FIBA World Cup [USA vs. TUR: 9/3, 8:30 AM EST (ESPN+)]

[ederson]

Serbia looked like another France to me!  They had 4 NBA players, a bunch of really talented euro players and of course dominant center play.

Freaking Bogdan Bogdonovich went 7/14 from 3... He's just a straight up Sniper.

The FIBA tournament has really turned into a great spectacle to watch.  Long term it's phenomenal for the NBA that their are so many quality players around the globe now, but I kind of think the era of U.S. dominance is over. 



 

I kinda think it's not. If the US sent Davis, LeBron, Durant(if healthy), Klay, Steph, Kawhi, Harden, Kemba, Mitchell, etc., this tourney would have been a farce. Maybe one team might get lucky and keep a loss to under 10 points but the tournament would have been over before it began.

100% agree.....

The distance has definitely closed but the top 12 Americans with a proper training camp will beat at least 9/10 times any other National team

[greece66]

Serbia looked like another France to me!  They had 4 NBA players, a bunch of really talented euro players and of course dominant center play.

Freaking Bogdan Bogdonovich went 7/14 from 3... He's just a straight up Sniper.

The FIBA tournament has really turned into a great spectacle to watch.  Long term it's phenomenal for the NBA that their are so many quality players around the globe now, but I kind of think the era of U.S. dominance is over. 



 

I kinda think it's not. If the US sent Davis, LeBron, Durant(if healthy), Klay, Steph, Kawhi, Harden, Kemba, Mitchell, etc., this tourney would have been a farce. Maybe one team might get lucky and keep a loss to under 10 points but the tournament would have been over before it began.

Then send them!

[nickagneta]

Serbia looked like another France to me!  They had 4 NBA players, a bunch of really talented euro players and of course dominant center play.

Freaking Bogdan Bogdonovich went 7/14 from 3... He's just a straight up Sniper.

The FIBA tournament has really turned into a great spectacle to watch.  Long term it's phenomenal for the NBA that their are so many quality players around the globe now, but I kind of think the era of U.S. dominance is over. 



 

I kinda think it's not. If the US sent Davis, LeBron, Durant(if healthy), Klay, Steph, Kawhi, Harden, Kemba, Mitchell, etc., this tourney would have been a farce. Maybe one team might get lucky and keep a loss to under 10 points but the tournament would have been over before it began.

Then send them!

Americans don't care about this tournament. Players or fans. They just do not see it as prestigious enough to bother. Hence why we had to send a group that is clearly far down the list of players the US would prefer to have sent.

Compare this team to next year's Olympic team. The talent difference will be huge. The US will win easily. Why? Because the best US players see the Olympics as prestigious and will want to play.

[Amonkey]

Serbia looked like another France to me!  They had 4 NBA players, a bunch of really talented euro players and of course dominant center play.

Freaking Bogdan Bogdonovich went 7/14 from 3... He's just a straight up Sniper.

The FIBA tournament has really turned into a great spectacle to watch.  Long term it's phenomenal for the NBA that their are so many quality players around the globe now, but I kind of think the era of U.S. dominance is over. 



 

I kinda think it's not. If the US sent Davis, LeBron, Durant(if healthy), Klay, Steph, Kawhi, Harden, Kemba, Mitchell, etc., this tourney would have been a farce. Maybe one team might get lucky and keep a loss to under 10 points but the tournament would have been over before it began.

Then send them!

Americans don't care about this tournament. Players or fans. They just do not see it as prestigious enough to bother. Hence why we had to send a group that is clearly far down the list of players the US would prefer to have sent.

Compare this team to next year's Olympic team. The talent difference will be huge. The US will win easily. Why? Because the best US players see the Olympics as prestigious and will want to play.

I think it would be cool if all the best players went, and that includes the international players. Just think about it, Canada was weak but they could have Andrew Wiggins, Jamal Murray, Kelly Olynick and Dwight Powell just to name a few. Ben Simmons could play for Australia. Al Horford for DR and so forth.

[ozgod]

Serbia looked like another France to me!  They had 4 NBA players, a bunch of really talented euro players and of course dominant center play.

Freaking Bogdan Bogdonovich went 7/14 from 3... He's just a straight up Sniper.

The FIBA tournament has really turned into a great spectacle to watch.  Long term it's phenomenal for the NBA that their are so many quality players around the globe now, but I kind of think the era of U.S. dominance is over. 



 

I kinda think it's not. If the US sent Davis, LeBron, Durant(if healthy), Klay, Steph, Kawhi, Harden, Kemba, Mitchell, etc., this tourney would have been a farce. Maybe one team might get lucky and keep a loss to under 10 points but the tournament would have been over before it began.

