AUS vs USA Bogut is playing well.

[Eddie20]

Didn't catch the game, but that's an absurd outcome. No doubt just effort-related. You essentially have an NBA All-Star team beast mediocre NBA players by 10? If they played tomorrow, they'd probably win by 30.

Remember when USA Select (maybe another name for them back then?) beat the Dream Team in their first scrimmage? The following day, USA Select gottwhipped by 50+.

Serbia says hello. (population: 7 mill)

I mean if Serbia left 5 of their 6 best players back in Europe you might be able to compare the two.

Really? That's the excuse, that somehow USA is undermanned? Nothing to do with chemistry and cohesiveness, huh?

Like Greece said, Serbia has a population of 7.1M. To put that into comparison, Massachusetts has a population of 6.7M.

[tarheelsxxiii]

Didn't catch the game, but that's an absurd outcome. No doubt just effort-related. You essentially have an NBA All-Star team beast mediocre NBA players by 10? If they played tomorrow, they'd probably win by 30.

Remember when USA Select (maybe another name for them back then?) beat the Dream Team in their first scrimmage? The following day, USA Select gottwhipped by 50+.

Serbia says hello. (population: 7 mill)

I mean if Serbia left 5 of their 6 best players back in Europe you might be able to compare the two.

Really? That's the excuse, that somehow USA is undermanned? Nothing to do with chemistry and cohesiveness, huh?

Like Greece said, Serbia has a population of 7.1M. To put that into comparison, Massachusetts has a population of 6.7M.

Posted this in the Olympic thread but think it's relevant here for continued discussion:

They're not playing together or hard.  They were getting beat backdoor every other play in 4th quarter against Serbia. That's about it. They lack a true leader to pull them together. When the closest thing to that is Melo... you got a problem. It's that simple.

And in spite of that, there's absolutely no way they fail to win gold. As soon as they care, a couple guys take the reigns and it's over. May have more close games but they'll win gold. Too shameful to come back otherwise. They know that. Coach K looks like he's feeling it more than anyone.

[RAAAAAAAANDY]

Didn't catch the game, but that's an absurd outcome. No doubt just effort-related. You essentially have an NBA All-Star team beast mediocre NBA players by 10? If they played tomorrow, they'd probably win by 30.

Remember when USA Select (maybe another name for them back then?) beat the Dream Team in their first scrimmage? The following day, USA Select gottwhipped by 50+.

Serbia says hello. (population: 7 mill)

I mean if Serbia left 5 of their 6 best players back in Europe you might be able to compare the two.

Really? That's the excuse, that somehow USA is undermanned? Nothing to do with chemistry and cohesiveness, huh?

Like Greece said, Serbia has a population of 7.1M. To put that into comparison, Massachusetts has a population of 6.7M.

Well it's a poorly constructed roster that doesn't fit together and Coach K isn't a good coach so he's blowing the rotations.

But ultimately none of that would mater if Lebron, Steph, Westbrook, Harden, Davis, etc. had come to the games.

Also, none of those countries have football siphoning off their top tier athletes. Soccer maybe, though the athletic skills between basketball and soccer overlap much less than a football and basketball.