“Team USA Players Are Reportedly Frustrated With Coach Gregg Popovich Running ‘San Antonio Offense’ After Loss To France“
LOL GREGG.
“Team USA Players Are Reportedly Frustrated With Coach Gregg Popovich Running ‘San Antonio Offense’ After Loss To France“
Jalen Rose was right. Deandre Ayton is exactly who should’ve been in the games. Should’ve been in the starting lineup, him or AD.
pop going woke still didn’t help him from losing the locker room
As we learned the last several years that it's very hard to have the locker room on your side when you don't have Tim Duncan backing you.
Ayton is not a US citizen. Can't play.
Since he pulled his shtick on Vardon and Perkins called it out, followed by (Stephen A.) Smith saying "what's he done since Duncan retired?", it's open season from the media. Windhorst took a bunch of scathing/thinly veiled shots today. The jig is up.
He's at least got to realize his San Antonio shtick isn't going to work. He's not the all powerful emperor that he is here.
He continues to kill this franchise. They're already about as undesirable as it gets to the majority of inner city millennials and he just keeps digging the hole deeper.
Why would he attempt to implement any "system" in a short tournament, with a hastily assembled, diva ridden team? The job is mostly about managing egos, something he's never been able to do.
Last edited by TD 21; 07-25-2021 at 03:52 PM.
Can they even beat Iran next game?
I think it’s disrespectful of you to insinuate that we can beat a team like Iran. They’ve kept me up for 4 years ever since the Iyatolla of Rock n Rolla became their starting SG
Pop is looking ridiculous. It's no longer a shtick. Gutless worms thread bump!
Poor pop. Atleast retirement is on the horizon
Pop should've taken Ayton with him or someone somewhat legit for some easy buckets. Without having some kind of threat inside you can't go far i don't care who you have on the perimeter. I don't trust Bam at all
Even though he's not on the team, the spirit of James Harden has corrupted the NBA league and and most of its star players. It is a scourge that must be lifted. Any team starring American Harden ball primadonnas led by over-the-hill Pop is sure to get exposed on the international stage. Aside from a few exceptions (Jrue Holiday is the man), most of the American players are unlikeable, and I won't feel bad for them when they lose. American basketball is pretty lame these days anyway, so it doesn't bother me to see it fail.
Last edited by KimmyGib; 07-25-2021 at 10:43 PM.
Pop would be flipping burgers at McDonalds if Tim Duncan never happened.
Opinion: Time to face facts, NBA coaching legend Gregg Popovich stinks at Olympic basketball
Dan Wolken
USA TODAY
TOKYO – If you want to call Gregg Popovich the greatest coach in NBA history, go right ahead. But let’s be as direct and to the point as Popovich usually is: He stinks at Olympic basketball.
We’ve seen enough to say that now, haven’t we? What more do we need to know?
If you want to know where to put the blame for Team USA’s 83-76 loss to France – America’s first Olympic men’s basketball loss in 6,176 days – look no further than the guy with five NBA les who has been clueless from the very moment he was given the reins to USA Basketball.
Clueless in what he values with this roster. Clueless with an offense that unlocks very little of what his players do well. Clueless with the expectations he took on by following Mike Krzyzewski in this admittedly thankless job.
And it’s the last point that irks the most.
As Popovich attempted to slough off this embarrassment like it's a Wednesday night in January at Minnesota and not the Olympics, he sounded no different from every Power Five college football coach who tries to reassure their fan base after losing to a MAC school that, hey, those guys are on scholarship too.
“When you lose a game you’re not surprised, you’re disappointed,” Popovich said. “I don’t understand the word surprise. That sort of disses the French team, so to speak, as if we are supposed to beat them by 30 or something. That’s a of a team. They have NBA players, other talented players playing in Europe who’ve been together for a long time. I think it’s a little bit of hubris if you think the Americans are supposed to just roll out the ball and win. You have to work for it, and for those 40 minutes they played better than we did.”
Everyone understands that France has NBA-level players, as do several teams in this tournament. Rudy Gobert is a star. Evan Fournier and Nic Batum are names you know. Nando de Colo played a little bit in the NBA and has been awesome year in and year out in the EuroLeague.
But it’s not even the slightest bit jingoistic or hubristic to look at that roster, then look at the U.S. roster, and know within a fraction of a second which one you’d pick.
You know who gets that? The players on the American team. After the game, a couple reporters caught Damian Lillard outside the locker room, and I asked him if it was fair for fans back home to be shocked by what they saw against France.
