USA Basketball team remains an Olympic-sized mystery
So what’s really going on here? What are we looking at? What are we seeing? What’s the takeaway from the lack of dominance and uninspired play?
What are our expectations? Theirs? Both realistic and exaggerated.
As with the directive handed out last week in the immediate aftermath of jumpstarting Kamala Harris’ Madame POTUS campaign, it seems like with the United States men’s basketball team there is not a “We got the assignment” response to the urgency. And when your inferred pound-for-pound best player (Joel Embiid, according to Joel Embiid) says out loud, “On this team, I don’t have to do nothing, just chill,” you kinda already know what moving forward this has a chance to become.
So many questions.
As these Olympics begin, one of the central contradictions (or conflict central to all of our concerns) is what to make, what to expect, where to place this new team that has yet to be given — or earn — a signature name that defines them? Who they are. What they are about. On paper and screen they can easily, especially when considering the age and condition of the elder members (and despite no Kawhi Leonard, no Jaylen Brown, no Kyrie Irving) be discussed as the best assembly of an American men’s Olympic basketball team in the history of the game.
Notice I said “best” not “greatest.”
And therein lies the rub. But Shakespeare isn’t hoopin’ with USA across his chest for the next two weeks. Steph Curry is. Anthony Davis is. Kevin Durant (at some point) is. Anthony Edwards is. A King called James is.
Names of and players who, while in the same uniform, on the same mission, should strike a historic level of fear and early on-sight defeat in damn near every team that confronts them regardless of the fact that the rest (or some parts) of the world has caught up to America in the game we invented, cultivated and perfected.
Fact is, no country/team in these Olympics is. Not anymore. Not after the “sample” of what the United States put on display leading into the official Group A play. That subpar performance in the second game against Australia, eventually winning by just six points. That 101-100 win over South Sudan in London, rallying from a 16-point deficit to avoid perhaps the biggest upset in the program’s history. Followed up by that four-point (92-88) win against Germany, who had it down to a one-possession game with under two-minutes left.
“I’m going to be honest: I like those better than the blowouts. At least we get tested.” LeBron James said after the one-point win over South Sudan in that pre-Olympic basketball showcase. Really? Really? Maybe that’s all we need to know to know the answers to the questions at the top of this column.
They haven’t won games as much as they’ve escaped losses. The difference seems to be for them it’s about the medal; for us — it’s about something more. It is not about just winning, this is about how they win. The matter in which they win and the messages they send with every win and the message they leave for the world once these Olympics are over. To win gold or establish a legacy? To win gold or prove to the world that the USA still run thangs and can run through all things when it comes to basketball? To win gold for the world to envy and hate us at the same time. To win gold …
No one is (really) saying that it’s up to this XXXIII Olympic team to live up to the XXV Olympiad squad’s supremacy and influence. That 1992 team faced a total of nine other NBA players during their Olympic run, this 2024 unit is about to face 39. With nine of the other 11 teams competing having at least five players on their rosters with NBA experience. Time’s done changed.
Still on this team’s behalf there has to be an understanding from them that people are going to side-by-side the two teams and then gonna do what people do: cast judgment and throw stones. And it is with that knowledge that LeBron & Co. should enter Paris with two missions. With winning gold being the easier of the two.
Is this a bad team? Tell me, is it? Should we respect them? Do they respect themselves? Do they have an obsession with winning? Do we have zero remorse? Or too much compassion? Are we delusional? Maniacal? Tell me. Do we think they are better than everyone else? Do they want to take what’s theirs and never give it back? Are they bad players? Tell me, are they?
It’s the newest “when expectation meets capability” moment in sports. Less than zero people are asking this team to turn water into a bottle of 2018 Brunello di Montalcino, we just would like to be able to uncork one and sit back, relaxed in full chill mode, and watch USA men’s basketball show us what this game in the hands of this generation’s version of a Dream Team looks like when played at it’s highest form.
With only the world as their opponents is elevated generational greatness too much to ask?