Minnesota Sports Forum

monsterpile wrote:

Brooklyn_Wolves wrote:

CoolBreeze44 wrote:Yeah it's a little bit of a knee jerk reaction, but I've lost some respect for Jimmy Butler's game during these Olympics. He's shot poorly and he isn't nearly as tough and gritty as I thought he was. He's got some punk in him. Very relieved we didn't deal the type of assets for him that were talked about at draft time.

meh... he's still a very good NBA player, another evidence that FIBA play has little to do with NBA. Draymond Green couldn't get it going and mostly found himself riding pine next to Barnes. A lot depends what kind of role your coach is giving you. Jokic is a much better player in the NBA than Radulica but their coach prefers the latter player.

Cool when you posted at thought this was going to be why you lost respect for Butler.

http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17354748

That was pretty good, I hadn't seen it.

I like the idea of this.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/why-olympic-mens-basketball-should-be-more-like-olympic-mens-soccer-221246177.html

bleedspeed177 wrote:I like the idea of this.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/news/why-olympic-mens-basketball-should-be-more-like-olympic-mens-soccer-221246177.html

I'm not a fan of that. Do you want the Olympics to be about more competitive performances or seeing the best athletes? USA (and other countries) crushed the world in a bunch of other sports. Are we going to change those rules too? Keep Bolt out that old guy crushed everyone too. One reason the seats were empty at events is because people in Brazil don't have money to pay to watch them which is a shame. A bigger deal would be for whoever has the broadcasting rights is to have a freaking online package I could buy to watch events on demand. Then you know I might actually like watch stuff. Ridiculous.

Yeah, I agree with Monster. Soccer has always made the World Cup it's marquee event. The Olympics would be nothing but another World Cup if they didn't water it down a little....which is why the most loyal soccer fans outside of Brazil were frankly not all that interested. Heck, the big-time professional European Leagues already started their regular season by the time the Olympics rolled around. I don't think Germans are overly upset about losing to Brazil in the Olympics. Now if that happens in the World Cup, it's a completely different story.

As for basketball, there is no equivalent to the World Cup, so the Olympics is THE venue for countries to send the best-of-the-best, old or young, to go compete. And if the writer of that article is concerned about attendance, I'm not sure how watering down the quality of teams helps. And by the way, doesn't the writer remember 2004?

I watched most of the Serbia/U.S. game and - ugh! - what an awful looking offense. Isolation, isolation, isolation....so many bad shots. It didn't matter because ultimately the U.S.'s physical superiority and sheer talent overwhelmed Serbia (plus they played inspired defense), but it was ugly one-on-one basketball a great deal of the time.

If I were in charge of Team USA, I would work a lot harder to put a real team together as opposed to so many score-first guys. I was really surprised Draymond Green didn't get more time.....

Q12543 wrote:I watched most of the Serbia/U.S. game and - ugh! - what an awful looking offense. Isolation, isolation, isolation....so many bad shots. It didn't matter because ultimately the U.S.'s physical superiority and sheer talent overwhelmed Serbia (plus they played inspired defense), but it was ugly one-on-one basketball a great deal of the time.

If I were in charge of Team USA, I would work a lot harder to put a real team together as opposed to so many score-first guys. I was really surprised Draymond Green didn't get more time.....

It's a bit of a balancing act too though. They need more marquee names to gain that attention from the masses to tune in.

Kyle Korver would be a great addition. But... "who?"

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

Q12543 wrote:I watched most of the Serbia/U.S. game and - ugh! - what an awful looking offense. Isolation, isolation, isolation....so many bad shots. It didn't matter because ultimately the U.S.'s physical superiority and sheer talent overwhelmed Serbia (plus they played inspired defense), but it was ugly one-on-one basketball a great deal of the time.

If I were in charge of Team USA, I would work a lot harder to put a real team together as opposed to so many score-first guys. I was really surprised Draymond Green didn't get more time.....

It's a bit of a balancing act too though. They need more marquee names to gain that attention from the masses to tune in.

Kyle Korver would be a great addition. But... "who?"

I really think team USA got put in a tough spot because of the guys that dropped out somewhat last minute. Some of that was probably created by themselves though as they probably played a bit of we are more athletic than you basketball because..um well they could and to some extent should. If Westbrook is on your team you better unleash the guy to attzck guys on both ends of the floor. The good thing was Chris Paul was a perfect guy to run a team. He can do it all and has the mindset of play as a true makes guys better PG. The USA didn't have that type of PG this year. Their most talented PG was Kyrie who is one of the best scoring PGs in the world. Jon K and Souhan said if the USA and Spain traded PGs Rubio for Kyrie it may have been good for both teams even though obviously Kyrie is a much better player. I thought it was something interesting to think about.

I just don't think the dynamics were that good for team USA and to some extent there was only so much shame in that. Team USA needs to continue and to some extent get back to building a team and have some players that compliment even if they aren't uber talented.

Also Q good point about the World Cup being THE tourney and the Olympics just being something else. It's flip flopped in basketball with Olympics being THE tourney and the Fiba tourney being kinda the other tourney. I do think that tournament will get a little more interesting as time goes on though. I don't think it will every be Soccer World Cup but I think it will go from somewhat afterthought (especially here in the US) to something that will be televised here.

I just liked the idea of some younger guys getting to play in the games. I really would love more of a team put together.

bleedspeed177 wrote:I just liked the idea of some younger guys getting to play in the games. I really would love more of a team put together.

I think that would be good for the FIBA tourney but I think they want to make that a more legit tourney and like I said before so think it will grow into that.

Here is a question. Of the guys available who would you have put on the team to make it more of a team for this Olympics?

Here is a question. Of the guys available who would you have put on the team to make it more of a team for this Olympics?

If simply given the players on the roster this year, here is what I would have done differently:

PG - Kyle Lowry
SG - Klay Thompson
SF - Kevin Durant
PF - Draymond Green
C - DeAndre Jordan

By putting Lowry and Green in place of Irving and 'Melo, ball movement and defense improve dramatically.