Team USA Overcomes 17 Point Deficit to Defeat Serbia, 95-91
Team USA outscored Serbia 32-15 in the fourth quarter to escape with a 95-91 win that punched their ticket to a gold medal game matchup with France on Saturday. Stephen Curry scored a game-high 36 points, one short of Team USA's single game Olympics record--but Curry had his best Olympics performance in a highly competitive game, while Carmelo Anthony scored 37 points in a blowout win versus Nigeria in 2012. Curry shot 12-19 from the field (including 9-14 from three point range), and he had a game-high +20 plus/minus number.
Joel Embiid had his best all-around game as a member of Team USA, scoring 19 points on 8-11 field goal shooting. He had seven fourth quarter points. LeBron James logged just the fourth triple double in the Olympics since the 1970s (when rebounds and assists began to be tracked consistently), and he is the only player since the 1970s with two Olympics triple doubles. James finished with 16 points, a game-high 12 rebounds, and a team-high 10 assists.
Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton did not play, while Anthony Edwards, Anthony Davis, Bam Adebayo, and Derrick White each played 13 minutes or less. With Team USA staring elimination in the face, the players who Coach Steve Kerr trusted the most were Curry (33 minutes), James (32 minutes), Embiid (26 minutes), Devin Booker (24 minutes), Kevin Durant (24 minutes), and Jrue Holiday (20 minutes).
Bogdan Bogdanovic led Serbia with 20 points, while Nikola Jokic had 17 points, a game-high 11 assists, and five rebounds. Aleksa Avramovic scored 15 points on 5-8 field goal shooting, and he led Serbia's long range attack with 4-6 three point shooting. Team USA only outrebounded Serbia 34-33, and Team USA committed 10 turnovers compared to Serbia's seven turnovers.
It was evident from the opening tip that playing Serbia in the medal round is nothing like playing Brazil, the team that Team USA routed in the first game of medal round play. Serbia dominated Team USA for the first three quarters, leading 31-23 at the end of the first quarter and pushing the margin to 17 (42-25) before settling for a 54-43 halftime lead. It must be emphasized that Serbia controlled the game despite Curry putting on an incredible shooting exhibition, starting with 14 points in the first 3:38 of the game and 17 points overall in the first quarter; what wins for Team USA is not three point shooting or highlight plays, but rather stingy defense leading to transition scoring opportunities--and Team USA did not play that way until very late in the game.
Team USA trimmed the deficit to six, 65-59, on a Holiday three pointer with 3:30 remaining in the third quarter, but then Serbia countered with an 11-2 run to go up 76-61 with just :32 left in the third quarter. The momentum shifted at the 7:19 mark of the fourth quarter when Jokic committed his fourth foul while Serbia led, 78-70; in FIBA play, five fouls result in disqualification, so Jokic could not be as aggressive the rest of the way. On one fourth quarter possession, he backed away from Embiid in the post and gave up an open shot rather than risk being whistled for his fifth foul.
James' driving layup tied the score at 84 with 3:41 left, and then after a Filip Petrusev dunk put Serbia back on top Curry drilled a three to give Team USA the lead for good, 87-86. Jokic's layup cut Team USA's lead to 93-91 with :26 remaining, but Serbia made a puzzling decision to let 18 seconds run off of the clock before fouling--and then they fouled Curry, whose two free throws iced the win.
Serbia shot 10-19 (.526) from three point range in the first half, and they made 15 three pointers in the first three quarters--five in each quarter--but did not make a single shot from beyond the arc in the fourth quarter as Team USA belatedly lifted their defensive focus and intensity. There could not be a better example proving the point that Team USA's shooting from three point range is not the deciding factor in these games.
When figuring out what to make of this game, keep in mind that Team USA's roster includes four players from the NBA's 75th Anniversary Team while Serbia's team includes four players who have NBA experience. Jokic is an all-time great and Bogdanovic is a solid NBA starter, but Vasilije Micic has averaged 7.0 ppg in 60 career NBA games and Nikola Jovic has averaged 7.1 ppg in 61 career NBA games.
Here is a fascinating thought experiment: would Serbia have come within five points of beating Team USA if you switched Jokic with any one Team USA player? Keep in mind that 75th Anniversary Team members James, Curry, Durant, and Davis won most of their NBA titles by forming super teams, not by elevating teams without All-Stars. Would any of them even show up for the Olympics if they were told that their team's second best player would be Bogdan Bogdanovic? Curry led an underdog college squad at Davidson so maybe he would accept the challenge, but James, Durant, and Davis are not built like that.
