OK, it’s time to stop hiding behind these ridiculous excuses that the world has caught up to USA basketball.
We need to face the facts. Why don’t we start calling a horse’s derrière exactly what it is? King Derriére is in charge, and if this wasn’t a family newspaper we’d call him exactly what he is. A horse’s (Rhymes with No Class.)
Yes, the world has gotten better at basketball. But that shouldn’t matter when you are Team USA.
Simply put, we shouldn’t lose. Ever.
But when you have a coach driven by his ego we get what we asked for. Gregg Popovich lacks the ability to have respect for the common man, and he passes down that ego to the players, who already have big enough egos as it is.
It’s ridiculous that a guy, who is considered one of the greatest coaches ever and has won five NBA titles, can put up with what we have witnessed out of Team USA. These are the best players in the world. No, we don’t have LeBron and Steph and Bradley Beal (COVID), among others. However, the players who are on the floor in the Tokyo Olympics still resemble an NBA All-Star team.
France was the latest team to show the Americans what a team concept is and the NBA players on the Team France roster aren’t exactly players we’d expect to see leading a team to an NBA title.
Sure, Rudy Gobert has had some good years (three-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year) and Evan Fournier was solid in his prime, but that prime has passed. KD and Damian Lillard and Khris Middleton and all shouldn’t be letting Fournier score 28 points. They made him look like he was in his prime.
I love Evan and he was great for the Magic, but c’mon. We should never read a headline: FOURNIER LEADS FRANCE PAST TEAM USA.
Fournier said it best after the victory, “They are better individually, but they can be beaten as a team.”
And they were.
It all goes back to coaching, and I realize these guys have not played together for very long, but neither has Team France.
Team USA’s offense lacks, well, offense, and where’s the defense? You shouldn’t even have to coach defense to these guys. They should get it.
But some of the defense we’ve seen from Team USA would be better suited for a matador in a Spanish plaza de Toros.
And the offense? It’s like watching pickup games at Barnett Park on a Sunday. One pass and pop. That’s quite appropriate, given the coach’s nickname.
This one-pass-and-Pop mentality isn’t going to cut it. That’s why Team USA lost an Olympic game Sunday for the first time in almost 20 years. Losing to Team France is the equivalent of the Magic losing to Gonzaga. It’s just not going to happen, and the Magic were one of the worst teams in the NBA this past season.
Pop needs to take charge of this team and I’m not talking about the way he takes charge of a news conference. He’s like the professional Bobby Knight when dealing with the media. He talks a lot and spews a lot of venom but when it’s over you’re left wondering if he even answered any of the questions.
At least Knight got the most out of his Olympics teams. Team USA was 8-0 under Knight in 1984 winning by an average margin of 30 points. OK, that was then. I get it, but the current players need to be held accountable.
One of my encounters with Pop left me with the same feeling I’ve had every time I’ve been around him.
During a preseason shootaround availability in 2018 with the San Antonio Spurs coach, I asked Pop what he thought of Magic rookie Mo Bamba. The Magic had, two months earlier, made Bamba the No. 6 selection in the NBA Draft. Bamba played one year of college basketball just 80 miles northwest of San Antonio at the University of Texas.
Popovich acted as if Bamba played on Mars.
In fact, he said, “Who?”
When another reporter said, “The rookie for Orlando,” Popovich had nothing else to offer.
“I just … I don’t know. I don’t watch anything,” Popovich said, shrugging his shoulders.
Perhaps he was spending too much time indulging at the wine bars of the River Walk.
Whatever he was doing, he claimed to be oblivious to Bamba, who averaged nearly four blocks per game in college.
He then said he wasn’t trying to be a “wise guy.” He wasn’t. He was being a wise- (rhymes with pass), which the Americans have apparently forgotten to do.
Team USA needs to get back to basics, and if Coach Popovich is such a hard- (rhymes with wine glass), he needs to reel these guys in, make them check their egos at the door and start playing some real, fundamentally sound basketball, with more than one pass per trip.
But, of course, why should we expect anything different in this day and age.
It’s not just a basketball problem, it’s an American problem. We think we’re better than everyone else just by walking in the door, no matter the sport.
What has happened to that good-ole American work ethic? You practice hard, you play hard and you win. Simple, right?
Not any more.
Today it’s all about me, me, me. While that might work in fishing, it doesn’t work in basketball.
But to think that I would expect anything different, well, I guess that just makes me a dumb- (rhymes with bass).
