If you're speaking toward his knack for the FIBA style I agree.......however he won't come close to the $50-60m he'll sign for in his next NBA contract overseas.Kliq said:
The Other World Cup, FIBA Hoops Edition
- Thread starter ifmanis5
- Start date
Looks like we got this Ukraine game. Can't say I've been super impressed by Team USA but they're doing enough to get by. Spain might be the only real test.
Kyrie limping off with hip/back injury. Spark up the Rondo trade rumors if thou brittle one has a bad MRI. That would be an ideal rental play for the Cavs.
For those who didn't see he went down under the attacking basket awkwardly. Happened when USA was up 30 and not much time left. If he's seriously hurt LeBron & Cleveland will come for Coach K.HomeRunBaker said:
CNBC was talking about game so I'm like oh let me check it out......only possession I saw was Kyrie hitting the deck HARD!ifmanis5 said:
Rondo for Tristan and Waiters as the core pieces works.
Edit: That's the thing about these games. Most of it is garbage time and SOMEONE has to play these minutes. If it was Curry and his ankle goes again the Warriors come after K......if its Rose and his knee K gets "The Thib Face." K can't win regardless.
Not to turn this into another Rondo thread but RR for Waiters, Tristan and one min salary guy should work per the CBA.Papelbon's Poutine said:
If Irving was going to miss most of the season,which seems very unlikely, Rondo for Irving would make sense for both teams.
Rose has looked bad during this tournament. Today he was 0-5 from the field with three turnovers. Watching the games he looks good, he looks like the athlete that he was pre-injury, but that hasn't really translated to statistical success. He looks like he has the ability to get to the hoop, but he lacks the confidence to finish at the rim. Today he didn't seem like he was comfortable in the paint, and settled for jumpers, or difficult attempts at the rim. It will be interesting to see how well he plays during the first few weeks of the season, because despite him playing on Team USA, he really hasn't answered any questions about coming back from his injury.
good lord that spain box score is ugly. 52 points, 20-62 shooting, 2-22 from three, 9 pts in the 4th, Marc Gasol, Ibaka, and Rubio each shot 1-7.
According to this story - http://espn.go.com/olympics/basketball/story/_/id/11504770/france-halts-spain-fiba-basketball-world-cup-title-dreams - they dared Rubio to hit jumpers and used his man to help inside.Infield Infidel said:
Rubio was 1 for 7
edit: corrected.
1 for 7 overall.wade boggs chicken dinner said:
He actually didn't hit a single three in any of the the 7 games Spain played, despite the shorter distance. 32.3% fg overall. His broken perimeter shot seems not to be improving. It's too bad, because I still think his combo of passing, floor management, defense and rebounding will make him an elite PG if he can ever hit the J with any kind of consistency.
In semi-related news, I love that Klay Thompson is kicking ass against the world's best (50% shooting, lockdown defense, led team in scoring last game). He definitely looks leaner, quicker and more confident with the ball than he did last year. I'm still kinda miffed the Warriors didn't pull the trigger on a Love deal (assuming a deal was on the table before The Decision Part 2), but his FIBA play and Coach K's raves about him have cheered me up considerably.
Curry habitually in foul trouble. Slovenia made a run after he got his 3rd in the first half of that game
Sloppy on offense, interior defense is poor. Not sure why Coach K is so afraid of Drummond, he'd be a game changer. Still, Faried and Klay are doing work.
I don't think it matters whether they were winning it for Paul George or for George McCloud......when Nenad Krstic is starting on your opponents front line.ifmanis5 said:
Kyrie was a beast.
The Serbs didn't seem to have anyone who could guard their man one-on-one. People kept talking about the Serbs on offense but didn't really think about their lack of defense.
Which, perhaps on a more interesting note for us, makes me wonder about Derrick Rose and how he is really doing. He ended up being shut out in this game; can't tell how many minutes he played from the ESPN box.
Rose didn't play much at all and appeared to want to be anyone else but at that game. This was Kyrie and Hardens game......it's difficult for a guy like Rose to fit in as a backup guard in a game dominated by uncontested 3-point looks. He also looks like a shell of his former self.....politics was the only reason he was on this team.wade boggs chicken dinner said:
Pretty spot on imo. The point about Kaye allowing a camera to follow him into George's hospital room leaves a bad taste in my mouth.Brickowski said:
How does the NCAA penalize Auriemma for making a congratulatory phone call to a 13-year old Little League pitcher who also happens to be an excellent basketball player (which I agree with the NCAA on) yet turn it's head on Kay essentially parading in front of all of these elite recruits during the dark period when other coaches cannot? There's an imbalance here which always comes back to the same old story. The NCAA should rot in hell.