Then send them!

Americans don't care about this tournament. Players or fans. They just do not see it as prestigious enough to bother. Hence why we had to send a group that is clearly far down the list of players the US would prefer to have sent.

Compare this team to next year's Olympic team. The talent difference will be huge. The US will win easily. Why? Because the best US players see the Olympics as prestigious and will want to play.

I think it would be cool if all the best players went, and that includes the international players. Just think about it, Canada was weak but they could have Andrew Wiggins, Jamal Murray, Kelly Olynick and Dwight Powell just to name a few. Ben Simmons could play for Australia. Al Horford for DR and so forth.

I posted this on the other thread "USA crumbles to France" regarding the challenge of consistently getting high level representation from NBA players in international competitions. I rephrased it somewhat to respond to your comment:

Our elite NBA players (and some others from teams like Canada and Australia) chose not to be there for their own reasons, whether it was because they thought it was a meaningless tournament, or because they wanted a summer off to recharge after a long season, or they didn't want to get injured, because the appeal of representing the USA was less than representing the team that paid their salary. And I can understand that (even though personally I'm disappointed as an American and Team USA fan). (I'll wager quite a few fans were happy they didn't suit up either, because then they are fresh for the NBA which is what they're really interested in.) So I don't want to use their absence as an excuse, as far as I'm concerned this is the best team we had available and willing and they weren't good enough.

In a sport where our professional league is seen as more important (or of a higher caliber) than national representation we will always have that challenge of getting players interested enough to risk their health and reputations for little return other than pride in representing your country, particularly if those tournaments don't have the same cachet as the Olympics. Having lived in Europe and Australia I've noticed other countries see international representation as the pinnacle of their careers, not just in basketball but in whatever sports they play, while as Americans we don't necessarily. We see the NBA finals as the pinnacle of basketball competition. It's just a difference in perspective to the US where sometimes we have an arrogance about things and don't feel the need to beat down on international teams to prove we're the best because we think our local stuff is the best anyway.

Of course it helps that one of our major sports is only played by us (American football) while baseball isn't really played outside of North America, parts of Latin America and Japan and Korea. Hockey is probably the sport where there is sufficient non-US representation (from Canada and Europe) that you could argue that international competition is of a higher standard than the NHL - but these days most of the best foreign players play in the NHL anyway.

[KGs Knee]

Serbia looked like another France to me!  They had 4 NBA players, a bunch of really talented euro players and of course dominant center play.

Freaking Bogdan Bogdonovich went 7/14 from 3... He's just a straight up Sniper.

The FIBA tournament has really turned into a great spectacle to watch.  Long term it's phenomenal for the NBA that their are so many quality players around the globe now, but I kind of think the era of U.S. dominance is over. 



 

I kinda think it's not. If the US sent Davis, LeBron, Durant(if healthy), Klay, Steph, Kawhi, Harden, Kemba, Mitchell, etc., this tourney would have been a farce. Maybe one team might get lucky and keep a loss to under 10 points but the tournament would have been over before it began.

Then send them!

Americans don't care about this tournament. Players or fans. They just do not see it as prestigious enough to bother. Hence why we had to send a group that is clearly far down the list of players the US would prefer to have sent.

Compare this team to next year's Olympic team. The talent difference will be huge. The US will win easily. Why? Because the best US players see the Olympics as prestigious and will want to play.

I think it would be cool if all the best players went, and that includes the international players. Just think about it, Canada was weak but they could have Andrew Wiggins, Jamal Murray, Kelly Olynick and Dwight Powell just to name a few. Ben Simmons could play for Australia. Al Horford for DR and so forth.

I posted this on the other thread "USA crumbles to France" regarding the challenge of consistently getting high level representation from NBA players in international competitions. I rephrased it somewhat to respond to your comment:

Our elite NBA players (and some others from teams like Canada and Australia) chose not to be there for their own reasons, whether it was because they thought it was a meaningless tournament, or because they wanted a summer off to recharge after a long season, or they didn't want to get injured, because the appeal of representing the USA was less than representing the team that paid their salary. And I can understand that (even though personally I'm disappointed as an American and Team USA fan). (I'll wager quite a few fans were happy they didn't suit up either, because then they are fresh for the NBA which is what they're really interested in.) So I don't want to use their absence as an excuse, as far as I'm concerned this is the best team we had available and willing and they weren't good enough.

