One problem is that the US has too many good players frankly. All that s*** with Tatum for example and you end up playing a lot of dudes short shifts and that's basically is never done in the most critical NBA games for a reason. You watch any critical playoff game and it's going to be your trusted 6-8 guys at the most and your top 6 are all pushing 40+ minutes. Considering the FIBA games are very short compared to NBA games (40 vs 48) and that means in theory guys like James and AD would be basically playing whole games. Not only don't you push Lebron minutes to max in the Olympics because of the politics a guy like AD has to split a ridiculous amount of time with good but still not as good players as him with Embiid and Bam. Within that shorter game period, that means runs caused by suboptimal lineups due to amount of players you need to incorporate causes a high level of negative variance for the US because they are not playing optimal linueps. In other words, a team will not have as many good players as the US but their best players play more minutes together and for extended periods which closes the depth of talent gap far more than people realize. Going back to Serbia even If you think Embiid (who just sucked on defense iMO) deserved more time against Serbia, fine, but then when you watched the game you saw the US offense just f***ing collapsed with Anthony Edwards running the offense which led to multiple easy Serbia buckets the other way. Yeah Serbia played fantastic for 3 quarters but Anthony Edwards is never going to act as your de facto PG in any NBA game 7 if you have Lebron James on your team: just ain't going to happen. Shaq is clearly an idiot IMO and as the rest of the world gets better: the variance provided by single elimination and a shorter game is going to cost the US and without Curry, Durant, and most importantly Lebron to be the de facto focal point of the next Olympics I wouldn't be shocked if they lose. These games are just like NCAA tournament games or World Cup soccer games where there is just not enough time for luck to be negated to a large extent. It's not a surprise that when the US turned it up with their big 3 not only did the US take over but also shot variance finally started falling the US way (i.e. commentators were like OMG Serbia missed a wide open 3 to go up 5 with a minute left well what about the multiple banked hail mary's that Serbia made prior to that?).
complaining when they went undefeated? lol. this isn't the 90s. hell, USA almost lost to lithuania way back in 00 shaq is such an idiot sometimes
yeah, i agree with all this. going forward, the glaring hole on future team usa is the pg spot. is haliburton really the best option? in international play, i want a chris paul/john stockton type. honestly, maybe reed sheppard is the long-term hope there--even if he's not an nba star (he might be, might now), he could certainly play against international competition, imo. anyway, the modern nba pg archetype doesn't translate that well over there, and we also don't really have point forwards like lebron coming up, either. as you said, edwards is not that, and neither is booker or tatum. it's why all of their nba teams look so much better when those guys are playing with actual pgs (and why the tyus jones pickup for phx was pretty huge, btw). anyway, i don't think the gap has narrowed that much because i don't think it was ever THAT huge (as 43 pointed out, we almost lost to lithuania 24 years ago). there's always at least one or two teams, sometimes more, who could pull off an upset. but it has always been and likely will always be an upset.