HomeRunBaker said:
I find it sort of odd that Woj singles Coach K out for his access to those players despite the fact that Billy Donovan, Shaka Smart, and Tony Bennett are actually coaching those guys and have far more access to them than Krzyzewski got during his one day at their camp. It's also difficult to make an argument that the best thing for the future of USA basketball is to wall off the U-19 national team from the senior team in order to remain in accordance with Draconian NCAA rules.
I don't really disagree with the idea that these teams should be U-22 or U-25 teams, but I do find it sort of odd coming off of a tournament where for a solid month the talk was about how the US wouldn't be favored to beat Spain specifically because our top players didn't commit. It's easy to look at this with the benefit of hindsight and pretend this team was never at threat of losing, but it doesn't really square with how the media approached coverage of this tournament. Woj is a great reporter, but as a columnist he has a tendency to come across as a clear mouthpiece for the interests of his sources. This article reminds me a lot of the hatchet job where he went after Hollinger post-Rudy Gay trade as it just feels a bit harsher than it should given the circumstances. Nobody feels good about the PG injury, and he's right there's going to be a groundswell of support to re-shape the roster selection process for the World Cup, but to pretend the whole thing is about Duke recruiting is pretty absurd. It's also doubly absurd to make John Calipari out to be some sort of victim in all of this two weeks after reporting this without comment. Woj may as well have just let Calipari and Mark Cuban ghostwrite this thing for him.
Like many of Woj's columns, this comes off as a hatchet job with an axe to grind. This one in particular comes off as meandering and repetitive to boot.
I am not a Duke fan, but my memory still holds up. And I remember that from 2002 to 2006, the US send just as good- if not better players - as the ones it send in this World Cup and they had a string of failures. Then they made a deliberate decision to change their philosophy, emphasize team play and tailor the team to international play. I distinctly remember Colangelo and Coach K saying these things in 2006 and 2007. Apparently, they have been so successful in this task because Team USA's victory seems preordained these days.
I can tell you that the World Cup is pretty big abroad; when I was growing up, I considered it more prestigious than the Olympics Basketball tournament. This year a lot my people got bothered that Koufos wouldn't join our team. I would actually preferred if all NBA players participated in the tournament instead of opting to rest.
Apparently, NBA GMs don't like this because they don't like seeing their assets at risk of injury. The same thing is true of world soccer execs, but their grumbles don't go anywhere because the international competitions are really popular. In America they may hold sway because the World Cup is boring for Americans. But the irony is this. It becomes less boring when America loses, but when she does, it becomes an affront to national honor, a fluke occurrence that people should make sure it's not repeated again. So, I am guessing that until the day comes when worldwide talent is more evenly distributed across nations and American success doesn't seem pre-ordained, the US basketball program will go through these cycles of caring and not caring about world events.
I am not a Duke fan, but my memory still holds up. And I remember that from 2002 to 2006, the US send just as good- if not better players - as the ones it send in this World Cup and they had a string of failures. Then they made a deliberate decision to change their philosophy, emphasize team play and tailor the team to international play. I distinctly remember Colangelo and Coach K saying these things in 2006 and 2007. Apparently, they have been so successful in this task because Team USA's victory seems preordained these days.
I can tell you that the World Cup is pretty big abroad; when I was growing up, I considered it more prestigious than the Olympics Basketball tournament. This year a lot my people got bothered that Koufos wouldn't join our team. I would actually preferred if all NBA players participated in the tournament instead of opting to rest.
Apparently, NBA GMs don't like this because they don't like seeing their assets at risk of injury. The same thing is true of world soccer execs, but their grumbles don't go anywhere because the international competitions are really popular. In America they may hold sway because the World Cup is boring for Americans. But the irony is this. It becomes less boring when America loses, but when she does, it becomes an affront to national honor, a fluke occurrence that people should make sure it's not repeated again. So, I am guessing that until the day comes when worldwide talent is more evenly distributed across nations and American success doesn't seem pre-ordained, the US basketball program will go through these cycles of caring and not caring about world events.
But I need to emphasize this about Woj. There are many times when I read him that I get the impression that a guy he's criticizing is a guy who somehow snubbed him, or didn't treat him fairly or didn't play ball and give him this or that journalistic tidbit. His criticism rarely comes off as disinterested or fair to me. There's always some unknown Woj agenda lurking in the background.
The article makes it sound like going under 22 for these tournaments is a done deal. That's not the case at all, is it? The NBA would prefer it but I don't think the rest of the world will go for it.