Already it begins: The bitching about USA Basketball

Starman · Jul 21, 2006

LAS VEGAS -- It didn't take long for Mike Krzyzewski to screw up royally in his new job as coach of Team USA. He did it before day one was even in the books.

Rather than tell the team its job is to win the World Championship on the night of Sept. 3, Coach K gave the players exactly the kind of misguided advice they didn't need to hear.

"We have to go out there and be dominant for 56 quarters -- every quarter of every game we play. That's our mission," Gilbert Arenas told me following Team USA's first practice Wednesday.

"Who on earth told you that?" I asked.

"Coach Mike," Arenas replied.

Well, Coach Mike or Coach K, or whatever you want to call him, is dead wrong, and Insider is not afraid to say so. This isn't 1992 anymore. This isn't about playing like the original Dream Team, for which Coach K was an assistant under Chuck Daly. And this should not be about restoring American dominance following three losses at the 2002 World Championship and three more losses at the 2004 Olympics.
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http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/insider/columns/story?columnist=sheridan_chris&id=2524470&action=login&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fnba%2finsider%2fcolumns%2fstory%3fcolumnist%3dsheridan_chris%26id%3d2524470

I don't have Insider, so I can only guess how the rest of the column goes.

So here we go again: The U.S. shouldn't aim to dominate. Oh, no. The U.S. should just be happy **IF** it can win. Don't get greedy. Be patient. Walk the ball up. Play The Right Way.

Fenian_Bastard · Jul 21, 2006

Star --
I don't understand the column, or what Coach Ratface is talking about, but I also don't understand your objection. Isn't Arenas saying he was told that they have to dominate every quarter of every game? Isn't that also called kicking ass? How do you read that as "don't get greedy"?

Bubba Fett · Jul 21, 2006

I think this guy was on SportsCenter yesterday making the same argument, perhaps word for word.

Songbird · Jul 21, 2006

I like Shashevsky's message, which is how I play sports: you've got to kill, kill, kill the opponent. Is there something wrong with that mentality? Scrap the goddam team if they don't buy into his message. Put players on the team who want to kill the goddam other team.

PopeDirkBenedict · Jul 21, 2006

Here was Sheridan's point: Telling the U.S. it has to absolutely destroy every team is setting it up for failure. This isn't 1992. The world has caught up to us and we need to recognize that. We aren't going to wipe the floor with the world and we might -- gasp! -- lose a game along the way. He believed that Coach K should have sent the message that what happens early on in the tournament isn't nearly as important as the last four games and this team should focus on trying to play its best basketball when it hits the knock-out round.

funky_mountain · Jul 21, 2006

here's the rest of it, for those interested, take one

This should be about having the U.S. team playing at its peak when the games really count, and that won't happen until the single-elimination stage of the World Championship arrives at the end of August with the Round of 16, then the quarterfinals, the semifinals and the gold-medal game -- the only four games that will really matter. Sure, it'd be nice to beat Senegal by 107 in the opening round, but nobody back home will care all that much about that if, when the games really mean something, France or Spain is one or two points better.

You know what would have been a better message, Coach K? How about this: "I don't care if you lose, and I don't want you losing your confidence if you do lose. I want you playing at your peak seven weeks from now. I want us at our best when this mission finally gets serious."

You can't be dominant if you're not even superior, and right now there's a team in Argentina that has first dibs on worldwide rights to being the best. Manu Ginobili and Co. earned that distinction fair and square in Athens, and they get to keep it until somebody knocks them off their perch.

You want to see dominant, Coach K? Go back and look at a tape of the third quarter of the Argentina-U.S. semifinal in Athens when the Argentines back-picked and back-doored the Americans into submission. That's what you're going to be up against next month, and if you infect your players with the wrong mind-set, it's going to happen again.

Better yet, Coach K, have someone from USA Basketball bring you a tape of the gold-medal game from the Tournament of the Americas in Puerto Rico in 2003, when the U.S. actually did perform like the original Dream Team and crushed Argentina with a stunning display of dazzling dunks in rapid succession at the end of the first half to turn that game into a rout. Those players were so sick of hearing assistant coach Gregg Popovich tell them how good Argentina was, they poured it on extra heavy just to shut him up.

The U.S. team Larry Brown took to Athens in 2004 talked early on about being dominant, too, but when the Americans got trounced by Italy on the way to the Olympics and by Puerto Rico in their opener, they were finished mentally. First-round losses shouldn't do that to any team, because first-round losses do not knock you out of international tournaments. The elimination games don't happen until the Round of 16, and the job in the opening round is simply to win enough games to advance to the elimination round.
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funky_mountain · Jul 21, 2006

take two

But is anybody in USA Basketball explaining that simple reality to the players?

Four years ago at the World Championship, the team then known as Yugoslavia was in such disarray during the opening round in Indianapolis, Serbian journalists were actually shouting down the coach as he walked off the floor. But by the time that tournament ended a couple weeks later, Yugoslavia was the champion after an overtime victory over Argentina. Sure, Vlade Divac and his teammates looked terrible in the opening round -- even worse than the Americans would look two years later when they lost to Puerto Rico and Lithuania in Athens. But they hit their peak when it mattered, and no one back in Belgrade cared at all about the first round by the time the tournament ended.

