The Olympics are Here

A 2-part preview of basketball in the Olympic games- the first half is mainly about the basketball side of things, and the second part focuses more on the politics of the game and the public opinion of Team USA.


Strategy for Success

Anyone who has watched Team USA knows that most of their scoring is generated from the fast break, which is fueled by forced turnovers, loose balls and sharp outlet passes after missed baskets (and sometimes even made baskets). As the US has superior athleticism across the board, running at every opportunity gives them the best chance to score, and in turn, to win. There are two major problems with this source of offense- frequent gambling on defense to create these opportunities, and the lack of a half-court offense when fast break opportunities don’t present themselves.

Against most teams, the US will dominate simply because the back-court pressure of Kobe, Williams, Paul and Kidd will be too much for inexperienced or incapable guards to handle- this prevents very good teams, like Lithuania and Germany, from seriously competing with the US. That said, the better teams have achieved top status in part because of their strong guard play. Spain, Greece and Argentina will not have the same struggles bringing the ball up. Spain in particular is loaded at point guard, led by Jose Calderon (who was among the NBA leaders in assist-to-turnover ratio last season) and young phenom Ricky Rubio, who will almost definitely be a top 5 pick in next year’s NBA draft and should get regular playing time.

Once the opposing teams get into their offense, Team USA loves to gamble, running out into passing lanes and prematurely leaking out on the break. The disciplined medal contenders will not only be able to withstand this, but exploit the aggressiveness of the Americans into easy half-court baskets, either with back-door cuts for open layups, or spot-up shooters getting uncontested looks from 3-point range. The thing that I’ve noticed about all of the international teams, even the lesser ones, is that if they have an open look, they will almost always make it. You can only expect to see the quality of shooters go up as the US faces tougher competition.

Team USA loves to push the tempo. Along with the strong trio of point guards, Kobe, Wade and LeBron are all capable of handling the ball in the open court, and every player on the team is more than capable of finishing on the break. But when teams take care of the ball and make a concerted effort to get all 5 guys back on defense (a strategy that Russia successfully employed), the opportunities to run will be less frequent. This is where the US needs to be able to walk the ball up and run plays in the half-court. This has always been a problem for the Americans, and unfortunately this team doesn’t seem to be much different. The issue isn’t the players, it’s just the nature of the international game that causes these problems. The NBA is fueled by individual offensive play- since zone defenses aren’t allowed and you can’t camp out in the paint, a superior offensive player who can beat his man one-on-one is given the advantage. With FIBA rules, there is no concept of individual play, and it shows. When the Americans try to run isolation plays, letting Kobe or Carmelo work against his man, it doesn’t look quite right, and generally doesn’t result in any advantage for Team USA- this isn’t the way the international game is supposed to be played, and there just isn’t going to be that much success with this strategy. International teams rarely, if ever, run isolation plays for a specific player. Instead, most offensive play in international basketball starts with a high pick-and-roll (and the pick man is given much more freedom to set a moving screen), and then goes into a series of perimeter passes with the intent of finding a mismatch somewhere on the court. In the event that an international player drives into the lane, he usually isn’t looking to get all the way to the rim and score- instead, his intent is to find a shooter that has been left open on the wing, or a cutter who the defense lost track of. Team USA is definitely capable of playing this way, but it is still a foreign (no pun intended) concept to actually AVOID one-on-one play for an entire game.

With all that said, the US should still be fine on offense, even in a slow game. Against Australia, the entire US team went ice cold, especially from 3-point range. The Americans continued to shoot 3’s because the Aussies were purposely sagging off of them, choosing to pack the lane and prevent drives at the expense of giving up uncontested jumpers. In a game where the US shoots 3-18 from distance, this strategy might work (don’t forget, however, that Team USA still won by 11 points). However, what happens if the US shoots 50% in that game- a completely reasonable number. 9-18 shooting from 3-point range gives the US 18 more points, and all the sudden you’re looking at a 29 point win. Watching the Australia game, I saw the Americans miss several open jumpers that they are more than capable of making, shots I’ve seen all of them make on a very regular basis. It’s rare for an entire team to have such a cold shooting night, but it happened to the US against Australia. The other thing that happens if the US shoots a percentage that they’re capable of making (we’ll still with the 50% estimate, which could actually be on the low side) is that the Australian team would be forced to change their defensive strategy. You can’t keep packing in the paint if the other team is making their open jumpers, and if the Australians opened up their defense, extending beyond the 3-point line, the US would have much more room for their athletes to get into the lane and get easier buckets.

