The 2024 Olympic men’s team may make history, but first it will have to figure out its rotation. Despite its win over Serbia, the United States is still in the development phase.
“This American team is better than the original Dream Team from 1992,” Serbia coach Svetislav Pesic said before the Paris Olympics last month. After Sunday’s 110-84 loss to the U.S., coach Pesic would likely have repeated that statement. Despite having the world’s best player on his side (Serbia tied with the U.S. when Nikola Jokic was on the court but was outscored by 26 points in nine minutes), the game still felt lopsided.
Kevin Durant made a strong comeback after missing the entire preseason with a calf injury. He scored 23 points in a game-high 17 minutes and didn’t miss a shot until eight minutes and 10 seconds remained in the fourth quarter. LeBron James finished with 21 points and a game-high nine assists on 9-of-13 shooting. Now 74, Team USA’s all-time leaders in points and assists still look like giants; their combined shot charts are timeless:
Overall, Team USA made 56 percent of its three-pointers and 68 percent of its two-pointers. Steph Curry’s screens wreaked havoc, Anthony Edwards’ athleticism sparked fast-break opportunities, Devin Booker’s outside shooting broke up a game plan that filled the paint, and Jrue Holiday, Bam Adebayo, Anthony Davis and Derrick White provided defensive lessons.
The biggest (and only?) concern for Team USA heading into the round robin was its low three-point shooting percentage and how a preference for two-pointers could leave the team vulnerable to an opponent who has done everything they can to win the math game. In Sunday’s win over Serbia, the Americans shot 46.3 percent from behind the arc. They looked to make threes in transition and had several open shots that were set up by some nice drive-kick-swing moves. The shots won’t always fall like they did in the opening win, but there’s no way to prepare for such a random, brilliant offense that positions all five players as scoring threats.
It’s in moments like these that people who believe this iteration of Team USA is the best ever assembled can puff out their chests. But even though it crushed a team anchored by a three-time MVP, the level, unreasonable or not, falls just short of perfection for a group that still seems at times unsure of how it wants to play. Sunday’s win was a drubbing. It also failed to show, in its entirety, how great the United States can be. There were sloppy turnovers (17 in total), periods of offensive stagnation (which allowed Serbia to attempt five more three-pointers and seven more free throws than the United States), and nearly a dozen minutes of Joel Embiid that veered between decent and disastrous.
If Durant is easy money, Embiid is an Overdraft Fee. Booed every time he touched the ball, the NBA MVP and 2023 GOAT who could have been was benched three minutes into the game after Serbia jumped out to an early 10-2 lead. In the second half, he was repeatedly grilled in the post by Jokic and failed to find an offensive rhythm. Embiid finished with four points and was the only player in a United States jersey with a negative plus-minus. (The team was outscored by eight points in 11 minutes on the court.)
Embiid was reportedly sick and missed Saturday’s practice, but his struggles are nothing new. Meanwhile, Anthony Davis, one of the most impressive players in this group in recent weeks, also missed practice due to illness. (AD finished with a team-best plus-28 and showed understandable chemistry with LeBron.) It will be interesting to see how much longer Steve Kerr gives the benefit of the doubt to this incredible talent who also has little FIBA experience and a rigid on-court identity working against him. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where Embiid ends up on the bench, but heading into group play, no one expected Jayson Tatum to record a DNP-CD either.
“It’s really hard to play 10-plus guys in a 40-minute game,” Kerr said after beating Serbia. “With Kevin coming back, I just went with the combinations that made the most sense to me. It seems crazy. I thought I was crazy when I looked at everything and figured out those were the lineups I wanted to have. Jayson’s been a first-team All-NBA player three years in a row. He’s one of the best players in the world. I went with the combinations that made the most sense to me, talked to him, and he was incredibly professional.”
Despite some disappointing performances heading into the weekend, it was a shocking and bizarre turnaround for a top-tier all-around player who scored 19 points in Team USA’s gold medal game against France three years ago, improves every team he’s a part of and just won his first NBA title. There’s no universe in which Team USA is better without Tatum in its rotation, and it wasn’t surprising to hear Kerr say Tatum would play in the next game.
There’s also no universe in which Durant continues to come off the bench. He’s an established demon in Olympic competition and has enough shooting prowess to lead the entire tournament in points. What he did Sunday, making his first eight shots, was no fluke. How Kerr adjusts his rotation based on both of those realities will be interesting. There could very well be a game in group play where Durant takes Booker’s place in the starting five, opening the door for Tatum to replace KD on the bench. There’s also a chance Davis (or Adebayo) starts at the five and Embiid takes over the game. Of course, it’s not so much a question of who starts as it is how many runs the most sensible units can get, what the opponent looks like, and which five players are on the court to close out a close game (if Team USA ever finds itself in another one of those situations).
Kerr has so many different five-man combinations to tinker with, especially after moving away from the hockey lines deployed in every exhibition game. Personally, I don’t understand how Tatum, one of the most adaptable, talented, unselfish, winning two-way players on the ice, was considered the odd man out against Serbia, but his demotion speaks to both the absurd depth of this team and the paradox of the choices Team USA’s selection committee imposed on its coaching staff.
Assuming that Curry, James, Durant and Davis/Adebayo are key players in the game-changing moment, Holiday, Edwards, Booker, Tatum and White are all practical candidates for the latter position. This is a fantastic problem (if there ever was one) for Kerr. Few coaches have ever been given such a large margin for error. It’s also more than enough reason to believe Pesic, a smart coach who knows what he’s talking about.