Talent gap between Team USA and the rest of the world is smaller – just not small enough
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RIO DE JANEIRO — If the U.S. men’s basketball team consistently passed the ball and moved without the ball to get open for passes – while playing even respectable defense – it would never lose.
This is pointless nitpicking. Team USA already never loses. On Friday it captured its 64th consecutive victory with an 82-76 victory over Spain in the Olympic semifinals. It is are now one victory on Sunday away from a third-consecutive Olympic gold to go with two world championships during this run. It gets harder and harder to remember that bronze in 2004.
Spain was supposed to be a significant challenge, a true rival, loaded with NBA talent. Spain has pushed them in the past. Plus the Americans hadn’t delivered their typical dominant performances in group play – though they did return to form in crushing Argentina in the quarters.
Except this wasn’t a significant challenge. The U.S. led throughout, often handedly. It wasn’t a blowout, but it wasn’t close either, the lead bouncing comfortably between six and 12 points. The game was disjointed with 41 combined personal fouls and four combined technicals. The crowd was mostly dead.
“I think it’s the most different game I’ve coached internationally for the United States,” said coach Mike Krzyzewski, who is now 79-1 as U.S. coach.
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About the most exciting thing to happen in the second half was when DeAndre Jordan traveled twice on a single one-on-none fast break. He got called for one of them, negating a dunk. That’s one more than would have been whistled in the NBA.
“International basketball,” said teammate Paul George with a laugh.
Jordan laughed last, of course, courtesy of 16 rebounds.
The U.S. hasn’t lost in a decade, and while this basketball tournament keeps getting more competitive and will one day (perhaps even by 2020) break through to becoming completely legit, it isn’t there yet. That doesn’t mean the U.S. is guaranteed gold on Sunday, nor does it mean beating Spain didn’t take a lot of effort, not to mention 22 points from Klay Thompson.
It does mean you sit and watch a team control a semifinal game and wonder how much more easily it would control the game if its offensive flow was better.
It means veteran Spanish coach Sergio Scariolo would stare at reality postgame and talk at length about moral victories and the pride in not ever having a real shot at victory, but also not getting completely run out of the gym.
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“I’m really proud of the effort of my players,” Scariolo said. “It’s like making a comparison in a club competition, [when the other] team has 50 times your budget and you manage to compete and stay in the game until the very end. That is an accomplishment.”
Scariolo didn’t come here to lose. His team is full of veteran talent including Pau Gasol, Ricky Rubio and a bunch of others who bounce between continents. This is mostly the same club that turned the 2012 London gold-medal game into a contest deep into the fourth quarter.
He deemed the loss “painful.” He could only look on the positive, though, because it was also unavoidable.
“With our defense, we managed to slow them down,” Scariolo said. “The key to the game was their defense, their athleticism, their size. They made our offense get difficult. Intimidation. Seven blocked shots [plus] minimum of seven changed shots. Their size in the wings is so huge. They are bigger than us at every position. At the end of the day the difference in athleticism is what made the difference.”
He sounded like the coach of an overwhelmed mid-major who advanced to the Sweet 16 only to get steamrolled.
“The game, I wouldn’t say [we were] completely equal but we were there,” Scariolo said. “We were always on their tail, we never let them play easy. We managed to find a way to not let them run away. When you talk about a team with such bigger potential than yours, more than thinking what you [needed to do] to win, you have to be happy to reduce the gap. The gap was bigger and we reduced it. It is positive and you take it that way. I think we did a good job making the physical difference become smaller on this court.”
Twenty-four years after the original Dream Team changed Olympic basketball forever, this is still where the game essentially is: coaches talking about closing the gap, even in defeat.
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Maybe Sunday will be different. What was clear in this Olympics is more teams stare across at the U.S. roster and see their NBA peers. What is also clear is none of them have the depth of talent, even for this American team that lacks LeBron James, Stephen Curry and others.
Jordan was arguably the most decisive player on the court – four blocks, nine points and those 16 boards. He was a massive presence inside. He plays with big-time enthusiasm.
“I have one job on this team, and that’s to come out and play with energy on both sides of the floor,” Jordan said.
At the beginning of this tournament, he wasn’t even the starter. No other club can compare with that. No other team can have its offense stall out, have the ball stop, descend into too much one-on-one and still never even feel threatened.
This remains the United States’ tournament. Maybe that changes as young stars from Australia and Canada blossom. Maybe that changes as depth from Europe grows.
On the verge of their sixth gold in seven Olympics, though, that 2004 debacle looks more and more like an aberration than anything else.
Pass the ball or don’t pass the ball, America is going to play for gold.
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