World Championships Preview/Gamethread II

Just curious.

Lamar Odom is a much more useful and explosive player when freed from the triangle.

but Moondebah always seems to be up-to-date on international stuff, even during their offseasons. At least that’s how I see it. Keep up the good work man. It’s guys like you that have me bragging to all my friends that I write for TDS.

I won’t be around for these games so I’ll miss chatting about them. But I’m definitely going to be interested in watch them on DVR later. Here’s to hoping for another badass performance by Luis!

(And I agree with the editors, keep up the great work. I’ve really enjoyed your analysis on the World tourny and just your comments and opinions in general, thanks for keeping us informed.)

Camera pans out to show about 60 people on the far side of the court. A Durant dunk gets a golf clap.

US on pace to score 132.

Angola “misses” a free throw. It bounces around on the rim while two Americans try to swat it off (a la the offensive goaltending rule) but eventually drops in. Ref rules that it was touched it so it becomes a two-pointer instead of a one-pointer.

Worried about team USA’s ability to shoot their way out of a zone defense? Worried about their turnovers against athletic teams? Worried about their ability to play inside against bigger teams with traditional centers?

Well worry no more! Or worry less. Not including Steph Curry and Danny Granger, two players who have been having a tough tournament and probably won’t see much air in competitive games, the US shot a whopping 56.9% from the field, 58.6% from three, and committed only 2 (!!!) turnovers. Seriously, there’s no reason the Rockets shouldn’t covet Curry and Granger once real basketball starts, but in just 30 COMBINED minutes they were responsible for 9 of our 37 missed field goals, 8 of our 20 missed threes, and 3 of our 5 turnovers (all Curry). Granger, by missing a free throw, even managed to lower our FT%. Ick.

What to worry about? Against Angola, not much. We weren’t really tested inside (their tallest player is 6’8"), which has been our biggest non-self-inflicted problem in our previous games. I guess Tyson Chandler did get 4 fouls in 13 minutes against a team where he has 5 inches on every player and a constant 30 point lead. Ick.

The one really worrisome thing is how many times an Angolan received the ball unguarded under his own hoop. Offensive rebounds, perimeter double-teams that left a man open inside, and a couple times when we almost had a good steal and so our centers left their guy to run down the court. We actually managed to salvage a few of these by swooping in at the last second, but any team with a 7-footer will flush these down easy.

That said, this was a hell of a game for the US. We had the start to finish dominating performance that you would have expected us to have against teams like Tunisia and Iran (but didn’t), and against a much better team (yes, there is about as big a talent difference between Angola and Tunisia as there is between the US and Angola).

Disclosure: the only Russian games I saw were most of the Puerto Rico game and then about 3/4 of the NZ one. My impression from the Puerto Rico game was that Russia was a standard (but not exceptional) Euro team. By that I mean they had a couple of big, physical centers and surrounded them with moderately athletic stretch shooters on offense, played a lot of help defense and zone on defense.

NZ was indeed unable to handle a fearsome Russian defense, but I’m not worried for a few reasons.

1) It was New Zealand (does anyone else’s spell check flag “Zealand”? That seems insulting). They’ve played decently this tourney, but they’re 13th in the FIBA rankings. Angola was 12th.

2) It seemed like Russia played stifling, very high (pressure outside the 3-line) mostly man-to-man defense to shut down the one area that NZ had an advantage: Kirk Penny, their leading scorer and the guard through which the entire offense runs. Penny got in foul trouble early, and the extra time on the bench (he played 28 minutes, 4 less than his average in non-elimination games) didn’t help them. They pestered him high, low, and everywhere, and he couldn’t get his shot up (previous FG%: 47.0. Today: 38.4). New Zealand couldn’t set up their offense with their playmaker in foul trouble and being chased around.

But our best player isn’t our PG, and we often have two all-star ball handlers on the floor. If they hound Derrick Rose high, most likely he will blow past them and dunk or dish, but he could also pass over to Billups and have him handle the ball. If they get Durant in foul trouble, Rudy Gay will be glad to light up.

The main concern is the volleyball inside, which will be our problem against any team with a decent front-court. However, we’ve mostly had trouble being backed down (as Gasol did in the Spain game before their coach stopped letting Odom practice against him, or Splitter did in the Brazil game).

We’ve actually been doing pretty well on the boards. I don’t have any advanced stats, but we’re leading the tournament in both FG% (which means we aren’t just rebounding our own shitty shooting) and rebounds per game.

I was planning on skipping this one, but looks like I may have to pay attention.

He’s got 17 points (including a 3) and even a couple of steals.

Watching him chase people around the perimeter and slash toward the basket make me forget that he isn’t just a high-post player. I was caught off guard by how quick he is, but we got to see some of that a few years ago as well.

Hello MVP

I can’t wait for the next game

That is seriously the 3rd time I have seen Scola try to intentionally miss a free throw and it has gone in. He’s done it twice with the Rockets.

Luis is beasting it! MVP!

They’re trading leads in the 3rd quarter. Serbia was in control in the first half, Spain dominated the first few minutes of the 3rd to steal the lead, and then Serbia has only recently stanched the flow.

Well, I was all in the process of typing up something about Llull’s defense against Serbia’s playmaker Teodosic, when (after Llull had switched off) Teodosic just made one of the best dagger’s I’ve seen. Wow.

EXTREMELY high man-to-man pressure by the US against Russia followed by an up-tempo offense. Unfortunately we’ve picked up a couple of quick fouls, but this is the sort of thing that can really pay off later in the game when their starters are exhausted and we get to take advantage of our athletic bench.

Pretty impressed by the US so far, they haven’t played like this before. Is this one of Coach K’s secrets?

Russia should start getting tired and the fouls should start piling up. Since we already have a small lead, I expect it to grow quite a bit by the end of the 3rd.

But it seems like the lesson Lithuania learned from the Argentina tapes is “stop Scola at all costs.” They’re doing mostly a man defense that sort of collapses into a bunch of guys in the lane when Scola gets the ball inside. Very tough for him to create.

Hopefully Lithuania gets too tired to continue to play such tough defense.

You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.

At least this tournament finished w/out Scola getting hurt which is the most important thing.

I’m not sure that Scola is going to get the MVP without making it to the semis but I hope he does get it.

A couple of thoughts

1. You think NBA refs are bad? They look so good in comparison to FIBA refs its not even funny. These guys simply can’t keep up and with refs from generally 2-3 leagues on the court you get 3 interpretations. Touch fouls? Maybe. Slugfest? Possibly. Wavering from one extreme to another? Almost certainly.

2. This team really could have used a couple of legit shooters. Curry doesn’t seem to be it.

3. Durant is simply unstoppable, and can overcome the refereeing. Lamar Odom should be the 2nd team MVP. The guy has been a revelation – looking like his pre-LA days, when he was a guy who could do anything. He’s not a center, but he’s making up for it with simply brilliant play on the defensive end particularly. I just can’t get over this. He generally looks hapless, hesitant and deferential in LA – he’s a much better player in this style and format. He honestly should play elsewhere – he’d make a great Sun.