Summer Wrapup: USA Basketball

A wise man once said “Ain’t no need to watch where I’m going, just need to know where I’ve been.” Okay, maybe it wasn’t Newton or Aristotle or Einstein. Maybe it wasn’t even Paul the Octopus or the inside of a fortune cookie. Maybe it was just Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy), the rusted tow truck from Cars. If I’ve learned one thing in life it’s to never get involved in a land war in Asia. But number two on that list would be that Pixar knows their shit. So, in the spirit of heeding all things Pixar, it might be wise to look back at the (very busy) summer of 2010 before jumping into the NBA season. Lost amidst LeBron’s decision, the return of the National Football League, a fantastic season of Mad Men and my burgeoning love affair with Arian Foster were the 2010 FIBA World Championships. That’s right, summer basketball. Very important summer basketball. Summer basketball at the end of which they gave out these fancy things called gold medals. Fortunately for this fine country, Kevin Durant and Team USA were not so easily distracted by Arian’s excellent vision and powerful, decisive cuts and restored order to the (basketball) universe in Turkey last week. Team USA won the world championships for the first time since 1994 by defeating Turkey in the gold medal game 81-64. The Americans won their elimination games by an average of nearly 25 points per game and played only one close game (against Brazil) in the entire tournament. They did all of this without a true center, prolific outside shooting or a creative force at point guard. It was the exact sort of lineup composition that failed in previous incarnations of Team USA. Why did it work this year? And can anything be learned from a tournament that features Kirk Penney and Hamed Haddadi as 20ppg scorers?

If ESPN commentator Fran Fraschilla told me once then he told me a thousand times, the international game is different than the NBA game. <RANT> Seriously, a thousand times. Not a whole lot of dexterity to Fran’s announcing game. It’s conceivable that he wasn’t even watching the games and ESPN recorded his clichés and “expert” analysis pre-tournament and played them according to the flow of the game Madden video game style. Thank goodness international basketball only comes around once every two years. </RANT> Since FIBA allows zone defenses, good shooters are at a premium in the international game because of the defense’s ability to clog the paint against big men and guards slashing to the basket. Skilled, mobile, versatile big men are similarly valued. Of all the players on the American roster, it seemed like Kevin Love was best suited to the international game and, more specifically, for the 2010 roster of Team USA. He was the best rebounder on an undersized team, an excellent outlet passer on a team that wanted to run in transition and a player who could play the center position but also stretch the floor on offense with his jump-shooting. Despite fitting the FIBA game perfectly and being the second most productive player on the American roster, Kevin Love played the tenth most minutes for Team USA. Coach Mike Krzyzewski would have been roundly criticized for his rotation decisions if the USA did not come home with the gold. But they did. And despite my general hatred for Duke and Krzyzewski, perhaps Love’s limited time did not showcase coaching incompetence but revealed an actual game plan from Team USA. Maybe Krzyzewski and Jerry Colangelo stopped focusing on the differences in the FIBA game and remembered that FIBA basketball is still basketball. Even the American B-Team will have the most talent in any international tournament and should be able to dictate to opponents if properly coached and organized.

“You had to give it to him, he had a plan. And it started to make sense, in a Tyler sort of way. No fear. No distractions. The ability to let that which does not matter truly slide.” Narrator from Fight Club