In a sport where our professional league is seen as more important (or of a higher caliber) than national representation we will always have that challenge of getting players interested enough to risk their health and reputations for little return other than pride in representing your country, particularly if those tournaments don't have the same cachet as the Olympics. Having lived in Europe and Australia I've noticed other countries see international representation as the pinnacle of their careers, not just in basketball but in whatever sports they play, while as Americans we don't necessarily. We see the NBA finals as the pinnacle of basketball competition. It's just a difference in perspective to the US where sometimes we have an arrogance about things and don't feel the need to beat down on international teams to prove we're the best because we think our local stuff is the best anyway.

Of course it helps that one of our major sports is only played by us (American football) while baseball isn't really played outside of North America, parts of Latin America and Japan and Korea. Hockey is probably the sport where there is sufficient non-US representation (from Canada and Europe) that you could argue that international competition is of a higher standard than the NHL - but these days most of the best foreign players play in the NHL anyway.

Basketball is basically the opposite of soccer.  Not too many people care, globally, about the olympic soccer tournament.  They care about the world cup.  In basketball, the olympics are king, and the world cup is just a distraction.

How many other sports with high-paying major professional leagues have multiple major international tournaments?  Honestly, having such tournaments more than once every four years just seems burdensome and a bit of over-saturation.

[Somebody]

Why did the three USA big men only play 16 minutes of the 40 in the game, meanwhile Gobert killed them. I didn't see it. But could they have been worse than letting joe Harris guard Gobert?  Seems weird to me.

Sounds like he was auditioning for our coaching job or channeling Brad Stevens to me.   Small ball is a gimmick and some times it can change the pace of games and give you a boost but when it is relied on as the sole method it exposes a team and can be exploited by the opposition.

Serbs went big and lost.
They brought 4 true centers to WC.
Then what is the logic there?
Please explain.

No one is saying to bring in 4 big men to the team, but when you're benching a modern big man like Myles Turner to have guys like Harris guard Rudy Gobert it's pretty bad logic.

Turner could never control defensive glass in his career.
Often he has a deer in the headlights look when he needs to make a quick decision.
So basically Pop (GOAT coach by CS) and CBS are forcing the small ball, "something that never works" (per majority of CS members).

I disagree.
USA team got beat because they came with their E-team.
If they brought their A or B-team, they could small ball everyone to death.

Turner isn't a good defensive rebounder, but his ability to stretch Gobert to the perimeter while not making Gobert like the second coming of Wilt Chamberlain whenever he gets the ball inside makes him a player that Pop should've played more imo. And small ball works when you have the personnel to make it work, as I have reiterated numerous times, not when you use Joe Harris to guard Gobert. And the USA's E-team should've won this competition imo on paper, just because better USA teams lost in the past doesn't make this any less of an embarrassment.

Game's not played on paper unfortunately. As our Celtics found out last year.

Um yeah, US teams love underperforming.

[Celtics4ever]

The latter sounds more reasonable, Pop iirc is a huge fan of Stevens' coaching. This sucks because if Pop played the style of play he started with at the beginning of the Spurs dynasty, the US would've probably won.

I was jesting.

[Fierce1]

The last World Cup in 2014, the Americans were dominant because they had a star-studded lineup.

Serbia made their first five shots of the game, to race to a 10–5 lead. After the U.S. timeout, Serbia scored anew, then the Americans had a 17–3 run to go up by seven. Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson scored three-pointers, to give the USA a 35–21 lead. In the second quarter, the United States made six more three point shots, to give them a 26-point lead at the half. The Americans erected the largest lead, at 39 points midway through the third quarter. The final deficit of 37 points and the 129 points scored, were the largest in a World Cup final since the USA's 137–91 victory over Russia at the 1994 FIBA World Championship. The Americans also became the third team, after Brazil and Yugoslavia, to successfully defend the world title, and tied the Yugoslavs for having the most championships, with five.


The Americans shot 58% from the field and 50% from beyond the three-point line in the game, won all nine games by an average of 32.5 points, and qualified to the 2016 Summer Olympics. Kyrie Irving was named the tournament MVP.

[ozgod]

Serbia looked like another France to me!  They had 4 NBA players, a bunch of really talented euro players and of course dominant center play.

Freaking Bogdan Bogdonovich went 7/14 from 3... He's just a straight up Sniper.

The FIBA tournament has really turned into a great spectacle to watch.  Long term it's phenomenal for the NBA that their are so many quality players around the globe now, but I kind of think the era of U.S. dominance is over. 



 

I kinda think it's not. If the US sent Davis, LeBron, Durant(if healthy), Klay, Steph, Kawhi, Harden, Kemba, Mitchell, etc., this tourney would have been a farce. Maybe one team might get lucky and keep a loss to under 10 points but the tournament would have been over before it began.

