Charles Barkley isn't happy with the USA Men's Basketball team's construction
Until Team USA’s mostly-dominant turn against Argentina on Wednesday, things were looking rather cagey for the American cagers. The group went undefeated through five games in pool play, but its final three contests were won by a total of just 16 points, with near-misses against Australia, Serbia and France (playing without Tony Parker) causing much consternation amongst observers.
Deserved consternation, it should be noted, because while the tough win over Australia was to be expected and outfits from Serbia and France are to be respected, Team USA hardly looked like a seamless squad working with a product greater than the sum of its total parts.
No, the seams were showing as the team’s offense ranked fourth overall in pool play, with its Olympic-leading offense often too reliant on the one-on-one brilliance of its All-Star-dotted roster.
Charles Barkley, in an interview with The Brad Cesmet Show (via The Big Lead), as is often the case, certainly noticed the minor failings:
“Well, I hope they win gold. I want always us to win the gold medal. It’s not a good team to put together. I don’t think they did a good job because if you watch all those guys — they’re all good players, don’t get me wrong — they all need the ball.
“If you take away DeAndre Jordan, every guy on that team is a ball-dominant guy. You see them playing a lot of one-on-one basketball. That’s the thing I’ve noticed more than anything. Like, you have to understand when you put a team together like that, you have to have some role players. … But you take a guy like Kyle Lowry, who is a hell of a player, he wants to score. Kyrie [Irving] wants to score. Kevin [Durant] wants to score. [Demar] DeRozan wants to score. So, I think they have been really stagnant offensively.
“When they put that team together in the future, they have to realize we can’t have just really, really great offensive players. They gotta to have players that if they don’t get a shot, they’re not just gonna stand around and mope.”
Charles is not wrong, but as a longtime employee of a particular shoe company, he’s not going to call out USA Basketball for one of its primary motivations – filling the Team USA roster with stars, and the more that wear a certain shoe company’s logo, the better.
Team USA has holes, even with that Olympic-leading offense and 6-0 record, as it heads into the semifinal round on Friday against Spain.
Starting point man Kyrie Irving has saved the team’s tail several times with killer offensive play, but he’s not a natural ball distributor, and has had a direct role in most of the more egregious defensive follies the squad has de-highlighted its run with. Irving is a terrible defender, and the former No. 1 overall draft pick is being exposed against a litany of point guards that NBA teams declined to use a No. 51 draft pick on.
Carmelo Anthony recently became Team USA’s all-time leading scorer, and offensively he’s a perfect fit for the international game. Defensively, though, he remains a terrible help defender at power forward in ways that cannot be masked as they are in the NBA – where he’s played the position to great acclaim. This is made all the more obvious in Olympic play when centers DeAndre Jordan or DeMarcus Cousins have to chase out guards or swingmen past their defensive comfort zones, asking Melo for a defensive rotation that won’t be there in the end.
Klay Thompson, outside of his 7-13 showing against France, has missed 20 of 23 shots from long range. Paul George has had his moments of brilliance offensively, but he can be forced out of the action when the ball isn’t moving, which it often isn’t.
Jimmy Butler has found it tough to contribute when he’s not being afforded plays run for him. DeMar DeRozan has struggled defensively and isn’t able to make a hefty box score contribution without frequent trips to the free throw line. Cousins’ low post game doesn’t consistently work in international play. Draymond Green keeps being shoehorned into unfortunate lineups by the Team USA coaching staff.
They are still the favorites to win twice more and take the gold, but there are holes. And most of this stems from, as Barkley pointed out, USA Basketball mostly grabbing the best shot creators they could on their way toward the final roster. Outside of Jordan and Draymond Green, each of these players are used to finishing a game with a high usage rate – and Draymond isn’t exactly exempt, as he loves acting as a ball-dominant point forward for long stretches of Golden State Warriors contests.
To this team’s credit, no player is standing around and moping, as Charles suggested. These guys mostly just don’t know how to play off the ball. We’re still playing the same sport in Rio, but asking Paul George to go stand in the corner behind the three-point line for possession after possession is a little like asking Paul Goldschmidt to spend a few weeks at shortstop, because, hey, we just traded for Anthony Rizzo.
It would be ideal to send off what would be, on paper, a well-rounded team. The most destructive issue, however, remains the same regardless of the total of combined All-Star appearances on the roster. It’s turning that team into a team.
Go ahead and substitute Jeff Teague or Mike Conley (given good health) in. Let Jae Crowder fly around. Add in Marvin Williams, or push C.J. McCollum’s ascendancy far past the usual “pay your dues on the Select Team”-schedule that we have in place for the younger cats. Make Gordon Hayward a centerpiece in 2020.
Fill out your roster with low usage guys that can complement the stars expertly. Teammates that aren’t used to leading their teams in shots attempted.
It wouldn’t matter. All the Select Team trials and intra-NBA camaraderie and great coaching won’t make the difference. It’s still hard to put together a team full of players who (mostly) are not teammates on NBA squads, and turn them into a collective outfit that plays without reflex when the going gets tough on both ends.
That’s not the fault of the players, coach Mike Krzyzewski (we can’t believe we’re saying that), or (and we really can’t believe we’re saying this) the ever-swooshing shoe ad that is USA Basketball. It’s just hard to get a team to learn how to act like a team over the course of a few weeks.
Charles Barkley isn’t incorrect in pointing out that Team USA is full of stars, and stars oftentimes don’t know how to play alongside each other. All-Star Games are usually a mess, and the LeBron James-led Miami Heat needed nearly two full seasons (plus two deep dives into the playoffs) to figure things out. Adding athletes with instincts that encourage movement on offense and communication on defense would help.
With that limited space in the summer left to encourage the chemistry that leads toward that unthinking, immediate brand of movement and help, though, would any changes even matter? Stars or no stars, Team USA is still going to have a hell of a time every time out attempting to pass themselves off as a collective unit, mostly because they’ll never have enough time to learn how to play alongside each other.
The obvious caveat remains. No, the games haven’t been fun to watch at times, but this brand is still the favorite to grab its sixth gold medal in seven tries during the Dream Team era.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!