Jaylen and Jalen will hunt you down…
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Different roles, and positions. Im building a team. But Cade is a guy I wouldn’t be shocked if he became an easy choice, but I also wouldn’t be shocked if he wasn’t on the team.
I admittedly got burned cause post Tokyo I declared he was gonna be the next American star and well here we are so he’s gonna have to earn some trust back from me
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Barnes, Morant (some extra concern here beyond playing obviously), Keegan Murray all strike me as possibilities too
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US women locked in a close one with France. 55-55 with 3m and change to play.
Wow! Crazy finish! By an inch we escape going to OT and win gold. The streak survives.
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Some big cuts and finishes from Kaleah Copper
Syla Swords will end our poverty USA bball next Olympics sadly
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Congrats to Taurasi 5 golds as a player 1 as a mascot.
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Clutch free throw shooting by the US.
That turned out to be very timely - that was the last Olympic event and allows the U.S. wins the medal race with China (tied in golds, ahead in total).
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What a finish!
I think a more modern approach is required with the women’s team - the personnel was fine, but tripling down on size by having Napheesa Collier as basically a third big (Taurasi started a lot but that was just respect stuff, though prime Taurasi would have been perfect), and having your only PG be a non shooter (Chelsey Grey is a great player but hard to play with three bigs, especially if you aren’t going to have Stew shoot) is really limiting. Having Alyssa Thomas be sixth in minutes compounds it too - again, a great player, but the lineups never clicked for me. We just wanted to play 90s ball.
They had shooting - Stew hasn’t shot well this year but is historically a high volume and reasonably accurate shooter. Plum, Ionescu, and Young are all good shooters - it’s not THAT hard to get the team attempt rate over 20%, which maybe would stop the opposition from sitting on A’ja’s head all game.
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Scottie Barnes is someone I probably overlook. I generally don’t love his archetype in FIBA as a ball dominant 4/wing that isn’t really a shooter. But in 4 years he could be really good. His shooting has already improved quite a bit. And if Chet is going to be a core piece, and we have PGs like Hali or Maxey, someone like Barnes would be pretty intriguing next to them as a defensive player that be a connector on offense. I think I like him more than Paolo who gets lots of hype already.
I’ll probably move him onto my projected team
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Yeah, they have a bunch of shooters on the team and Reeves doesn’t use them. I get trying to overwhelm them with size but they need wing and shooters surrounding A’ja and Stewie.
DT and Griner are certainly done after this Olympics. A new generation will be playing for them like CC, JuJu, Paige, Reese, etc. The PG shouldn’t be an issue with CC and Paige on the team, but CC needs to control her turnover issues.
Projected team as of now:
Locks:
Ant
Tatum
Bam
Book
Has a very good shot of coming back:
Hali
Past FIBA WC team should be taken into consideration:
Mikal Bridges
JJJ
Jaylen Brown
Donovan Mitchell
Josh Hart
Paolo
Jalen Brunson
Walker Kessler
Potential Newcomers in no order:
Chet
Jalen Williams
Ja
Cade Cunningham
Zion Williamson (if he’s healthy)
Cooper Flagg
Brandon Miller
Tyrese Maxey
Evan Mobley
Scottie Barnes
AJ Dybantsa
Cameron Boozer
Keegan Murray
Donovan Clingan
Ace Bailey
Dylan Harper
Any players who can be a role player aka 3 and D alas Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, etc. will be in consideration. We are a long way from getting a complete picture of what the '28 team will look like.
EDIT: @kturnup correctly pointed out that I made a mistake on the past FIBA WC team. For some reason, I thought of '20('21) Olympics on the top of my head.
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Fwiw JJJ and Bridges weren’t on an Olympic team. And if you wanted to include the WC guys in that group then you’d need to move Jaylen Brown, Mitchell, Hart, Paolo, Brunson, Kessler
I think AD and KD said they are probable to play again
Probably missed some guys the board mentioned and I added some of my own just scrolling thru DARKO and b-r but thought this was an interesting view. Creates a nice lil rule of thumb for how good we think you should be vs. how old you are so if I missed your guy, can just look up his 24-25 age and compare.
I just assumed the Dybantsa/Boozer/Flagg trio were NBA replacement level rn. Seems reasonable enough, kind of silly tho no matter what. I made Stokes worse than that bc he’s younger iirc. I lazily decided to give Ausar Amen’s DARKO. I dk why.
Embiid I think everyone is probably properly suspicious of but I think Mitchell is a guy that has low key exploded for the Cavs and could be a guy to build the offense around.
That said, feel like we have a lot of ball dominant guards and everything else is a lot harder to find. Basically, we have the one thing it was obvious nobody else in this tournament had. Makes Tatum even more necessary for the future.
Really hope Ant’s O advances a LOT (and you would expect it to) bc I think he’s gonna expect to be the alpha next time around. But man he had some gnarly offensive possessions in the playoffs and the Olympics.
Maybe we just make the whole thing out of the Thunder.
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I’ve been silently waiting for the DARKO chart to come out!