even though they probably have the most all around talent of any team, not having chemistry is becoming more and more important now that the talent gap has shrunk.
Next is the rules, how fouls are called, and playing style. I mentioned how fouls affected the game is played in the NBA in a previous post, and I think the Olympics shows how the NBA is negligent to improving the game, specifically through fouls. They are improving with the rule change they just implemented but still are behind in my opinion. I personally hate watching players jump into the defenders, and fall over very easily, so it makes it hard to watch the NBA when there is a foul every other possession. Now these same players are playing on an international level and showing that they can't score without the help of the referees. The other point was the playing style, which relates to the fouls, its more physical and the refs are letting fouls go that would normally be called in the NBA.
I really feel that this shows how negligent the USA is in international tournaments. They think they can just show up with the best players from the NBA and win like the past. But there recent performances have shown they can't. So it is going to be interesting to see if they can put some good performances together and win some games, if not they will be going home early.
You still got to pick the best players, and it should be the coach' job to deal with the egos and stars and somehow get them to play together. Of course, easier said than done. I think they also lack some play time together, with for instance three players joining just a couple days before the first game because of the NBA finals. And finally, for pretty much all other teams, it's such a pride to play against team USA, they give it all out on the court.
Fouls and refs shouldn't be an excuse, they're all strong and physical players and should be able to adapt very quickly.
How would you go about picking the team? you raise very valid points, but what would you do to create chemistry on the court?
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