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Fud

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Everything posted by Fud

  1. Bam is an underrated difference maker for this team
  2. Curry needs to be excellent on offense to justify being on the court due to his defense. He's the opposite of that today
  3. KD, always there to bail the national team out when they need it
  4. There's a lot of slipping on the court right now
  5. S Sudan's athleticism is going to give Serbia problems
  6. I mean, that's what we're talking about, right? The US Olympics is extremely difficult to make, especially for a perimeter player who's a terrible three point shooter
  7. Hart is more of a World Cup guy when a lot of the all-NBA and even all-star types turn the opportunity down. Brunson is in the dozen or so guards bucket that I mentioned; in addition to the guards I predicted to be on the team there's also Brunson, Kyrie, Mitchell, Fox, Ja, Maxey, etc..
  8. I didn't watch him closely, but Hollinger/Duncan thought he looked terrible per their latest podcast The next guy to watch for them is in the 2025 draft; point guard Nolan Traore If Sarr hits, they could potentially have something like Traore-Coulibaly-Risacher-Wemba-Sarr
  9. Also I'm listening to Duncan and Hollinger right now and they're discussing how there's been a ton of athletic and long but raw french wings who've been drafted because of their upside but who quickly busted. It might be a thing.
  10. By the way, France has a ton of young talent coming up through the pipeline, including players who are already in the NBA, high draft picks from the 2024 draft, and prospects projected to go very high in next year's draft. In four years Wemba might be a top five player in the world, and they might be able to surround him with good NBA players. They should make the next World Cup team heavy with young players in preparation for the Olympics
  11. You're losing those three top 10-15 all time players, plus likely one of the historically best team USA players in Jrue Holiday. He left the team before the Olympics started, but you can also probably go ahead and cross Kawhi off too. You can still get 10-12 all-NBA types on the team though. A lot of it is deciding which of the dozen or so qualified guards do you pick? Do we go ahead and assume health for Embiid and AD? Is Zion healthy? Is someone like Brandon Miller too good a fit at FIBA ball to keep off the team? Who replaces Jrue as the primary on-ball defender? I'll take a stab 'C: AD, Bam, Chet (I'll go ahead and guess that Embiid is injured and AD isn't) W: Tatum, Paolo, Flagg, Brown (I decided between a bunch of wings here, including Brown, Barnes, Bridges, Miller, but went with Brown) G: Ant, Haliburton, Booker, White (again, you can justifiably pick a dozen different guys here, but it's probably easiest to pick players with prior Olympics success).... I'll take a heat check and take a fifth guard with Jalen Suggs, who's now one of the best perimeter defenders in the league and is turning into a good connecter, he just needs to be able to make open threes I think by this time Ant is probably the best American player, with Tatum not far behind. So the team would be more ball stoppy and iso heavy because that's how those two play, which can be remedied a bit by starting Haliburton and telling everyone to just go (plus Haliburton adds spacing). Obviously Haliburton is a problem on defense, but so is Steph; as long as he works hard defensively, you can probably make up for it with four other good defenders around him. The other 5th starter can be matchup dependent, or maybe Paolo or Flagg has ascended at that point, or maybe it's just Booker
  12. Listening to the Hoop Collective, it seems like Kerr wants to go with a ten man rotation, and since he said Tatum will play this next game, then means someone else will be out of the rotation. Is it one of the guards, which would be White, Booker, or Ant? Is it Embiid?
  13. Players see diminishing returns in efficiency as usage goes up, but Joel’s remain very high. Rare offensive hub players can pull that off, and he’s one of them That said, I don’t think he’s a great fit for this team, especially in his current form
  14. I don't take him very seriously as a pundit, but his podcasts are entertaining
  15. He takes a 2-3 week break from the main podcast every year right before football starts, although he'll pop up on other ringer pods
  16. lulz at getting negged for this post. Hopefully his keyboard didn't get fried from his tear drops
  17. Embiid doubles up AD in assists. He's a better offensive hub than AD. He's a better scorer. He demands more double teams. AD might be more impactful to winning and thus might be the better overall player at the highest levels largely because he's more flexible defensively, he's more malleable around other good offensive players, and he runs the court better, but Joel is the better overall offensive player by any metric. If free throws are taken out of the sport, then AD might have an argument, but then Joel would probably flop less and just try to score more without flopping; Joel is, after all, an excellent jump shooter within about 20 feet, and can just shoot over most players
  18. They're objectively not similar at all offensively in terms of impact. Embiid averaged over a point per minute along with over five assists per game this year. This is silly.
  19. Tatum is excellent, but the bar is high for team USA when the stars decide they want to play, especially if your typical role is the primary initiator and KD/Lebron play your position. If he was a better connector and transition player, he'd probably be playing more. There still might be some matchups where he makes sense defensively, but I think Kerr probably just doesn't love him as a player and would rather play KD/Lebron
  20. What years would he have won multiple MVPs? He's a better defensive player than Embiid because he's more switchable on the perimeter, but he's not in Embiid's universe on offense
  21. Kerr hates ball-stoppers/surveyors, which Tatum is. Also, it made sense to go guard heavy against Serbia. I think against lesser teams you'll see him play, but against teams with a real chance of losing, you'll see his time limited Embiid needs to sit at this point. There was merit to seeing if you could play him into good form, but he's been a net negative against the starters of other teams and he doesn't really fit how this team plays. AD and Bam rotate with the option to go big by playing both or small with Lebron and KD. Embiid can match up with true big centers when you play them Regarding who starts/closes, keep in mind Holiday needs to be in those lineups. He's the best on-ball defender on the team so he's guarding the other team's best perimeter player, and he's shown to be an excellent catch-and-shoot spacer, connector, and cutter
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