coach k = fraud

You wouldn't be Ed Martin, would ya? Oh wait... he's dead.

 

Looking at the stats, Greece (23 for 33) didn't do that much better than the U.S. (20 for 34) at the line. Just because they shot free throws before the game didn't mean they were any better at it.

Besides, it's the defense that failed this team.

 

'Twas beauty that killed the beast. LeBronze, 'Mello and DWade thought they were better than they really are.

 

I just finihsed watching it. Kirk Hinrich stopped in mid air on an open three and came down from his jumper without shooting. When was the last time you saw that?

When you read that Greece ran the pick and roll, it meant ALL GAME. Why wouldn't they? The screener was wide open every time. The big Greek guy dominated. The smaller greek guys had their way as well.

Best basketball players in the world, my ass. Greece steamrolled them for the last three quarters. The U.S. had no answers. It wsa humiliating.

 

OK, here's what the US has to do:

1. Tell Brad Miller to stay at home. We don't need token honky gumps taking up space at the end of the bench. Antawn Jamison, you can stay home too. We need 12 useful players we can use in the game at any time.

2. Bring Kobe Bryant, Michael Redd and Tayshaun Prince. Redd brings a dead-nuts 3-point shooter, Bryant the best offense-defense combo in the game, and Prince a super-long-armed blanket defender who will help smother 3-point shooters and a guy who would be murder on a full-court denial press (which we should play for 40 minutes of every game).

3. Order every player on the roster who shot under 75% free throws to shoot 500 FTs a day between now and 2008.

4. Change high school/NCAA/NBA rules to almost completely conform to FIBA rules. Trapezoidal lane and legalize basket interference (offensive and defensive). Allow zone defense in the NBA with no restrictions.

5. Fight over all screens. Stay on the shooter no matter what. Make sure to knock the screener on his ass, HARD, the first couple times they try the screen-and-roll -- that is, run right through the pick (making extra sure to plant strategic elbows right in the groin). However this will cause more problems since the refs will call fouls almost every time it happens -- the opposing teams can set 5,000 moving screens and they are never called, but the first time a US player steamrolls somebody on a pick, just wait for the flagrant foul call.

6. Ingrain in all the players every single minute: THE REFS ARE OUT TO GET (the) US. It is a fact. It cannot be changed. Never, ever, ever cry to the refs about any calls -- it will do no good. Not One Word. DON'T GET FOULED -- make the goddamn shot. You will get no help from the refs. None. They live to screw the United States whenever they get the chance, AND THEY WILL. Therefore it is imperative in every game, to run up the score so high that no screwy calls can screw you out of the game. You can not ever rest or ever loaf, ever. Push the ball upcourt, every time. If that means we beat Angola by 107 and Tunisia by 94 in preliminary rounds, that's what it means.

7. Bring in Paul Westhead and Jerry Tarkanian as pressure defensive consultants. Instead of giving lip service to playing a full-pressure uptempo game, DO IT. Contest every dribble, every pass, every step of the court. Yah yah yah, all the old-school "Right Way To Play" limp-wristed grandmothers will say "you can't press international players," but you CAN.

It happens on every level of basketball. You may think your team is well-coached, well-prepared, well-drilled, and it well may be against average teams, but being physically overmatched by overwhelming pressure at every position destroys all that.

It destroys your offense -- first, through turnovers, of course, but besides that, it forces you OUT of everything you want to do. People you don't want handling the ball end up handling the ball, you pick it up in places on the court you don't want to, you're passing from angles you don't want to, you have people taking shots from spots they're not used to, yadda yadda. It destroys everything.

AND, it also destroys your defense, because you have to expend all that energy on offense just to get the ball upcourt, plus every possession is a sprint -- even when you BREAK the press, you have to sprint upcourt. So you get tired, and when you get tired, your feet get heavy, and your defense goes to hell.

You may think, as most international teams do, that they can handle the press. Against average teams with average players, they probably can. Make one or two passes, find the open player, and bingo, you have it made. But when you are overmatched at every position, that all goes to hell in a hurry. Overwhelming defensive pressure at every position over the entire court destroys everything.

That's what the U.S. needs to do.

 

I will say they looked very good this morning. My fear is they were looking past Greece towards the matchup with Argentina. If you saw them today, it would seem like that was the case.

 

Why did Ginobli sit the entire 3rd quarter?

Why couldn't ESPN send the announcers to Japan? Fraschilla sucks ass but sitting a studio in Bristol while the games are in Japan is stupid.

 

Oh, would t'were that it were.
But I doubt it.

 

The entire hand-wringing process amuses me. These aren't little fiefdoms the size of Rhode Island we're playing here (at least, not since Monte Carlo decided to pull out). They're national teams, and they've obviously caught on to this little sport.

Does the "gangsta" attitude -- style is everything -- permeate U.S. play? Not as much as it did 3-5 years ago. They're heading in the right direction. Now you just need to produce some driveway shooters. Clone about 15 Andy Enfields to teach shooting around the country. Make it as scary for opponents to lose a perimeter shooter on defense as it is scary for us to lose a perimeter shooter.

K was doing the right things. Just stay the course now. And I would agree, it wouldn't hurt to have another scorer on the floor. Say, somebody from L.A.

 

Kobe was out because of injury/surgery, right? Not because he dissed the team or the team dissed him, correct?

 

That was the official word. Yet, I think in the current climate, they weren't about to choose him. No AI, I can agree with. But I believe Kobe would have helped. The man isn't stupid, and he knows this would be the perfect opportunity to help his damaged image.

 

Kobe wouldn't have made an appreciable difference against Greece, I don't think. I thought the Greeks shot the ball exceptionally from the perimeter- probably about as well as they're going to shoot it. The other side to the coin was the fact that our defense was piss-poor, and few of those shots were contested. There is absolutely no excuse to get burned on the pick-and-roll time and again. That was just embarrassing. The team lacks cohesion at both ends of the floor. Hopefully, in time, that will improve. Argentina has played together for the better part of a decade, and many of these other teams have been together for years.

I haven't seen the bronze medal game yet, and can't say if we really elevated our game, or if Argentina basically mailed it in. Either way, it's an impressive victory, despite the fallout from the Greek loss, and gives us something to build on.

The NBA game definitely got exposed at the Worlds (if it hadn't already). Obviously, as a basketball culture, we are lagging in skill development. I find Starman's ideas about pressure defense intriguing, and that might be one way to take advantage of our superior athleticism and quickness. Same token, the top teams aren't just going to wilt in the face of pressure D. Spain and Argentina have NBA caliber guards.

This is going to be a process. My sense is that the Greek game was something of an aberration, but without a shadow of a doubt, the American model of the game has been exposed. These guys have not had much time to gel, but fundamentally, they are way behind the rest of the world, for all their explosiveness and skill. We also need more legitimate shooting threats. Germany exposed that weakness, and their zone wasn't even particularly good. We need at least one or two other straight zone-busters, specialists. I don't know that we had one guy on this team that fit that description.

This performance says less about Coach K than it does the state of the American game. The whole AAU/hip-hop/AND1 phenomenon is a part of the problem. We have to get back to the fundamental skills of cutting and screening, moving without the ball, shooting. That is the bottom line. For all our talent and incredible athleticism, the European model of the game is superior. We have to adapt, or continue to flounder.