Top Storylines and Predictions Heading into FIBA World Cup Medal Rounds
And then there were two.
Well, OK, it's actually four, but...you know what we mean.
Partakers of the 2014 FIBA World Cup of Basketball had to wait more than a week before witnessing the tournament's first real upset. And oh, what an upset it was—a 65-52 win by France over heavily favored (and hated rival) Spain on Wednesday.
Sadly, the magic ran out in the semifinals, where Nicolas Batum's blistering 35-point performance wasn't enough to close the gap on hot-shooting Serbia, which weathered a late flurry from France to walk away with a 90-85 win.
Waiting at the other side of the bracket: Team USA, whose path of basketball destruction continued with a 96-68 dismantling of Lithuania in the tournament's other semifinal Thursday night.
The pairing might not be the one most expected, but as an exercise in opposing basketball styles, Sunday's gold medal game promises intrigue aplenty—pregame point spreads be damned.
Meanwhile, Lithuania and France each look to add to their already impressive collections of hardwood hardware with a bronze showing Saturday afternoon.
With four of the game's biggest global powers set to write the next chapter in FIBA's already riveting history this weekend, we've put together seven storylines and predictions to bear in mind.
The host country might have met an untimely demise. But for the millions of basketball fans around the world, FIBA's final two showcases are far from short on international intrigue.
Let us be worldly!
Milos Teodosic Is Now on Your Radar Screen
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Serbia's Milos Teodosic isn't the best player at the FIBA World Cup. Nor is he the best point guard. Truth be told, he might not even be the best on his own team.
But you'd be hard-pressed to find a player more important to his squad—as a statistical and psychological leader alike—than Serbia's firebrand point guard.
Following Teodosic's 23-point, four-assist performance in his team's 84-56 thumping of perennial powerhouse Brazil, it was worth wondering what he had in store for an encore. That answer came in Friday's semifinal win over France, in which the 27-year-old CSKA Moscow star tallied 24 points on 9-of-12 shooting (including 5-of-7 from downtown) in Serbia's narrow win.
Watching Teodosic, it's hard to believe the 6'5" floor general hasn't found his way into the NBA. Don't be surprise if that oversight is rectified sooner than later.
Teodosic has proven himself an uncanny hardwood wizard—a guy as liable to thread a cross-court pass to a striding teammate as he is pulling up and canning a backbreaking three.
If I'm Mike Krzyzewski, I’m thinking seriously about having Klay Thompson shadow Teodosic's every move. Otherwise, Team USA could be in for a much bigger headache than it bargained for.
Rim-Clank Redemption
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Prior to Thursday's loss at the hands of Team USA, Lithuania had emerged as one of the tournament's most formidable three-point threats.
But faced with a defense loaded with wingspan, Jonas Kazlauskas' crew couldn't find its stroke from deep, finishing a paltry 2-of-18 from distance.
Against a far less versatile French side, expect Lithuania to right the range one last time.
Indeed, while Kazlauskas has prioritized running his offense through burly Jonas Valanciunas, Lithuania has inflicted the most damage on spot-ups and kick-outs.
Valanciunas might be the one setting the tempo early, but expect Lithuania's guards—led by Martynas Pocius and Adas Juskevicius—to hoist haymakers aplenty as the game wears on.
Can Siberia Keep Its Turnovers Low?
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A big part of Serbia's gangbusters run through the FIBA bracket has been its ability—and Teodosic's in particular—to steer clear of the turnover bug.
Indeed, had Serbia surrendered more than the nine cough-ups it committed in Friday's narrow win over France, you could make the case for the latter being the one to continue its Cinderella run.
To date, Team USA has forced an astounding 188 opponent turnovers. That’s roughly one every two minutes. That's not just good; that's terrifying.
Serbia has the skills and scorers to keep the game interesting regardless of pace or score. To have the best chance at pulling off the impossible, however, requires Teodosic and company value every possession as if it’s the gold medal itself.
If Serbia can somehow keep its turnovers under 15, there's no earthly way that Team USA wins by more than 20.
Careful control of the tempo, coupled with sound offensive execution, constitutes Serbia's best recipe for success. Even if, just as with baking the perfect pastry, a dash too much of anything else could render the whole thing disastrously moot.
The Boris and Batum Show
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Without Tony Parker and Joakim Noah serving as its spiritual anchors, France instead turned to another NBA duo—the San Antonio Spurs' Boris Diaw and the Portland Trail Blazers' Nicolas Batum—to capitalize on the team's upset win over Spain at Eurobasket 2013.
