Olympic basketball is meant to be enjoyable. However proper now, I’m probably not having enjoyable.
It’s enjoyable fan-casting a dream staff of gamers for Group USA, as is questioning if Anthony Edwards or Devin Booker ought to begin or what the best massive rotation is. It’s a practice to listen to that Kawhi Leonard is just too injured to play, write articles about cryptic posts on social media about who bought snubbed, in the event that they’re mad about it, or in the event that they hate their teammates now and if it’s truly Grant Hill’s fault.
It’s all in good enjoyable, however none of it’s about basketball. As a result of for USA Basketball, Olympic basketball isn’t about basketball. For the opposite 11 basketball groups on this match, it’s about basketball. However for this political occasion we name USA Basketball, successful basketball video games has one way or the other change into a second precedence behind the exhausting and unoriginal larger fish all of us one way or the other ended up frying: silly, invented and downright uninteresting narratives about Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid.
Lately, on the 2024 Olympic Video games in Paris, Tatum performed zero minutes within the staff’s first sport in opposition to Serbia. Then, after head coach Steve Kerr obtained roughly seven trillion questions on it, Tatum began the next sport in opposition to South Sudan, logging 4 factors and 17 minutes. In the meantime, Joel Embiid had roughly the inverse sport log, beginning the Serbia sport however touchdown a DNP in opposition to South Sudan. After the sport, Embiid was named a starter for the subsequent sport in opposition to Puerto Rico.
Is that this critically what the Olympics are going to be about? Am I truly going to must spend this complete lengthy march to a gold medal listening to about Tatum and Embiid’s worth prefer it’s mid-March in a traditional NBA season? If this was truly about successful, then placing collectively a steady eight-man rotation can be priorities primary, two and three for Kerr and Co., they usually had ample time to take action.
As an alternative, they’ve elected to flip-flop round like a pair of Birkenstocks to attempt to soothe the calls for of indignant followers who need this man or that man or these two or that lineup to get kind of or no enjoying time. It’s chaos, and morphing into some type of magnificence pageant to point out off the most recent basketball traits within the USA one by one. And this chicanery is inspired by the truth that they’re nonetheless going to win anyway as a result of they’re simply so significantly better.
Kerr claimed that the lineup adjustments had been primarily based on “matchups,” a time period so obscure it will probably cowl all method of sins. It’s attainable USA Basketball had crunched the numbers and tape, however one wonders precisely how refined the matchup knowledge was for Tatum not enjoying in opposition to Ognjen Dobric for Serbia however completely countering Nuni Omot for South Sudan.
Photograph by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE through Getty Photos
I’m not aware about all the small print, however normally, basketball groups don’t toss NBA champions and league MVPs across the rotation like they’re a kind of Chinese language yo-yos getting hurled round a stage by your pal Eric on the Fifth-grade expertise present. Usually, the end-of-the-bench guys are simply blissful to be there, and in the event that they log zero minutes however fourteen sideline-towel-spins and 9 air-guitar shreds, that’s a stable day’s work.
However these gamers normally don’t find yourself beginning the subsequent sport, and are additionally normally not named Jayson Tatum or Joel Embiid. These rotations simply look humorous, just because USA Basketball recruited a staff with method too many good gamers and never sufficient minutes to play all of them. On a traditional basketball staff, that will be all nicely and good, however having the “DNP – CD” tag go on Jayson Tatum simply doesn’t sit proper with anybody.
However we have now to do not forget that this staff isn’t about successful, since that’s going to occur anyway. It’s about sending the correct message, and it’s turning the Olympics right into a LeBron James-captained redemption arc for the failures of USA Basketball on the current FIBA World Cup, once they unceremoniously misplaced to Germany.
These Olympics are about what James has given to the game, what Durant has given to USA Basketball and why Stephen Curry doesn’t have a gold medal but. There’s lots else to select from, too: Kawhi Leonard dropped out. Jaylen Brown is tweeting the head-scratching emoji. Anthony Edwards is likely to be Michael Jordan and Derrick White is a very nice man. Tatum is just like the ninth most attention-grabbing story on this staff, so it’s no surprise he’s not precisely the highest precedence to play.
For the USA Basketball staff, striving in direction of “victory” is irrelevant, not compelling and subsequently dangerous enterprise. Any end result apart from gold can be a nationwide embarrassment given the expertise mismatch, so reporters and media members focus extra on the rotations and on making up the reason why a Tatum DNP issues in a sport Group USA received by 26.
That is going to drive me insane. If we’re simply centered on successful, then let’s drop these narratives about who performed and who didn’t when any mixture of 5 gamers on the roster will robotically be higher than the opposition and simply consider beating them.
If it’s truly about these narratives, although, then I suppose we’d higher proceed our evaluation of this non-issue and I’d higher proceed probably not having fun with Olympic basketball. However I’d fairly not do this.
