Olympics Basketball

[FfldCntyFan]

You don't understand the tournament then.

In no order who have great players.

1. USA
2. Germany (F Wagner, M. Wagner, Schroder)
3. Spain (littered with terrific euro players who are proven but older like R Fernandez. Have Juanacho and Wily Hernangomez)
4. France (Goebert, Wembanyama, a ton of talent)
5. Serbia (Jokic)
6. Greece (Giannis )
7. Australia (Ingles, Jock Landale, Giddey, Patty Mills) -- cut an NBA player (Thybulle) from the team.
8. Canada (SGA, Jamal Murray, RJ Barett, Dort,)

If I had to pick?

USA - Gold
Canada - Silver
Australia - Bronze
France - Shutout

But we'll see.

The bottom 4 who should struggle, but who knows
Puerto Rico (Jose Alvarado, Tremont Waters!)
Brazil
Japan
South Sudan
Those top eight teams all have multiple nba guys.

The USA should win, but its going to take a great game from them to beat some of these teams. Jokic can dominate a basketball game any time he steps on the floor, as can Giannis.

Yes, the rest of the world has made up quite a bit of ground and yes, some of the top players in the world are from other countries but fielding an actual team requires quite a few pieces.

If you were to take the fifth, sixth and seventh best players from any other country, how deep in US players would you need to go to reach similar talent? 35? 45? 50?

Where we should have a massive advantage is in the quality of players three or four through the end of the bench. What we've been lacking in tournaments where we haven't done well is play as a team and bring the overall commitment necessary to win a competitive tournament.

I personally believe that if we put the teams together correctly (and the players were willing to comply with what would be necessary) we could field five or six full squads that would be at worst equally talented to any other country's team.

 

[aceboon]

What needs to happen is they need to start going back to the original goal after the Larry Brown 2004 disaster of securing multi-year commitments so guys are around and playing with each other for both the World Cup and Olympics. Not sure why they strayed from that model but that would be the best way for continuity instead of throwing guys together for a few weeks for both tournaments and it would also ensure that they wouldn't be getting embarrassed at the World Cup with the C team. I originally started watching Germany at the 2022 EuroCup because Giffey was playing and had a decent role off the bench and the same core of that team has been together for the 22 EuroCup, 23 World Cup, and now the 24 Olympics. They've got NBA players and guys that have been used to playing with each other for years and multiple tournament cycles.

 

[Dogdeacon]

You don't understand the tournament then.

In no order who have great players.

1. USA
2. Germany (F Wagner, M. Wagner, Schroder)
3. Spain (littered with terrific euro players who are proven but older like R Fernandez. Have Juanacho and Wily Hernangomez)
4. France (Goebert, Wembanyama, a ton of talent)
5. Serbia (Jokic)
6. Greece (Giannis )
7. Australia (Ingles, Jock Landale, Giddey, Patty Mills) -- cut an NBA player (Thybulle) from the team.
8. Canada (SGA, Jamal Murray, RJ Barett, Dort,)

If I had to pick?

USA - Gold
Canada - Silver
Australia - Bronze
France - Shutout

But we'll see.

The bottom 4 who should struggle, but who knows
Puerto Rico (Jose Alvarado, Tremont Waters!)
Brazil
Japan
South Sudan
Those top eight teams all have multiple nba guys.

The USA should win, but its going to take a great game from them to beat some of these teams. Jokic can dominate a basketball game any time he steps on the floor, as can Giannis.

I'm a basketball fan posting on a niche basketball website, so of course I follow Olympic hoops. That's how I knew the best player for Deutschland was a Wagner, who is not even an all-NBA talent - so you artfully avoided the question and listed all of the NBA players in the tourney.

It is hyperbole, but this might be the most competitive international basketball tournament ever, however we will see. Yet in terms of highly competitive basketball its proven a notch below even by your way of substantiating the quality. Your talent proof is to list NBA players. However, the Wagners and Schroeder as your leads would be underdogs in an NBA playoff series. Different rules of course and the international squads are experienced playing together, but very likely teams 2-7 on the list would struggle to get out of the first round in an NBA playoff series.

To test international vs NBA it could be cool if they invite a few internationals to the NBA Cup every year to play that out. That's more CRAZY talk I suppose that maybe should be qualified as a theoretical construct even on a superfluous college hoop fan message board.

 

[BigErnMcCracken]

I saw a crazy stat today: the ‘92 dream team played against 9 NBA players. The ‘24 team will play against 61. That doesn’t even sound possible but I saw it on the internet so it must be true.

 

[Bboy Lace]

I saw a crazy stat today: the ‘92 dream team played against 9 NBA players. The ‘24 team will play against 61. That doesn’t even sound possible but I saw it on the internet so it must be true.

Nice fun fact.

 

[Bboy Lace]

Team USA is a -12.5 favorite over Serbia on Sunday.

 

[IndyLives]

USA can win gold with their B-Team. No one is going to beat a team with Tatum, Curry and LeBron.

 

[olehead]

I saw a crazy stat today: the ‘92 dream team played against 9 NBA players. The ‘24 team will play against 61. That doesn’t even sound possible but I saw it on the internet so it must be true.

But grassroots this, aau that. That's over 20% of the league.

 

[StllH8L8ner]

Watching Germany/Japan hoops at the moment. Hoping Germany pulls away so Gif gets some burn.