Team USA Basketball Might Have Too Many Alphas

101-100.

It’s the lasting impression of Team USA’s run-up to the Paris Olympics.

Embarrassing … but in a good way.

No doubt, the unnecessary tension of a one-point win over South Sudan will provide incentive for the 2024 version of America’s finest in men’s basketball. And therein lies Team USA’s biggest problem.

No, not the need for an incentive. But rather, being America’s finest.

In a nutshell: Team USA has too many alphas.

Devin Booker, Derrick White, Tyrese Haliburton, Jayson Tatum and Bam Adebayo are all award-worthy basketball players. Just not high-energy, understand-my-role complementary pieces. You know, the types of guys that fill out a gold-medal team.

Give me B-Team stars with a pulse. Give me Jaylen Brown, De’Aaron Fox, Tyrese Maxey, Desmond Bane and Chet Holmgren, and you could give every other country a 20-point head start. It wouldn’t matter. 

Unfortunately, there will be no promotions on the eve of the Paris premiere. 

So as the less-than-dreamy dozen pack the resort refrigerators with France’s best champagne, here’s my view on what needs to get tweaked in order to bring home the gold with only one shower—a bubbly one:

International teams run a fluid offense

There’s a counter to that: Send out the dogs. Attack defensively. Turn Jrue Holiday, Anthony Edwards, Booker and White loose on overmatched Euro League ballhandlers. Nothing disrupts 3-point shooting like a point guard who can’t get the ball upcourt in a timely manner. Brown would have helped big-time. Fox and Maxey, too. But for now, someone needs to convince Booker, utterly useless in the exhibitions, that this is his key to getting on the court. Five frenzied minutes at a time.

The game is a sprint, not a marathon.

American stars learned long ago: Save your energy for the end. As long as LeBron James abides by that principle, everyone else can throw it out the window. The US team has the best athletes in the world; it’s time they start showing it. Push the pace. Play like Fox, the one-man fast break in Sacramento. Haliburton used to be Fox’s teammate. You want to play? Do your best imitation.

Issue: We left the microwaves at home.

Note the commonality of three of the four most out-of-place Americans in the exhibitions: Booker is a career 36-percent 3-point shooter; Haliburton shot 36 percent from deep last season; and Tatum—well, we’re still waiting for him to hit his first important shot from beyond the arc. 

All initiators, not finishers. 

Team USA needs catch-and-shooters. Human microwaves. (It also would help if Stephen Curry could hit a shot.) Where are Maxey and Bane? Even Kevin Durant has to understand the No. 1 rule of a role player: Make the most of your first three trips up and down the floor. Hit your first shot, and you stay in. Then pick up full court. And when told to sit down, simply say, Yes, sir.

Three’s a crowd.

Team USA has opted to play big this year. Good for them. Because while foreign countries are good at developing big men, they tend to be soft and perimeter-oriented. In other words, polar opposites of the two best low-post big men in the tournament: Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. Unfortunately, each at times has been suffocated by the presence of a sidekick big man, Adebayo, who hopefully is only playing because Durant hasn’t. 

The question is: Will Durant accept standing in the corner and shooting 3’s, as Holmgren would? Even on one leg, he could still be an asset.

They chose the wrong coach.

Like his mentor, Gregg Popovich, Kerr’s motion offense takes months (sometimes years) to learn. A few practices and exhibition games lead to… well, 101–100. The scholarly Kerr would be wise to steal from the playbook of Michael Malone, whose Nuggets on offense know two things: get the ball to the big man and spot up. Maybe there’s hope for White after all.

Eleven countries now believe they can shock the world.

Sorry, guys, but when LeBron starts getting serious for 20 minutes instead of just three, the game is over and you’re playing for second. The world’s greatest player could pour in 50 points a night if it meant his youngest son, Bryce, was also allowed to join the Lakers this fall. The only guy on Earth who could stop LeBron is Kerr. Here’s hoping he hasn’t read the Dean Smith Bible.