Manchester Arena
Manchester, England
Time: 2:10 p.m. EDT
TV: ESPN2
Apologies for our absence before and after Team USA's last exhibition game against Brazil. A confluence of factors — a recent move left me without Internet access for the past few days, and Ben Wagner was on a plane and thus unable to see the game — conspired to prevent us from doing our due diligence in breaking down the contest. Nevertheless, we're here now and, in the time we were away, the team picked up and flew to England on us. They'll take on the British team this afternoon in Manchester — a game that, from a competitive standpoint, should be a bit of a snooze. However, as with all these exhibition games, that shouldn't prevent us from learning quite a bit about this team and where everything stands with the start of the Olympics only 10 days away.
What To Watch For:
First quarter focus. Against Brazil, Team USA came out flatter than the flattest thing you could possibly imagine. Pancakes are even too fluffy and delicious to be an apt descriptor. They made a token show of "defensive intensity" by attempting to pick up full court on the first possession, but Leandro Barbosa promptly burned past Kobe Bryant for an easy lay-up. It only got worse from there. Before you could say "underachieving," Brazil had a 10-point lead and was seemingly in control. Of course, the Americans' second unit ratcheted up the defense and took advantage of Brazil's scrubs in the second quarter to claw back in the game, but that opening frame remains an unmitigated disaster. Team USA can't afford to start games like that against good teams in London. Great Britain is definitely not a good team, but it will still be interesting to see if Coach K can prevent this becoming a troublesome pattern.
The size conundrum. Great Britain may not be a very skilled team, but they are actually pretty tall across the board. Eight of the Brits' 12 players are 6-foot-9 and above. (The Americans have four such players.) Granted, none of them is actually taller than 6-foot-10, but then again, neither is anyone on Team USA outside of Tyson Chandler. While this won't be quite the same challenge as facing down the Brazilians' massive frontcourt of Nene, Tiago Splitter, and Anderson Verajao, the USA bigs need to show that they can assert themselves, especially against ostensibly weaker competition. After allowing the Brazilians to control the boards so decisively on Monday, they need to instill some kind of confidence that they're capable of getting it done down low. Maybe that means more Kevin Love. Maybe that means Tyson Chandler finding the internal fortitude to grab more than one rebound. Maybe it means an Anthony Davis sighting. Whatever the case, I would like to see something that makes me believe the Gasol brothers aren't going to eat our bigs for lunch.
Shooting woes. For a team without many great shooters, Team USA sure has been shooting a lot of threes recently. They've hoisted up a staggering 57 long balls in the last two games, making only 19. That's a 33 percent conversion rate. Yikes. Do I think this is actually representative of their shooting proficiency? No. Love, the NBA's reigning three-point champion, has been woefully off the mark thus far, while Deron Williams and James Harden, both decent marksmen in their own right, have also struggled. Those shots will (likely) start falling eventually. What I can't condone, however, is the high volume of threes being taken by sub-par shooters. Kobe Bryant, who has only topped 36 percent from deep once in his last nine NBA seasons, is a disastrous 2-for-10. Carmelo Anthony, a 34 percent shooter himself last year, has yet to make one on this tour. And while it's hard to get too upset about Russell Westbrook taking and missing two threes, chances are Team USA would have derived more benefit from him using those touches to get into the lane. Moral of the story? Shoot better and shoot smarter, Americans — and if you can't, just stop shooting. Yes, I'm looking at you, Kobe Bean Bryant.
That being said, let's go humiliate some redcoats.
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