Why You Need to Watch Team USA and the Men's Olympic Basketball Semis
We've got four teams and roughly 10 times that many intriguing storylines left in the men's basketball portion of the Rio Olympics.
It's elimination time now. A loss at this stage means bronze is the best-possible outcome, and nobody wants to come this far for that. Spain and America square off in half of the Friday bracket, while Serbia and Australia will do battle in the other. The winners advance to the gold-medal game.
The stakes are high, and Team USA's somewhat surprising vulnerability (don't get too caught up in that blowout win over an overmatched Argentina team in the quarterfinals) means the competition is a little more open than most would have expected.
Spain is rolling, Australia's offense is humming, Serbia just keeps surviving and the U.S. still has more than its share of kinks to work out.
This is going to be good.
Team USA Finally Found Itself...Maybe
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Team USA shook off its troubling streak of too-close-for-comfort wins by smashing Argentina in the quarterfinals, and it broke the trend by leaning on its defense.
At the start of exhibition play, head coach Mike Krzyzewski insisted to reporters that defensive potential set his club apart from the rest of the world. Fueled by length, athleticism and versatility, the U.S. should have made good on Coach K's contention a long time ago.
By implementing the right lineups against Argentina, that defensive potential finally showed up.
After watching the first unit bleed points yet again, Team USA fielded a unit composed of Kyle Lowry, Jimmy Butler, Paul George, Kevin Durant and DeMarcus Cousins. In a perfect world, Cousins would have sat in favor of Draymond Green for maximum destructive potential.
But this one worked pretty well, per NBA.com's John Schuhmann, who tweeted: "USA-ARG postscript: Lineup of Lowry, Butler, George, Durant, Cousins outscored ARG, 35-15 in 11.8 min. Other lineups: 70-63 in 28+ min."
Kyrie Irving and Carmelo Anthony are fantastic scorers, and their one-way skills still matter. But for Team USA to beat Spain in the semis, it's going to take defense. And up until the win over Argentina, it didn't look like that stopping power was ever going to manifest itself.
Based on assistant coach Tom Thibodeau's comments, though, Team USA seems to have finally figured out how to conjure its most dangerous weapon: "When those guys came in, that changed the game, from ball pressure, to challenging shots, to finishing the defense, to getting out into the open floor. And once we got into the open floor, we got some easy scores, and I thought that got us going."
Better late than never.
The Potential for Delly Statues
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Are you ready for a world in which Matthew Dellavedova is the Olympic men's basketball MVP?
Actually, that award doesn't exist. But if it did, the Australian point guard might be just one more big performance away from securing the honor—which is borderline incomprehensible considering the other talent in Rio.
With per-game averages of 10.3 points, a tournament-high 7.7 assists and 53.8 percent shooting from long range, Dellavedova has been the lynchpin of Australia's fantastic offensive attack. Keep in mind, those averages include a pair of games against China and Venezuela in which Delly saw limited action because of a sore hip.
None of the Aussies' efficient scoring (they top the field with a 51.7 percent accuracy rate from the floor) or precision offensive execution would be possible without Patty Mills' perimeter onslaught or Andrew Bogut's elbow orchestration, but Delly's stewardship may be the most critical element of the whole operation.
Oh, and his very best game of the tournament—a 23-point, 13-assist gem—came in a 95-80 group-play win over Serbia.
Australia has never medaled in Olympic competition. One more terrific offensive output—led by Dellavedova—could result in several new statues of the point guard being erected Down Under.
Paul George's Straight Talk
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Remember all that stuff from earlier about Team USA finally finding its identity, about defining itself with defense? George is the biggest reason why.
In addition to being, objectively, the best perimeter stopper on the roster, the Indiana Pacers forward has been the most vocal about channeling the intensity required to play sound D.
"For us, it's all about effort," George told reporters after his 17 points and suffocating perimeter harassment helped the U.S. advance to the medal round. "We got all the talent in the world. If we don't have no effort and no heart to it, we're really just a joke in this thing."
That's a sentiment shared by many Team USA observers, albeit probably in more frustrated, profane terms.
There's just something deeply annoying about watching a team with the U.S.' talent flail around at anything less than an utterly dominant level. While it's true the American roster lacks the continuity and chemistry of most others in the tournament, there's still this sense that talent and effort should be more than enough to make a boat race out of every game the U.S. plays.
George gets that, and he's backed up his talk with action. In doing so, he's established himself as perhaps Team USA's most important player. He was certainly the game-changer against Argentina.
Durant will almost certainly lead in scoring against Spain, but George will set the tone.
Nikola Jokic's Shot at Redemption
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As lustrous beards go, Serbia is in good shape with center Miroslav Raduljica.
But it'll take more than one bruising big man to match Australia's hulking frontcourt, which means Nikola Jokic had better bring it in the semifinals. He didn't when the two teams met in group play, scoring just seven points and posting a minus-11 in 18 minutes of that 95-80 loss.
