Forget about their lack of size, or playing time together. This team has no heart. And if they keep playing this way they have no shot of defending their Gold medal, or winning a medal at all.
In their first game of Group Play Team USA was defeated by France, 83-76. This marks the third defeat in four games for this iteration of Team USA, including their practice games in Las Vegas prior to traveling to Tokyo. Even worse, it’s the team’s first loss in 25 games at the Olympics dating back to 2004.
Evan Fournier - you remember him, Celtics fans - led France with 28 points, while Rudy Gobert added 14 points and nine rebounds. The US was outrebounded, 44-28, overall. It was Fournier’s best overall game since he joined the Celtics prior to last season’s trading deadline from Orlando. After the game the one time and possibly future Celtic had a very telling comment on Team USA’s approach.
A sad but honest indictment of a squad full of All Stars, max contracts and NBA champions that can’t seem to play together in anything that would resemble the dominant fashion expected of them. Let alone win! Not when your leading scorer is Jrue Holiday, who just flew in from celebrating an NBA Championship in Milwaukee, with 18 points. And when you have all the talent this team does, and don’t make a basket for nearly the final five minutes of the game, this is the kind jaw-dropping result you get.
How disjointed is Team USA at this point? Take this sequence from the final minute. Down two after a three by Fournier, Team USA elects to try for a three multiple times in a row, with no success, instead of driving to the hoop for a tying basket.
A perfect indictment of how things have gone and what’s wrong with this incredibly talented yet unsuccessful team. Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Draymond Green, Devin Booker, Damian Lillard ... and this is the best they can do?
Perhaps the loss is even more an indictment of USA basketball in general, with the more defensive and team-oriented FIBA style of basketball proving effective in stymying the individual and isolationist style of basketball so prevalent in the NBA and now the US. A notion brought up and hammered home during Sunday’s “Tanguay and Hart” show on WEEI.
Fatigue could also be in play, given some of the players having gone deep into the NBA playoffs all the way to the Finals. But that still shouldn’t be an excuse given the talent on this roster. Whatever the case, Team USA has no more margin of error this early in the games. They are running out of excuses and potentially soon opportunities, to prove that they’re the best in the world. Or at least capable of winning and not getting embarrassed time and again by the rest of the world.