I mean no disrespect to Serbia. In fact, my point is that the Serbian players are better at basketball than they are given credit for being, while American players are overrated. This is not a hot take, or an overreaction to one game. Team USA's game plan for the first 30-plus minutes versus Serbia seemed to be to hope that Curry could
make enough three pointers to overcome their sluggish defense and their
lack of an effective half court offense; in marked contrast, Serbia played a team game at both ends of the court. American basketball--from high
school to college to the NBA--has devolved into an isolation game in
which star players are protected by the officials and in which
principles of team play at both ends of the court are not emphasized
enough. For at least the past 20 years in FIBA play, we have regularly seen that American players who are used to traveling,
palming, and being rewarded with free throw attempts after jumping into
defenders are not nearly as effective when they are not provided with
such leeway. NBA players, particularly American NBA players, rely on rules that favor
offense, and their statistics are inflated by that reliance; think of how often NBA players are bailed out by flopping and flailing. Embiid had an excellent game versus Serbia, but in this game and throughout the Olympics he has often flung himself to the floor--as he does all the time in the NBA--only to watch in exasperation as the FIBA referees refused to bail him out. Embiid has bragged that he would average 50 ppg in the NBA if double teaming were outlawed, but a better hypothetical to ponder is how many points he would average if the NBA stopped rewarding him for falling down.
As I noted in my article about Team USA's performance in the USA Basketball showcase, the popular notion--repeatedly asserted by J.J. Redick--that today's NBA players are vastly superior to NBA players from previous eras does not withstand careful scrutiny. Jokic already has won an NBA championship despite not playing alongside a single All-Star, and now he nearly took down four 75th Anniversary Team members (plus a host of perennial All-Stars) with one NBA starter and two NBA reserves. Either Jokic is the greatest player of all-time, or his Serbian teammates are much better than anyone thinks, or the American players are not quite as good as their press clippings. Again, this is not based on just one game; this is based on watching more than two decades of regression of the American game--with a brief respite when Kobe Bryant and Jason Kidd restored order by playing the kind of perimeter defense that is necessary for Team USA to consistently win in FIBA play: Bryant went 36-0 in FIBA play, and Kidd went 56-0 in FIBA play, but before and after their tenures with Team USA the squad suffered losses to teams that looked vastly inferior on paper if one only considers the players' NBA resumes.
Redick and others assert that the supposedly skinny NBA players of the
1990s, 1980s, and earlier would have had no chance trying to compete
against James. If that is true, then why does James need three other
75th Anniversary Team members to barely beat Jokic and--no offense to
Serbia--a bunch of skinny dudes who will likely never make an NBA
All-Star team? I don't doubt that James would put up big individual
numbers in any era, but he would not have won more championships in
earlier eras than he won in his own era, unless you can picture Jokic
and crew beating any championship team from
the 1990s, 1980s, or 1970s. If James needs a team stacked with NBA All-Stars to barely squeak by Jokic and Serbia then James is not beating the 1970s Knicks or Celtics, or the 1980s Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, or 76ers, or the 1990s Bulls unless he has a stacked team.
This close call versus Serbia is just one more example of the extent to which American players who expect to be able to travel and palm the ball while being rewarded with free throw attempts if a defender even breathes on them are not nearly so spectacular when they are expected to play basketball by the written rules and not by the NBA's lenient interpretations of those rules. Remember when Gregg Popovich used to instruct his players to put their hands behind their backs when they guarded James Harden? Popovich was trying to prevent his players from getting into foul trouble based on the ludicrous way that Harden was officiated but--intentionally or not--he was also exposing the extent to which the NBA game is slanted to favor offense.
It is often said that the world has caught up to America in basketball, but that is overly simplistic. It is true that many of the other national teams have improved, but it is undeniable that American basketball has regressed. There is video evidence to demonstrate this. On August 8, 1992, the one and only Dream Team beat Croatia 117-85 to win Olympic gold. Team USA's starting lineup that day was Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Scottie Pippen, Charles Barkley, and David Robinson. I realize that half of the people reading this article may not have been alive in 1992, but those of us old enough to have seen all of the Dream Team's games live know the difference between their brand of basketball and the brand of basketball being played by the current version of Team USA. It is fair to say that the Dream Team would have beaten this Serbian team by at least 15-20 points, and probably more. Keep in mind that the Croatian team that the Dream Team thrashed featured three future Hall of Famers: Toni Kukoc, Drazen Petrovic, and Dino Radja. That Croatian team would probably beat this Serbian team. The Dream Team certainly made their share of highlight plays, but they won because of their mastery of basketball fundamentals at both ends of the court: they defended tenaciously, they rebounded, and they punctuated fast breaks with dunks, not "logo threes."
It is undeniable that Team USA 2024 is far from being a Dream Team, let alone matching the real Dream Team, and even though Team USA is (and should be) the favorite versus France it is not at all certain that Team USA will win the gold medal game. France beat Team USA 83-76 in the first game of the 2020 Olympics (held in 2021), and then battled Team USA to the wire before falling 87-82 in the gold medal game.
Labels: 2024 Olympics, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Joel Embiid, Kevin Durant, LeBron James, Nikola Jokic, Stephen Curry, Team USA
posted by David Friedman @ 1:49 AM