While this scenario might seem complicated and optimistic, it really isn’t that farfetched. When you have a team with so much talent and athleticism, you have to expect your opponent to use the rules to level the playing field- in this case, using a zone defense or very soft man-to-man, exploiting the lack of the defensive 3 second rule. From there, it comes down to one simple opportunity. If you make your perimeter shots, the opposing team will be forced to play a more traditional defense that doesn’t give up easy outside shots, and the floor opens up again. If you miss your outside looks, then the opponent isn’t penalized for playing a “junk” defense, and they will continue to do so until you can make them pay.

To me, this closely resembles the individual battles that a superstar has with his primary defender every night in the NBA. For this example, I’m going to use Dwyane Wade. Since Wade has such an explosive first step, along with the speed and strength to score every time he gets close to the basket, his defender has to give him some space, thus negating his first step. Wade, given this extra space, now has the opportunity to shoot an uncontested jumper basically every time he touches the ball. If he chooses to take this shot, and starts making it, his man has no choice but to guard him more closely- this prevents Wade from shooting open jumpers (which, in this scenario, he has been making), but sacrifices the buffer zone that protects him from Wade’s deadly first step. Since his jumper is falling, Wade can once again get into the lane at will. And back and forth. For most NBA stars- Paul, Williams, Kobe, LeBron, and Carmelo are all included here- this is the case almost every night. If their jumper is falling, then they’re impossible to stop; if their shot isn’t falling, then the defense has more of an advantage. The international game takes this one-on-one scenario and expands it to the entire team- if USA is hitting from the outside, which they are very capable of doing, the floor will open up.

I’m not overly worried about one bad shooting night for Team USA. The odds that EVERY shooter on the team goes cold at the same time are very slim, and if even one player had a plus shooting night, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. That said, the nature of the Olympic tournament doesn’t allow for off nights. The medal round is a single elimination tournament, and one bad shooting night against a top team could very easily result in a loss. In the NBA, where the regular season is 82 games long and each round of the playoffs is best of 7 games, players are protected from having poor games. While I think the US will be fine, at least in terms of their shooting performance, the idea that one bad game could end their run is a scary thought.


America's Team?

I’ve noticed a fairly large number of people who seem to be rooting against Team USA, or laughing about their close calls in the exhibitions and the difficulty they will surely face to potentially win the Gold. Part of this stems from the fact that it’s easy, and fun, to root for an underdog. That rationale would be understandable, except for the fact that this is the Olympics, and this team is representing our country- there’s no way any Americans should be rooting against them. I think that this anti-Team USA sentiment stems from two deeper issues- the fact that they aren’t as good as the Dream Team, and the general public opinion of the NBA and its players (and most professional athletes, for that matter).

The original Dream Team, the team that represented the United States in the 1992 Olympics, simply dominated their competition. They famously went through the Olympics without calling a single timeout, without ever scouting an opponent, and probably without ever really holding serious practices or learning the international rules. However, it wasn’t just the sheer talent on the USA roster that made all that possible- it was the fact that the rest of the world didn’t really play competitive basketball yet. Without going into a full history of international basketball, I can definitely say that the roster of the ’92 team isn’t THAT much better (if at all, but once again that’s another story) than the current roster. Show me Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, and I’ll counter with Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, currently the consensus best two players in the world. The list goes on, for both sides. But the Dream Team would play opponents who were just as interested in taking pictures and getting autographs from the NBA players as they were playing the actual games. The Dream Team was a spectacle, and relative to their competition, was easily the best basketball team ever assembled.