The two combined for 48 points (Batum alone had 35), 12 rebounds and five assists in France's narrow 90-85 loss to Serbia. Such a dual performance is no substitute for a spot in the gold-medal game, of course.
As bellwether for bronze consolation? France will take it.
While Thomas Heurtel has proven himself a capable floor general for the French, Diaw is arguably the more important playmaker—a versatile forward whose point-guard instincts were instrumental in helping the San Antonio Spurs cruise to a five-game win over the Miami Heat in the NBA Finals.
Batum, meanwhile, has been a bit of an enigma, registering gems and duds in equal measure.
To save face and secure a third-place finish, France—without its two best players—needs the next two to step up.
Front[court] and Center
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It's difficult to imagine where Team USA would be if not for the infectious energy and rim-protecting prowess of Anthony Davis and Kenneth Fared.
Me? I’ll just come out and say it: There's a good chance the Americans would be settling for silver or bronze.
Writing at The Cauldron, the always excellent Kevin McElroy underscores just how important this two-headed frontcourt monster is to Team USA's golden cause:
"Davis even deserves a decent share of the credit for the things that his teammates do well on defense. Despite their shortcomings, the American guards do force a ton of turnovers — the team averages a totally ridiculous 14.2 steals per game — and that is tied, in part, to their ability to take risks with the knowledge that Davis can cover for them if they get beat. When paired with Davis, the sometimes impetuous and undisciplined Kenneth Faried can be unleashed as a major destructive force, flying from paint to perimeter with reckless abandon to get in the way of almost any action the offense has planned. This, too, is an acceptable risk-reward calculation only because of how great Davis is.
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Faried in particular has been a revelation—a high-octane force capable of both sparking Team USA's berserker fast breaks with blocks and rebounds and finishing it off with a thundering flush at the other end.
Davis, meanwhile, has been every bit the steady presence everyone expected, at times single-handedly bailing out two or three teammates in a single defensive possession.
Expect Sunday to be the two's encore performance.
For all its well-seasoned skills and savvy, Serbia simply cannot match Davis and Faried's beastly intangibles. Keeping a body on one of them is challenging enough, but both of them? For 40 minutes? Forget about it.
Lithuania Makes It 2 Straight Bronzes
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In a region where soccer is king, Lithuania's obsession with basketball has made for one of the sport's more charming love affairs.
Ranked No. 4 at the start of the tournament, Lithuania has displayed all the hallmarks of its ever-growing hardwood legend: intelligence, toughness and togetherness. And while the team's golden dreams were once again derailed by Team USA, it's not about to walk away from Spain empty-handed.
Batum and Diaw are certain to give Lithuania a fistful of fits. Where Lithuania can gain an edge, however, is in Valanciunas neutralizing dominating France's comparably wiry bigs down low. Look for Valanciunas—an increasingly versatile arsenal of low-post moves at his disposal—to get Joffrey Lauvergne and Rudy Gobert into some early foul trouble
For many teams, winning a bronze medal is a consolation they'd just as soon avoid. For these two European powerhouses, however, it's another stage from which to showcase their respective statuses as bona fide global powers.
Look for a basketball barnburner from start to finish.
Prediction: Lithuania 85, France 80
America Stays Golden
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If the tournament ended today, Team USA's 32.5-point average margin of victory would be second only to that of the 1992 Dream Team, which ended its legendary run with an astonishing mark of 43.8.
Not bad for a team many believed to be the weakest of Krzyzewski's nine-year international tenure. Still, that's not stopping Team USA's skipper from keeping things in perspective.
Krzyzewski said after Thursday's game (via Sam Amick of USA Today):
"I'm not surprised about anything in international competition. All these teams are good. That's why we haven't mentioned anybody that we might play, because we don't know if we might play. That's the very first thing. We can lose. If we feel we can lose, we feel anybody else can lose because there's so many good teams.
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With only two holdovers from its gold-medal showing at the 2012 London Olympics (James Harden and the then-sparsely-used Anthony Davis), Team USA seemed as vulnerable to an upset as it's ever been. Instead, Krzyzewski has brilliantly leveraged his squad's unique skill set—youth, length and athleticism—toward one of most dominant start-to-finish performances in history.
Serbia is no slouch, of course. With 33 medals to their credit (many of them coming under the flag of the former Yugoslavia), Teodosic and company can count this silver not only as one of the program's most memorable but one of the most deserved as well.
In the end, though, Team USA has had an answer for every gimmick and game plan it's faced, and Sunday's finale—frenetic atmosphere aside—will be no different.
Prediction: USA 105, Serbia 89
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