Palau Sant Jordi
Barcelona, Spain
Time: 4:30 p.m. EDT
TV: ESPN2
This is it. This is the one we've all been waiting for — the measuring stick game where we get to see how this team stacks up against its only legitimate competition for the gold medal. This is also the last opportunity many Team USA players will have to make their case for a spot in the rotation before the games start to matter on Sunday. And to top it all off, the Americans will get a chance to prove that their largely unimpressive six-point win over Argentina on Sunday was merely a fluke, and to send one last message to the field prior to group play. Clearly there's a lot at stake here for a game that doesn't actually count — and I can't wait.
What To Watch For:
Size, size, size, size, size, size, size. At the end of the day, this is what everyone is really curious to learn from Tuesday — can Team USA, with only one true center in its 10-man rotation, handle the gigantic Spanish frontcourt of Pau Gasol, Marc Gasol, and Serge Ibaka? If the answer is yes, everyone will breathe a little easier and mark down an extra tally (in pretty thick pencil) in the United States' gold column on the medal count. If the answer is no, the critics will consider themselves vindicated. They will crow that the team is flawed, that coach Mike Krzyzewski was foolish to think he could build a squad solely around athletic wing players, and that the country's history of basketball dominance is yet again at risk of Olympic-sized besmirchment. Regardless of whether either of those reactions are reasonable, these are the stakes — and that's why everyone will be watching the big men on Tuesday. It's worth paying special attention to how Coach K manages his lineups in the face of a such an enormous opponent. Will he change his rotation in order to adapt? Will Kevin Love get more than 7 minutes? Will he take the blindfold off Anthony Davis and let him actually see the floor? Only time will tell, but we should have a clearer picture when the (really annoying) final buzzer sounds in Barcelona.
Bombs away! Team USA hasn't been shy about shooting the long ball thus far. They are taking nearly 29 threes per game, a mind-boggling number even by international standards. And while they're not converting at a horrible rate collectively (37 percent isn't setting the world on fire, but it's not bad either), those stats are heavily buttressed by the fact that Kevin Durant has been pretty much unconscious from deep for the last month straight. You can cover for a lot of bad shooting if the guy who takes roughly 23 percent of your threes is knocking them down at a 54 percent clip. Nevertheless, the fact remains: this team is far too mediocre from distance to justify taking this many outside shots. Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Russell Westbrook, Kevin Love, and James Harden are each connecting at a rate far below 30 percent — but they have combined to take 45 percent of the Americans' three-point attempts. Durant can't bail them out forever, so this won't work long-term. It will be most interesting to see if they try to take it to the rim against the Spanish bigs and draw fouls, or if they once again settle for long jumpers and crossed fingers.
The chess match. According to a source with pretty intimate knowledge of these sorts of things (coughMarc Gasolcough), it appears we may not get a glimpse of the full Spanish armada in Barcelona. Apparently La Roja are savvy enough to avoid placing all their cards on the table in an exhibition, and I'm sure the Americans will respond in-kind. So while this tune-up will undoubtedly provide some great perspective on the current state of the global basketball landscape heading into London, smart observers should also remember to take any result with a fairly sizable helping of salt. If these same teams do end up meeting in the gold medal game a few weeks from now, they may not look anything like the teams we see on Tuesday. Or they might look exactly the same. Nobody really knows. Either way, it will be fascinating to watch Krzyzewski and Sergio Scariolo attempt to satisfy their respective fan bases' expectations of short-term success without opening their bag of tricks. It should be an interesting study in restraint, to say the least.
If you're not at least a little nervous for this one, you're doing it wrong. Go America.
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