Olympic Basketball Arena
London, England
Time: Tuesday, 5:15 p.m. EDT
TV: NBC Sports Network
With a convincing win over France safely in their back pocket, Team USA will be able to breathe a little easier on Tuesday. Instead of facing down an opponent with four or five NBA-caliber players in the starting lineup, they'll be squaring off with Tunisia — a country that, if we're going to be honest, wasn't even supposed to be here in the first place. Prior to 2011, the Tunisians hadn't made it to the final round of the FIBA African Championship since 1965. However, they made a storybook run last August and ultimately pulled off a stunning upset of heavily favored Angola in the finals to qualify for London. It's a wonderful story and all, but the United States should win this game by at least 40 points, if not more. Remember how the Dream Team steamrolled the competition by 50-plus every night? They were playing the Tunisias of the world — because in 1992, everyone else was essentially like present-day Tunisia from a basketball perspective. Things are different now, of course, and Team USA faced more NBA players on Sunday against France than their dreamy predecessors did in their entire Olympic run combined. Nevertheless, if this iteration wants to make a statement and begin shaping their legacy, they have to start by absolutely decimating the teams they should decimate.
What To Watch For:
Slow starts. The Americans have gotten off to a slow start in just about every game they've played in the last month, with a few exceptions. No matter what starting lineup combination coach Mike Krzyzewski uses, his team seems willfully intent on limping out of the gate. This kind of approach will likely come back to bite them sooner or later, and while it may not be against Tunisia, I fear a lack of focus and urgency could result in an even more pronounced lull. The last thing Team USA wants is to let Tunisia hang around for an extended amount of time — every minute this game is close is one less minute that LeBron, Kobe, and KD get to recharge those tired legs. They want Anthony Davis and James Harden playing 25 minutes each on Tuesday. But if the boys in red, white, and blue start poorly yet again and don't recover quickly, the Tunisians could require more star attention than they're worth.
Love on D. While Kevin Love has been experiencing a bit of an offensive renaissance in the past few games and seems to have finally found his stroke with the international ball, his defense has been fairly atrocious. He was repeatedly abused by France's front line, and while there's a decent collection of talent there, Ronny Turiaf and Ali Traore are also not the Gasol brothers. Obviously Tunisia won't have any bigs near that caliber on the floor, but this is an important game for Love all the same. If he can't contain whatever junior college prospect he'll be asked to guard on Tuesday, he may not be able to guard anyone in this tournament — which will severely limit his value and utility to Coach K's rotation. It is great that he's finally found a rhythm offensively, but if Love doesn't begin to show improvement on the other side of the ball soon, he could see his minutes decrease yet again.
Brow Watch 2012. If the United States takes care of business early and jumps out to a sizable lead (and as noted above, this is a fairly substantial "if"), we will likely see a lot of Anthony Davis' luscious unibrow. The highly touted rookie has been impressive in his few opportunities thus far, but they have mostly come against other bench players in garbage time. This is not to say that playing against even Tunisia's starters will provide a much higher level of competition, but it should be interesting to see exactly what Davis can do when he's allowed to stay on the court for longer stretches at a time and really settle into the flow of the game. It will be fun watching how those previous flashes of ability hold up in a larger sample size.
Blowout City, here we come. (Hopefully.) Go Fightin' Unibrows.
Follow @LondonBalling12