Then send them!

Americans don't care about this tournament. Players or fans. They just do not see it as prestigious enough to bother. Hence why we had to send a group that is clearly far down the list of players the US would prefer to have sent.

Compare this team to next year's Olympic team. The talent difference will be huge. The US will win easily. Why? Because the best US players see the Olympics as prestigious and will want to play.

I think it would be cool if all the best players went, and that includes the international players. Just think about it, Canada was weak but they could have Andrew Wiggins, Jamal Murray, Kelly Olynick and Dwight Powell just to name a few. Ben Simmons could play for Australia. Al Horford for DR and so forth.

I posted this on the other thread "USA crumbles to France" regarding the challenge of consistently getting high level representation from NBA players in international competitions. I rephrased it somewhat to respond to your comment:

Our elite NBA players (and some others from teams like Canada and Australia) chose not to be there for their own reasons, whether it was because they thought it was a meaningless tournament, or because they wanted a summer off to recharge after a long season, or they didn't want to get injured, because the appeal of representing the USA was less than representing the team that paid their salary. And I can understand that (even though personally I'm disappointed as an American and Team USA fan). (I'll wager quite a few fans were happy they didn't suit up either, because then they are fresh for the NBA which is what they're really interested in.) So I don't want to use their absence as an excuse, as far as I'm concerned this is the best team we had available and willing and they weren't good enough.

In a sport where our professional league is seen as more important (or of a higher caliber) than national representation we will always have that challenge of getting players interested enough to risk their health and reputations for little return other than pride in representing your country, particularly if those tournaments don't have the same cachet as the Olympics. Having lived in Europe and Australia I've noticed other countries see international representation as the pinnacle of their careers, not just in basketball but in whatever sports they play, while as Americans we don't necessarily. We see the NBA finals as the pinnacle of basketball competition. It's just a difference in perspective to the US where sometimes we have an arrogance about things and don't feel the need to beat down on international teams to prove we're the best because we think our local stuff is the best anyway.

Of course it helps that one of our major sports is only played by us (American football) while baseball isn't really played outside of North America, parts of Latin America and Japan and Korea. Hockey is probably the sport where there is sufficient non-US representation (from Canada and Europe) that you could argue that international competition is of a higher standard than the NHL - but these days most of the best foreign players play in the NHL anyway.

Basketball is basically the opposite of soccer.  Not too many people care, globally, about the olympic soccer tournament.  They care about the world cup.  In basketball, the olympics are king, and the world cup is just a distraction.

How many other sports with high-paying major professional leagues have multiple major international tournaments?  Honestly, having such tournaments more than once every four years just seems burdensome and a bit of over-saturation.

They're probably trying to take a leaf out of FIFA's book with the Soccer World Cup, the European Championships, the Copa America, etc. Then you add in all the qualifiers for those. I agree the Olympics is probably soccer's Mickey Mouse tournament.

[ozgod]

Looks like Spain are into the gold medal game against France or Argentina after a double OT win over the Aussies. Shame I wanted the Aussies to win now that the US is out.

[footey]

Looks like Spain are into the gold medal game against France or Argentina after a double OT win over the Aussies. Shame I wanted the Aussies to win now that the US is out.

Me too. I predicted Aussies would win it all.  Close.

[footey]

Argentina's PG is very crafty. Don't count them out vs. France.

[Adelaide Celt]

Looks like Spain are into the gold medal game against France or Argentina after a double OT win over the Aussies. Shame I wanted the Aussies to win now that the US is out.

Me too. I predicted Aussies would win it all.  Close.

Bitterly disappointing. Had control for most of regulation. Spain got some crucial calls down the stretch but we still had our chances and just let ourselves down with some bad turnovers and poor defending. Wasn't quite as bad as being robbed of the bronze in the Rio Olympics but not far off.

Andrew Bogut and Luc Longley didn't hold back with their opinions after the game.

I hope Argentina win the final. I fear we are destined for yet another 4th place finish  Seen too many of them in my time, going back to losing the bronze medal playoff against Lithuania in the 1996 Olympics.

[Fierce1]

Patty Mills had a chance to win it for Australia in regulation.

But once again a missed FT turned a win into a loss.

The Raptors were brilliant at the FT line against GSW in last June's Finals.
That's why GSW only won one game.
Kawhi and Gasol made a lot of FTs in that series.

Free-throw shooting may not be a big deal during the regular season, but in the playoffs and in the Finals, it could be the difference in a 7-game series.