I didn’t even know Germany had a basketball team. You think Germany you think soccer . First time I saw Schroeder it was hard to believe he was German . No racist…
So BI who was supposed to be a STUD by now, in spite of having put some good muscle finally on that thin upper body .... is not all that great STILL on defense and as a complete player. And was reportedly unhappy with his role and didn't even play the last two games with an illness. BUT no wonder ALSO why we lost to Canada .... didn't know this until seeing the box score .... why did JJJ also not play? They only gave Kessler 16 minutes so yeah talk about undersized, Wow! https://www.espn.com/fiba/boxscore/_/gameId/401596639
Kerr is trying to play small ball. JJJ and Banchero apparently were sick.I don't buy it. USA played whole 4 quarter and OT, except for couple minutes with Edwards and Hart been their tallest players. I am positive that if Kerr wasn't that obsessed with small ball USA would've won championship. .
Oh bleep …. Banchero too!! No wonder, and we STILL took them to overtime. But what’s not to believe …. I doubt all three of these guys were faking illnesses for any ulterior reason. Could have been a bug getting shared possibly?
And it's really embarrassing. the Americans lost 3 matches at the tournament, conceding in the main 40 minutes - 110 from Lithuania, 113 from Germany and 111 from Canada. Only Lebanon allowed more points from Canada.
Olympics need AD and Looney and a stopper like Caruso. Talent differential is no longer there where you can't take roster construction into account anymore. When you're one big whose expected to get big minutes averages less rebounds then your wings that is going to be trouble
Ingram sucks whole championship and even in friendly games,JJJ admitted that he was having a very bad tournament Reigning Defensive Player of the year Jaren Jackson Jr addresses criticism on his rebounding and defensive liability accusations and I don't know about Banchero,but something wasn't right or maybe they were just satisfied that they going play in Olympics and didn't care much about medals
And Germany in soccer lost to Japan yesterday in friendly game and their coach was fired immediately.
BTW congrats to Ex -Lakers players Bonga,Mo and Dennis. I don't know how many of you watched last year Euro,Germany got bronze medal so they are definitely one of best FIBA's teams and their coach completely outplayed Spo and Kerr
Team USA should have taken Kuzma instead of BI. Kuz will do what the team needs and during the bubble run and the year after he definitely showed that he would crash the glass of that is what the wanted. Plus he used to playing off ball with ball dominant types
The final day once again showed the big difference between Fiba Basketball and Nba Basketball. Canada-Usa 127-118 Germany-Serbia 83-77 Most Nba Players just don't know/care how to play defense anymore, and it's kind of sad to see.
Watched the whole tournament. Dennis was solid at european style basketball, peкformed like a leader. Frantz Wagner was also impressive. Serbs were missing Jokic, Otherwise they would have probably won. USA team was way undersized, JJJ played like s*** - averaged like 3-4 rbds per game. AR- was rock solid, played good D and very impressive O with great numbers, Always played in the clutch and IMHO was the best player on USA team. Looking forward to his 3rd season as a Laker. The guy is fearless and tough.
We have to start preaching this in NBA circles, places that Silver and his cohorts will see it!! They are turning the USA into a second tier league!!! ADAM SILVER!!! Make the dang changes, go back to what made us great and quit putting out cissy 3 point shooters who don't know how to play real defense!!!
i think it's hard because some of what makes the nba games more exciting than international games is...bad defense. i'm sure silver is thinking about his product in general given that currently most of the top players in the league aren't american. that's ok for now, but what if the next luka or jokic or giannis decides to play overseas? what if some saudi group forms a pan-european basketball league with salaries competitive with the nba's? and maybe this is just an unusual circumstance/blip, but given the rising global popularity of the sport, probability would dictate that the ratio of american to non-american stars won't be like it was for the first 50+ years of the nba. the nba has a huge brand advantage, obviously, but they'll need to protect it, and some of that will have to involve improving the on-court product. cue my rant about the size of the court...
I posted the headline tweet in Bron's thread but looks like he's leading the charge to take the Olympic games seriously. Making one last run for several of them. From The Athletic's Shams and Varden So something like this... AD/Bam Bron/Dray KD/Tatum Booker/Ant/Bane Holiday/Steph/Haliburton -f*** Booker, but he seems likely and we need shooting. -He wasn't listed in the long line of PGs, but I think you HAVE to get Holiday back. He was vital defensively. -I'd rather get Butler in there instead of Bane but haven't seen him interested. -If you get Embiid to flip, drop Haliburton. -Our top end PGs struggle there so I'm not that interested in Dame, Kyrie, or Fox.
