Thoughts on Team USA after seeing them beat China on Aug.10

[dr8ked]

Off one bad shooting game in which his team still put up a blowout win? Fault Kobe when the team loses not when they win. LeBron and Wade on the other hand were absolutley amazing. Did you guys know Wade didn't miss a single shot? That is 7/7 from the field and 5/5 from the FT line.

Damn, talk about efficiency.

[JellyBean]

Man, for the first game, they looked good!!

I am sure that Team USA was a nervous, being the first game an all. We have really nothing to worry about the rest of the way. We have inside and outside. Our 3 pt shooting has to get better, but again, it was the first game, so the shooting will get better.

Defense. We shut down Team China in the 3rd quarter. They could not do anything.

People keep talking about Spain and Greece. Bring them on, we got something for them.

The only thing that could mess us up, is ourselves. Right now, we have the best team players around.

Team USA!!!!!!

[All Net]

The defensive rotations still seem to be a problem but the run and gun game worked very well. There were times that Lebron, Wade, Kobe, Paul e.t.c were down at the other end 3 seconds after China scored or missed...they must continue with this and take it to the rest of the nations. It was a slow start as expected but once they relaxed they looked good enough.

It's the final 3 games to win is what matters.

[mrhoopfan]

Too much streetball. This team runs ZERO plays and the only inside scores are in transition off steals. They don't defend the 3 either.

I would add Tayshaun to the starting lineup cos Kobe, Bron, Wade and Melo are all playing a bit selfish right now. There is no passing unless it's on the break.

Kidd/Deron
Kobe
Tayshaun
Bron
Dwight

CP3
Wade
Melo/Redd
Boozer
Bosh

D-Wade would continue to be first off the bench and Redd would still be the designated shooter

I don't know if I'd call it street ball considering coach K. is the coach and his Dukies play a similar style of spread offense

[mrhoopfan]

What a blowout. But good for team USA, this was a pretty decent start.

Best player of the game was probably Wade (as much as it pains me to say that) but he was near perfect. Jason Kidd was useless. 0 pts 0 assists 1 reb... What's the point of having him as our starting PG?

Kidd makes alot of hockey assists, passes that lead to the scoring pass

[LuppersGB]

Firstly that was a pretty good game to watch.

Now the USA has thier first taste of the olympics and they shouldn't feel too complacent about beating China. I feel they played well, but had no offesive plays so I'm not going to comment on thier offense. I watched the Lithuania game and the US had not very good defense imo. They had a much improved defensive game today. I thought they played a zone well enough for it to do its job. Yes in the 1st half the Chinese were seriously on fire, and tbh that was the stadium adrenaline, the second half obviously improved for the US. the zone constantly pushed the Chinese to crap 3pt shots. There were a few times (when they decided to actually give the ball to yao) that inside worked a bit. This China team failed due to a lack of maturity and thier leader not being 100%. All in all the defense was improved.
After the Lithuania game I was shocked by the lack of offesive rebounding by the US, but this game they picked it up which impresed me seeing as the Chinese were a very tall team.
The USA still need to be tested against a decent team who play a solid inside-outside game and who will test the USA's half-court set to the nth degree.

This game showed you guys what can happen if a fiba team gets thier shooting on, which maybe a factor once again in these games.

all in all I was more impressed by the US than the previous game I saw

[ForceOfNature]

This is dangerous... very dangerous. If the U.S. keeps a team like China in the game like they did in the first half, things could be very very difficult. After watching the China game, I went over to nbc.com and watched the Greece-Spain game (tape), and realized that those teams are more scrappy, athletic, and faster than China. Not saying it's any crazy revelation, but the Americans should not (and I don't think they are) celebrate over this one blowout. Granted it was against the home crowd's team, but they have a long way to go.

[Indian guy]

Poor perimeter shooting is still our biggest issue IMO. Given our athleticism and playmaking ability running set plays in the halfcourt isn't much of a necessity AS LONG AS we have zone busters. But whatever happened to 'Melo and Kobe's shot? Where's everybody else? Why doesn't Michael Redd see the floor much? These guys struggled to shoot in the exhibition games and are still struggling. Against a team that can take care of the ball we're going to have difficulty scoring - which is the biggest reason why we lost in '02, '04 and '06.

