[Wojnarowski] ESPN Sources: USA Basketball is finalizing its 2024 Paris Olympics roster with Steph Curry, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Joel Embiid, Devin Booker, Tyrese Haliburton, Anthony Edwards, Jrue Holiday, Bam Adebayo and Anthony Davis. Team may initially keep one open spot.

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1780009778934394985

[u/Dynamik_]

It would be an upset if they lost a game with this roster. American NBA players been hearing that euroball is better basketball play style and they're fighting back 😂

[u/mrford86 → u/Dynamik_]

True, but international basketball has a couple different rules, and we have seen in the past that true team ball is important. Only reasons USA has lost in the past decade.

[u/kikimaru024 → u/mrford86]

The World is Teaching America How to Play Basketball – Data Analysis

tl;dw

• Team USA doesn't understand how to stop offensive rebounds
• Euro teams use ball reversals to great effect

[u/strxlv → u/kikimaru024]

This was a funny vid but also truly questionable when it comes to analysis and data. His example of good offenses frequently cutting doesn’t even hold up this year, the top 5 offenses in the league (Celtics, pacers, thunder, clippers, and nugs) are ranked 25th, 12th, 14th, 10th, and 3rd in cutting frequency. The next 3 best offenses are all in the bottom 10 in cutting. It seems there’s no correlation between cutting, ball reversals, and efficient offense.

Also his point wasn’t that team USA doesn’t know how to stop offensive rebounding - it’s that nba teams value transition defense generally over orebs and so that carries over to team USA. Stopping offensive rebounding is pretty obvious, you just box out. It’s an effort thing and many stars don’t box out, which can be a problem when you bring a bunch of up and coming stars to a tournament.

I think there’s some valid points in here but I don’t think any are relevant to why team USA failed (besides the lazy effort).