After slim victories, Team USA needs to be worried
By Ian Pierno
After two narrow victories, is Team USA in trouble as the men’s basketball continues at the Rio Olympics?
During Team USA’s men’s basketball team’s exhibition tour preceding the Olympics, the fourth quarter was time for high-flying alley-oops and ridiculous 360 dunk attempts, a practice that came to an abrupt close once the team started competing in the Rio Olympics.
After a thrashing of an extremely under-skilled and undersized China team in the opener, the wheels have spun in the mud for the men in stars and stripes.
The 113-69 defeat of Venezuela in the Americans’ second game of group action didn’t tell the story of what has been Team USA’s Achilles heel in the Olympic games: the inability to string together four clean, smooth, periods of basketball. Team USA was knotted up 18-18 with Venezuela before pulling away.
That’s when the competition finally started to rise for Team USA. The Americans needed a revitalized Carmelo Anthony to spearhead a second half comeback to overcome Australia’s hardly intimidating duo of Andrew Bogut and Patty Mills with a 98-88 score at the final buzzer.
If not for Team USA’s dominance on the offensive glass — the Americans held a 21-8 advantage — that gave it the second chance opportunities it needed to wipe out its dismal shooting night (34.8 percent by players not sporting “Anthony” on the back of their jersey).
So, if the problem was a lackluster shooting night that could eventually be overcome thanks to Team USA’s rebounding dominance, that would make it just a game to put it in the rearview, no?
When Team USA played Serbia, it finally faced a competent big man, the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokic, who infiltrated an American front-court that seemed impermeable during the pre-Olympics exhibition tour.
Jokic tore up Team USA, scoring 25 points on 11-of-15 shooting in 30 minutes of action. Alongside Jokic, European professional players Nikola Kalinić and Stefan Marković crashed the boards with determination as the small nation of just over 7,000,000 citizens were held to only a 33-31 disadvantage on the boards (nine-to-eight on the offensive glass).
If not for Bogdan Bogdanovic’s missed 3-pointer with two seconds to go, Team USA may not have escaped with a 94-91 victory.
The story wasn’t the same as the Australia match-up, but the conclusion matched: a lack of consistency nearly costing the squad of NBA all-stars and its five-time NCAA Final Four winning head coach what should’ve been a seamless win.
Team USA needs to re-discover its fire, whether that’s from a Coach Krzyzewski speech or a LeBron James subtweet, it needs to happen before Sunday’s game against a talented French squad, arguably the toughest competition the United States has seen this summer.
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The last time Team USA notched back-to-back wins by this slim of a margin, it was ensued by a four-point loss at the hands of Lithuania in a forgettable 2004 Olympics in which the Americans barely earned a bronze medal.
It’s said that it’s important to know history so that it doesn’t repeat. For the sake of Carmelo Anthony and his chase for a gold medal trifecta, here’s to hoping he pushes the first-timers on the roster to do their research.