“I wouldn’t say it’s unfair,” Lillard said. “I mean, I think that’s just what the expectations are when you play for Team USA. I think we have a history of dominance, maybe not always blowing people out but we have a history of winning. It’s not often that you see Team USA go out there and lose especially to start.
"I think that’s why a lot of people will make it seem like the end of the world, but our job as professionals and as this team representing our country in these Olympics, we have to do what’s necessary. We can still accomplish what we came here to accomplish, and we have to make sure we keep that in mind.”
You know why Lillard isn’t afraid to own up to the fact that Team USA is expected to win these games? Because it’s true.
USA Basketball didn’t win three straight Olympics and dominate every international event in between by accident. It happened because there was great care put into building those rosters and because there was tremendous buy-in from the top American players and because Krzyzewski did enough not to screw it up.
This idea that the world has caught up to the USA? Pfft. The world has been good for a long time. The French team isn’t locked in a gym in Paris working on sets all year long laying in wait to knock off the Americans. They’re professional players who have to come together in a short window for these tournaments just like our guys do.
And for the last 17 years, since the debacle in 2004 in Athens that forced USA Basketball to overhaul everything it was doing, the U.S. has been better at that than everyone else. At least until Popovich showed up with a bag full of excuses, saying ridiculous things like it was good that the U.S. lost to Nigeria in an exhibition game or that “those things happen” when you blow an eight-point lead late in the game.
It’s not supposed to happen to the United States in international compe ion. But it seems to happen more than its fair share under Popovich, who was an assistant under Larry Brown for the 2004 disaster and has overseen a seventh-place finish at the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup and now a loss at the Olympics after 19 straight wins.
“Basketball is an international sport,” Popovich said. “There are very good teams all over the world. People shouldn’t be surprised that the French team or Australian team or Lithuanian team – it doesn’t matter who it is – the gap in talent shrinks every year as there are more and more players all over the world, and you need to give the French team credit.”
You can give the French team credit while also wondering why the U.S. team wasted time at the beginning of this process by picking Kevin Love – a terrible decision that could not be justified by his play over the last couple years – only to see him bail midway through the training camp. You can wonder why the U.S., with a bevy of great young point guards who can run a half-court offense better than the guys they picked, snubbed someone like Trae Young who clearly wanted to be on the team. You can wonder why the spacing is so bad and the ball doesn’t move. You can wonder whether Popovich is too stubborn and too far past his prime to be the right choice to lead this team.
Ultimately, Team USA can shut everybody up by winning a gold medal, which is still within the realm of possibility. That’s the ultimate scoreboard.
But as we can see with our own eyes, it won’t be easy. It may not be likely. And it sure won’t be because the alleged greatest coach in basketball history figured something out.
Popovich has had years to figure out the whole Team USA thing. We’re still waiting for his first good day at the office.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...ce/8086604002/
Seriously. Get someone to photoshop Pop in a McDonalds uniform. Print it on t-shirts. Hand them out at the games.
The timeline for having real change occur would speed up
People here are looking at the roster and thinking they the best players. Yes, in the NBA where the game is dominantly run by guards and iso ball, allowing space on jumpers and unable to defend drives, having a 3 in the key penalty for defense. International ball is now the more physical game when big men matter. Draymomd Green is a 3 in the 90s but a 4/5 in team US and the NBA.
Being humiliated in the Olympics, no surprise to any of us, is probably enough to make sure Pop returns as coach.
No way he steps away from basketball as a loser when he can get the meaningless all time wins record and salvage some of his rep and get the news stories on his retirement to be 'all time leader' instead of 'Olympics failure leads to retirement'
it's stupid to say it's pop and not the stupid way this team thinks practicing only two weeks makes them better than the compe ion. No coach is going to create an offense with this amount of time. the Sad part here is that pop will be railroaded because the USA basketball is too gutless to go against the Stars. They don't even get the good stars. Honestly, if this is the death of US basketball good riddance.
Will the current media truths translate into honest critique of his Spurs coaching?
Pop just isn't the personality you want responding to the media. As for the team itself, I haven't seen any consistency over the last few years between Rio to these games in terms of roster.
It's just names out their with the majority (not all) with weak ass egos.
These USA players can't handle concepts or be run like a team???
I'm calling BS and this can't ALL fall on coaching.
I’m embarrassed to be an American.
Somewhere, you know Doris Burke is loving this. Lots of media who get on by this arrogant bag are loving it too.
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