In the future we'll be writing some super-small game recaps like the following, especially as the FIBA tournament rolls on and preseason games start. More detailed analyses will come later.
Team USA against Slovenia last Tuesday was
an ugly game, there’s no way around it.
It started with Slovenia’s snot green uniforms, and it never really
ended after that. Slovenia’s poor
shooting led to wild rebounds, much floor scrambling, many sloppy fast breaks; their
poor defense clogged everything up for the Americans so the latter never got
into an offense; the refs were obsessive compulsive and wouldn’t let the game
flow.
It was a good attempt of the US
team to deal with a smaller shooting team, which they haven’t come up against
yet, so all the ugliness eventually had a point. Their defense was excellent, and several times
they caught the Slovenians in a trap in a corner. In the end, Slovenia couldn’t get a shot
off. This defensive tenacity flagged towards
the end of the game, and they got the score back within twenty when Goran
Dragic’s amazing brother, Zoran, started getting hot from behind the line. But mostly it proved what we already know—that
the US won’t have too much trouble dealing with a team that can’t take it into
the paint.
But it was a useful scrimmage
as the team heads into the tournament: it never hurts the US to deal with teams
that would never have a chance in the NBA.
Exposing NBA players not just to unfamiliar styles of play but to team
compositions quite foreign to them is one of the toughest tasks facing Coach K. The US can’t be inflexible, and play to their
own set of rules.
Yet the team has been dealing
with these types of teams for some time, in these sorts of ugly games. However nice it is to see them attempt to
adjust, it seems like this group already is flexible enough. The tournament needs to start already. FIBA ball isn’t particularly easy on the eyes in
general, and the less we are exposed to this sort of win, the better.
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