I like that Coach K isn't afraid to bench guys.. It's not an All Star game for Christ's sake... He found his rotation by the Medal round & it worked.
I think Green is mentally shaken right now, still rattled from knowing he probably cost his team a championship with his dumb*** antics and karate kick nut shots.
I can't stand the Spanish team, biggest bunch of floppers and whiners in the entire tournament. You could make a 10 minute reel of them flopping from this Olympics alone.
Green seems to me to be a system player though. Take him out of that GS system and I dont think he looks nearly as good as he does.
i argued with folks during the season that most of gs's roster was "system players". it was a team that fit really well together, where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. this was mostly in regards to its bench, but the same is somewhat true for the starters from last year. curry's the only one who definitely would be a star anywhere, but it's not even certain that other systems would/could allow him to play to his strengths at all times like gs does. thompson would likely be a start anywhere, but he's definitely not a superstar. and i agree that green would have trouble playing in other places, with other people. this is partly why the durant thing is interesting. they got themselves another bona fide superstar, but potentially at the cost of altering their style of play (and by shedding some other nicely fitting parts).
Losing Bogut for them was a big factor too. He was an able rim protector, provided the toughness and kept the Cavalier bigs off the glass. He was also an underrated passer. I do not know if Pachulia will provide them the same intangibles. Speaking of which, I thought Bogut did well in the Olympics.
pachulia can pass and brings the same grit, but zero basket protection and poor finishing ability. he's a poor man's bogut.
I've got this feeling with the quantity of big men the Lakers now have on the roster, a number of which were specifically wanted by Luke, that against GS and certainly other teams as well he is going to run waves of big men down low that teams will be at a disadvantage handling. We are a huge and physical squad now. He will remember the inside / out game the Lakers ran with the Triangle under Phil. Of course he will have all of his small ball options and schemes as well filed away in that killer basketball brain of his.
Klay and Green ( especially Draymond) are not 1 on 1 players , they shine in GS because the ball and players constantly move . The addition of KD will be interesting for both GS and Durant imo : 1) KD will definetely help when the team sets are contained by the opponent D with his ability to create his own shot AND to get to the line 2) Will KD be able/improve to play organized team ball in which the attention to details is important ?
kd will really help if and when curry's hurt. they became a pretty ordinary team when he was at 70%, and they would have been an early playoff exit if he couldn't have gone at all. but i'm not sure they'll be a whole lot better (if at all) when everyone's healthy. their margin for error ("error" in this case being injury, which is the big wild card in the nba every year, really) is quite large now, though, much more than anyone else's.
