KiwiMatt wrote:Without George you're not getting past Spain let alone New Zealand....
I don't wanna take away focus from George and his injury, but you're insane if you think USA's not winning that tournament.
Haha just kidding Cam! Although you could say that about USA every international basketball tournament! But Spain is a threat and international basketball is called alot different to the NBA by officials.
World K not much to report on the Kiwi team. Adams not playing, working with OKC this off season. Have a couple of college guys and Kirk Penney whose had a couple of stints in the NBA.
Man, its a downer watching george's injury. That was nasty and would take at least a year to get well and who knows how long before george can get back to his old self.
Big blow to team usa. Durant and george are the starting forwards for usa and they gave the team a huge matchup advantage over the opponents. Now both are gone and there just isnt anybody on the orster that could replace what they bring matchup wise.
The team is also short on bigs and durant is a 4 in international competition and can also play some 5. Instead of george and durant's size and length, we are looking at klay, parsons, hayward etc. Just not the same caliber of players.
Spain's chances are looking good now and they have homecourt.
Colangelo said today on the Jim Rome show the guys are coming together wanting to win it for Paul George. Its almost like when Durant led the team to a surprise (sort of) win in this tournament 4 years ago. The pressure is gonna be sorta of different there is no true star guy people are not absolutely expecting them to win. The guy thats going to be huge this time? Anthony Davis. Cousins could be a guy I think makes his mark too. His skills are actually are a good fit for the euro game and he is a bigtime rebounder. It sounds like they are very happy with his attitude.
I think Harden becomes the alpha dog on this team now. He has Olympic experience and he can get a good shot off whenever he wants. He's not the same mismatch as Durant, but he is still lethal offensively. With a Love deal agreed to now, I wonder how long he'll wait before he shows back up to be the savior. Start Rose/Harden/Thompson/Love/Davis with Irving/Curry/Korver/Parsons/Cousins as backups. As long as Love re-commits and they take Love/Davis/Cousins, I don't think Spain will be a huge problem. That's two big if's though in Love coming back and Coach K taking Cousins over Plumlee.
They have added Rudy Gay to replace Durant. He has been around team USA and while I'm not a fan of his game my guess is he will be more worthwhile with stars than on an NBA team if he ends up being on the final roster. He is probably pretty solid add all things considered at this late stage.