During this past NBA season, I asked Ginobili how Argentina could have looked so bad in its quarterfinal victory over Greece at the Olympics before playing so cohesively in the semifinals against the U.S. and the gold-medal game against Italy.

"Well, every team has one bad game in every tournament, and we had ours that night but were fortunate enough to win. Our team has been through enough of those tournaments to know there's going to be a letdown somewhere along the way," Ginobili said.

Memo to Coach K: Steal Manu's words of wisdom and pass them along to your team.

This whole focus on restoring U.S. dominance is so misguided, it's actually mind-boggling. It ain't 1992 anymore, Coach K, and opposing players aren't going to be asking your players for autographs after humbly being beaten into submission. The best of the rest of the world have already proved they can stand up to the U.S., and when the rest of the basketball world hears that you want to dominate 56 quarters, they're going to laugh.

They see a U.S. program that's gone 11-6 over the past four years and is showing up with another roster bereft of America's best big men and shooters. Think they're scared of being dominated? Fat chance. They're thinking about how they're going to try to pick you apart.

This should be about one thing, Coach K: winning the gold in Japan and earning an automatic berth into the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. That's the prize here, and it's your job to keep the players' eyes on it. What happens if your team is not dominant in a preliminary-round game against Slovenia or Italy? What if they actually lose? You want that loss to get into their heads like the loss to Puerto Rico did two years ago?

If you set the bar too high, your chances of failure increase. And if you're telling them they need to dominate 56 quarters, Coach K, you're setting them up to fail.

Speaking as an American here, do us all a favor and stop trying to turn back the clock to the Age of Barcelona. Go tell your team the truth, that their only job is to continually get better as the gold-medal game in Japan draws near.

We can talk about dominance 26 months from now when y'all get back from Beijing. Until then, let's just worry about winning. And if the path to winning includes a loss along the way, let's not create a collective mind-set among the players that makes such a loss so mentally devastating.

Just tell them to do what the Miami Heat did: Tell 'em to win their final four games, and stage one of their mission will be an unqualified success. That's the message they needed to hear on day one.
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Armchair_QB · Jul 21, 2006

PopeDirkBenedict said:

Here was Sheridan's point: Telling the U.S. it has to absolutely destroy every team is setting it up for failure. This isn't 1992. The world has caught up to us and we need to recognize that. We aren't going to wipe the floor with the world and we might -- gasp! -- lose a game along the way. He believed that Coach K should have sent the message that what happens early on in the tournament isn't nearly as important as the last four games and this team should focus on trying to play its best basketball when it hits the knock-out round.
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Bullshit.

With the right team USA Basketball can run every other team right out of the building every single night. Fundamentally, the USA doesn't turn out the best players anymore but we can still find a few guys who will play defense, press like crazy and run, run, run. There isn't a country on the planet that can keep up with us.

Songbird · Jul 21, 2006

PopeDirkBenedict said:

Here was Sheridan's point: Telling the U.S. it has to absolutely destroy every team is setting it up for failure. This isn't 1992. The world has caught up to us and we need to recognize that. We aren't going to wipe the floor with the world and we might -- gasp! -- lose a game along the way. He believed that Coach K should have sent the message that what happens early on in the tournament isn't nearly as important as the last four games and this team should focus on trying to play its best basketball when it hits the knock-out round.
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If we lose a game, OK great, but at least play the game with a kill mentality. Wait until the last 4 games? No fucking way. From the first tipoff of the first game go at it hard. But it goes deeper: the first time they step onto the same court for their first practice is when the kill mentality must be born and fostered.

Starman · Jul 21, 2006

PopeDirkBenedict said:

Here was Sheridan's point: Telling the U.S. it has to absolutely destroy every team is setting it up for failure. This isn't 1992. The world has caught up to us and we need to recognize that. We aren't going to wipe the floor with the world and we might -- gasp! -- lose a game along the way. He believed that Coach K should have sent the message that what happens early on in the tournament isn't nearly as important as the last four games and this team should focus on trying to play its best basketball when it hits the knock-out round.
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The world has NOT caught up to us. There is no other team in any international tournament who will field even five players who are starting-caliber NBA players. There is no other team in any tournament who will field even three players who could make the United States roster.

The reason the U.S. performance in international basketball has gone completely to shit is exactly this pervasive attitude of diminished expectations, lowered intensity, and preemptive rationalization for failure. "It's OK if the opponent scores on you. It's OK if we get outscored for a quarter, or a half. It's OK if we lose a game or two."

The team should focus on playing its best basketball from Day One. Day One to Day Last. No quarters off. No possessions off.

You know what would have been a better message, Coach K? How about this: "I don't care if you lose"
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Any USA Basketball coach who ever says this should be fired instantly. On the spot.

Fenian_Bastard · Jul 21, 2006

OK, so the fight is with Sheridan, and not with what Arenas said.

Songbird · Jul 21, 2006

Can a team dominate all 56 quarters? Probably not. But you've got to want to dominate 56 quarters. That's where Sheriden doesn't get it.

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