[Noob Saibot]

today i was most impressed with LeBron and Wade. and Yao too, even if he didn't get a lot of touches, he was battling.

but i was the least impressed with Dwight Howard, what happened to ya man, you're getting swatted down low for trying to do left hand lay-ups. and people call him the Next Shaq, please.

i agree with everybody else, we must improve our outside shooting.

[Shepseskaf]

2) Almost non-existant half court offense?

100% agreed. Everyone was standing around the perimeter in the half-court. No cutters whatsoever, unless it was a fast break situation. This will come back to haunt. With a few basic plays and ball movement, no other team in the tournament is athletically gifted enough to stay with the American team.

5) Atrocious defense? I couldn't even count how many open looks Chinese players got. The only reason they missed them was because they are so damn poorly conditioned. Again, playing this kind of perimeter defense will allow better teams to kill us from 3.

Agreed again. Very poor perimeter defense. If a good shooting guard gets hot later in the tournament, there'll be trouble, because teams like Spain and Argentina certainly know how to milk the hot hand.

One other major factor is the undeclared leadership contention between Kobe and LeBron. This is supposed to be Kobe's team, but anyone with eyes can attest to the fact that LeBron is the most indispensable player. In fact, you could replace Kobe with any of the top 5 - 6 SGs and get essentially the same thing. He's not bringing any thing "special", but LeBron is.

[20 Dimes A Game]

What more needs to be said? I am sure people will look at the score and the flashy dunks and say Team USA is back.

I prefer to look at:

1) The fact that we continue to overplay and gamble on defense. I recall one instance where Wade lunged for a pass that was easily caught by a Chinese player, then Wade trying to jump back to steal it again, only to commit a foul. This is not intelligent basketball. It will only hurt us, especially when we play teams like Greece, Spain, Argentina who have excellent guard play.

2) Almost non-existant half court offense?

3) USA "bigs" repeatedly being worked under the post by Chinese players.

4) Howard exposing his true self? Dude has absolutely zero post game. Absolutely none. Struggled to post up, struggled to get shots off, stymied by the zone, etc.

5) Atrocious defense? I couldn't even count how many open looks Chinese players got. The only reason they missed them was because they are so damn poorly conditioned. Again, playing this kind of perimeter defense will allow better teams to kill us from 3.

They didn't need to against the lowly China. But when they play Spain ect they will be demolished without a good offense.

[JerrySteakhouse]

You guys joking? USA team can beat any team in any style. Even freestyle.

[Cangri]

If I was the coach I would just alternate between CP3 and DWill, bench Kidd and only play him when the games are 20+ points in favor of USA(Kidd doesn't do crap, even the other teams don't care to defend him which leads to more double teaming on the other players). I would start every game with:
DWill
Kobe
Lebron
Bosh
Howard

[Lakerssss]

well I just alked to Shaq and he got a message for Yao Ming,

"Yao, tell me how my balls taste"

and Shaq said he's freestylin too.

[Gotterdammerung]

Lets not start laying heavy $ on the US after today. Despite this 30 point victory, we should note the maxim: things aren't that good when you win, and things aren't that bad when you lose.

First, the good: Team USA did well against high screen rolls by having their bigs show and the ball defenders go under the screen. This demonstrates their pick/roll defense is improving.

2, fantastic quickness and speed resulted in nearly 60 points scored in transition.

3, excellent half court defense, although poor play from the Chinese backcourt (forced drives, bad shooting on the move, weak interior decisions) helped them out.

4, unselfish passing and excellent shot selection. But Michael Redd needs more burn against elite teams.

5, USA's incredible depth blew the game open in the 3rd quarter.

On the other hand....

1, interior defense sucks. The Chinese got far too many offensive rebounds and easy layups. That cannot happen against the better teams.

2, perimeter defense remains undisciplined: they failed to stay on their guys whenever the Chinese penetrated from the strong side, causing them to be out of position for kick-out passes. The game would've been a lot closer had the Chinese hit their open threes/perimeter shots.

3, zone proved USA's halfcourt offense to be nonexistent. They shot approximately 6 of 21 versus the zone, which means the tougher teams will note this and exploit against the US.

Bottom line: deeper teams with skilled perimeter players and althletic frontline will give USA far more trouble. The key to USA's gold chances depends on their ability to hit their threes.