Having gold medal dreams, Team USA? Well, you better wake up because those dreams are over.
In the semifinals of the FIBA World Championship, Team USA lost to Greece, 101-95, sending them to the bronze medal game to face Manu Ginobili and the rest of the Argentinean team. Greece will play Spain in the gold medal game on Sunday.
The U.S. avoided their usually sluggish start, and came out with a sense of urgency at the beginning of the game by playing great man-to-man defense, which led to a 33-21 second quarter lead. At that point, Greece’s head coach, Panagiotis Yannakis, changed strategies. He implemented a pick-and-roll offense, which Team USA was unable to figure out for the remainder of the game. Greece went on a 24-8 run to close the second quarter, leading 45-41 at halftime.
Time after time, a Greek guard would run off a ball screen by a bigger teammate and, time after time, they would get a great look at the basket. The U.S. players on the other side of the court would often fall asleep, failing to cover their man as they cut to the hoop or failing to box them out when the shot went up.
This continued in the third quarter as Greece built a 14-point lead with six minutes to play in the quarter. Several hustle plays by Shane Battier helped Team USA cut the lead to 10 with just seconds to play in the period. Dwayne Wade had the ball at the top of the key and drove into the lane, clutching the ball one too many times and ended up forcing a bad shot attempt with less than five seconds to play. Had he gone straight up he probably would have scored the bucket, but Wade is used to playing against more athletic competition, where the extra clutch is necessary to avoid the high-flying defender. Greece grabbed the rebound and advanced the ball quickly up court for a layup at the buzzer. This four-point turnaround was a momentum killer for the U.S.
Throughout the entire second half, Team USA was hamstrung by poor free throw shooting. They finished a miserable 20-34 (59%), while Greece actually shot a higher percentage from the field (35-56 for 63%). Poor free throw shooting, along with the inability to cover the pick-and-roll, made any substantial comeback impossible.
Carmelo Anthony carried the U.S. offensively in the second half, and led all scorers with 27 points. Dwayne Wade added 19, while LeBron James scored 17 in the loss. I mentioned in my preview of the game that Greece didn’t have a NBA player on the roster, but guard Vasileios Spanoulis (22 points, 3-5 from 3-PT range) will be joining the Rockets this season and the rights of FC Sofoklis Schortsianitis (14 points) are owned by the L.A. Clippers, though he’s staying in Greece for at least another year. Spanoulis was especially deadly in the second half, murdering the U.S. on the pick-and-roll and hitting several clutch shots. Schortsianitis’ nickname is “Baby Shaq,” but he looks like a more athletic Robert “Tractor” Traylor. During Greece’s run, he looked like more like the Michigan version of Traylor than the NBA version.
After this summer’s re-tooling, I really thought that U.S. coach Mike Krzyzewski would be able to turn the team around more quickly, but it’s clear that additional time is needed. This was envisioned as a three-year plan, culminating at the 2008 Olympics, so there is time for Coach K to straighten things out.
I get the sense, from watching their body language reading some of the quotes from the U.S. players that they don’t feel that international play is real basketball. The truth is that the international game – with its passing, screening and cutting – is more representative of the game that James Naismith invented back in 1891 than the current bastardization that is the NBA. The league has recognized that, in many ways, the SportsCenter culture has hurt the game, but is just now taking steps to try to correct it. Basketball is a team sport, and five good players playing together will usually beat five great ones playing separately. Team USA learned that lesson (once again) against Greece.