Jokic, who occupies a special place in the hearts of analytically inclined fans after a brilliant rookie season with the Denver Nuggets, simply isn't strong enough to battle with Bogut and Aron Baynes. He's only 21 and hasn't fully filled out yet, so no shame there. But there's still room for him to make an impact (and make his lumbering opponents uncomfortable) with his considerable offensive skill.
Just ask Team USA's centers, who watched him score 25 points on 11-of-15 shooting in group play.
With good feet, deft passing and surprising range, Jokic could force Bogut and Baynes into territory they don't like. Whether as a short-roller who can make the right pass from the elbow or a floor-stretching perimeter threat, Jokic can do some things on offense to complicate life for the Aussie bigs.
He hit 33 percent of his NBA three-point shots last year, and his 41.5 percent accuracy rate from 16-23 feet suggests he should be letting fly from the shorter international line more often. Anything he can do to get Bogut and Baynes on the move will help, and the more he taxes them defensively, the less likely they are to control the game on the other end.
Milos Teodosic, Bogdan Bogdanovic and Raduljica must play well for Serbia to advance, but Jokic may be the hidden key to neutralizing Australia's formidable bigs.
The Rubio Question
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Kyrie Irving hasn't guarded anybody, and Ricky Rubio doesn't need to be guarded.
So what happens when those two collide in the semis? Will they just stare at each other while the other eight players play four-on-four? Will a worm hole open up if they make physical contact, sucking the entire continent of South America into an interdimensional vortex?
These are important questions brought about by a truly unusual strategic issue.
Rubio is a fantastic defender who'll be vital in slowing down Irving, but as NBA analyst Nate Duncan has mentioned several times, Spain often plays much better offensively without Rubio on the court. Team USA, on the other hand, is a more balanced and defensively potent group when Irving sits.
Could the U.S. get tricky and utilize Irving over longer stretches than usual, specifically to keep Rubio's nonthreatening shooting on the floor? Would that play into Spain's plans, though? After all, if the Spaniards see more of Irving, it means they're seeing less of the U.S.' top defensive group.
It's one of those "we know that they know that we know" situations. Who blinks first?
The smart money would seem to be on Team USA playing its game, not worrying about building a defensive scheme around exploiting Rubio and using whatever lineups it wants. But isn't there a small part of you hoping we see some back-and-forth gamesmanship structured around this tricky point guard matchup?
Can Anyone Stop This Aussie Offense?
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Serbia showed flashes of what it'll take to slow down Australia in the third quarter of its 86-83 win over Croatia on Wednesday.
Leveraging intense pressure (often of the full-court variety) and forcing Croatia into bushels of turnovers, Serbia swung the contest with a 34-14 advantage in that decisive period. Unfortunately, the dialed-in defense disconnected during the subsequent quarter, allowing Croatia to force its way back into a game that went down to the wire.
Australia's offense, all whirling triple screens and split-second cuts, is not an attack that will forgive such sporadic defensive commitment—Only Team USA averages more points per game, and nobody has been more efficient from the field.
Drop focus for a second, and Mills gets loose for a three. Turn your head, and Bogut will have already whipped a sidearm bounce pass to a cutting Joe Ingles for a layup.
The Aussie attack demands constant vigilance and communication. We saw some of that from Serbia, which offers some hope for a competitive semifinal. But it's difficult to envision a group with Teodosic defending the point of attack sustaining the stopping power necessary to bottle up Australia.
Spain's Breakthrough Potential
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Don't get caught up in that 0-2 start. Forget the absences of past pillars Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka.
Instead, take note of Spain's average margin of victory over its four most recent games. It's over 30 points, and one of those contests was against a France squad that came within a single possession of beating Team USA.
Spain is peaking at the right time, led by Pau Gasol, Nikola Mirotic and Sergio Llull and Rodriguez. And though the U.S.' efforts against Argentina showed progress, it's still objectively true that Spain has played better than the Americans over the last week or so. After falling short in the 2008 and 2012 gold-medal games, this might be the Spaniards' best chance to finally topple the U.S.
Remember, too, Gasol gives his team a unique advantage against Team USA.
Defending the high screen has been a major problem for the U.S. throughout the tournament because of Coach K's general reluctance to utilize Draymond Green at center. DeAndre Jordan and DeMarcus Cousins are't comfortable hedging against guards, and the American scheme has mostly called for them to drop conservatively into the middle. Green busts all of that up with his quickness and anticipation, but he's hardly seen the floor.
That's a glaring source of concern against Spain because Gasol has been lights out as a pick-and-pop threat. He's shooting 56.2 percent on nearly three attempts per game from deep. We should expect Spain to milk that advantage, and Team USA will have to make adjustments if Gasol is hot.
Mirotic has also been great, hitting 42.9 percent of his 5.2 triples per game so far. Can Carmelo Anthony's spacey defense be trusted against a shooter like that? Considering it took the U.S. staff all of group play to trust its defensive wings (clearly the right move from the outset), it's difficult to have faith in subsequent speedy tweaks if Spain runs out to an advantage early.
Team USA's talent still means it deserves favorite status, but this is a Spanish squad clearly capable of an upset.
Stats courtesy of FIBA.com.