But the climate of international basketball has changed, and a large part of that comes from the dominance of that Dream Team. Other counties wanted to learn the game, and eventually be competitive. Some teams, like Spain, Argentina and Greece, have reached that goal; others, such as Canada, Australia and Germany, are still trying to reach it. Either way, the international teams that the current Team USA faces aren’t star-struck anymore. Instead, they have a sense of hostility and aggression that the Dream Team never had to face- these teams want to prove that they can beat the best, and want to show that they are just as good as these international superstars. Even when watching these exhibition games, it is clear that the other countries now treat FIBA basketball at “their game,” one which these NBA players are outsiders to. In any sport, the title of being “the best” comes with a large bullseye for all to see. In every game the US plays- regardless of the quality of the opponent or the circumstances of the game- they bring out the best in their opponents, because a victory over the United States would be a landmark win for that country. And for the US, a loss, in any situation, would be looked at as a monumental failure. Even if they win the gold in these Olympics, a single loss along the way would be looked at as a disaster.

Don’t think that our current team is weak, because they’re not. The fact that they are going through extensive practices and thoroughly scouting their opponents should prove that the world really has caught up. And while it might be hard for a casual fan to understand, this is a good thing for the NBA, and the game of basketball as a whole.

The other issue that people seem to take with this current team is the more troubling one for me. To most fans who don’t religiously follow the NBA, basketball players are brash, overgrown kids who have had everything given to them their whole lives. They either skipped college or got a free ride through school before leaving early because of their talent, and now they make more money in a single season than most of us will make our entire lives. They are covered in tattoos, and every run-in with the law is publicized as the hottest story of the day- they don’t exactly fit the description of someone that we want to represent our country on the world’s biggest stage. Once again, this could be a story in itself, but I’m going to move on. These stereotypes might make them difficult to root for, and the coverage provided of these games doesn’t really explain why the team might run into trouble in the Olympics. For the media personnel who don’t typically cover everything basketball, it’s hard to understand what makes the international game different, and why we can’t dominate like the old days. In fact, some casual fans might not even realize that basketball even HAS different rules in the Olympics. Instead, the struggles of supremely talented individuals in a team-oriented game gives the press even more reason to write these players off as egotistical, immature and self-centered players who care only about themselves. And to those people, my response is simple: we brought this on ourselves. This is OUR fault.

The NBA, just like the NFL, MLB and any other sports league, is a business. A business that, by nature, wants to succeed. For die-hard fans like myself, the game will always be appealing- the NBA doesn’t need to market to me. The NBA wants the business of the casual fan, and in order to do this, they need to make their product as appealing as possible to the masses. The game has evolved over the years so that more people will watch. The common fan who is flipping channels on TV doesn’t want to see a low-scoring game where they can’t recognize any of the players and they don’t see any highlights. Instead, they want to root for a player, maybe more than they want to root for a team. We want a superstar that we can identify with one name who has unbelievable talents, someone who can score 40 or 50 points in a single game, throw down jaw-dropping dunks and showcase his otherworldly speed. And of course, when we see this player endorsing a product, we want to wear what they wear or use what they use, because we want to be able to do what they do. While I love Shane Battier and think that he’s a great role player on a very good team, people aren’t going to wear a specific shoe because Shane Battier tells them to- but if we see Kobe Bryant jumping over a moving car in his new Nikes, that’s a different story. To cater to this phenomenon, the NBA has changed its rules to produce fast-paced, high-scoring games that give every advantage to their stars. People aren’t going to tune in because the Pistons have great role players, people watch because tonight might be the night that Kobe or LeBron, the one-named immortals, might score 50 points. Old-school basketball purists hate what the game has become, but it gets ratings and puts people in the stands.

But the rest of the world doesn’t play this style of basketball. The international rules create a game that levels the playing field, where superior individual talents can be neutralized by a team of inferior players, and slow-moving, low-scoring games are more likely to take place than the high-scoring shootouts that we want to see. By definition, putting together a team of NBA players to play the international game is the same as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole (or whatever the metaphor is). I applaud and congratulate the current USA team for their valiant efforts in putting this team together in their quest for the gold. I respect the fact that these players have played through three consecutive summers, a time when most players are relaxing on the beach after a grueling 82 game season, in order to be here. But mostly, I hope that the rest of the country can appreciate the fact that these players have sacrificed their egos in order to play in these Olympics, and have put in countless hours of work to become a team that we can be proud of, and can appreciate that while there will never be another Dream Team, that our current team is pretty good as well.