Is the U.S. Is the men's basketball team following the same path that the 2004 Athens team rallied for the bronze medal?
Team USA's 83-76 loss to France in Sunday's opening game in Tokyo was its first loss in Olympic competition since 2004, when a semi-final loss to eventual gold medalist Argentina saw the U.S. was ruined for the bronze-medal game. Then as now, Team USA suffered an early defeat in the pre-Olympic exhibition game and fell in their opening game of pool play.
USA Basketball responded to the 2004 disappointment by putting together a strong program with Mike Krzyzewski with undefeated runs at the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Olympics. led to the gold medal. Is that streak of gold destined to end in Team USA's Olympic winning streak? Let's break down the comparison.
Although a US team with NBA players lost in the Olympics for the first time in 2004, the professionals had previously lost on home soil at the 2002 FIBA World Championships in Indianapolis, going 6–3 and following a quarterfinal loss to Yugoslavia Was in sixth place. .
As of 2019, the world's other major global basketball competition was renamed the FIBA World Cup, but the U.S. The results were similar: losing to France in the quarter-finals and finishing in seventh place.
Initially, USA Basketball made a good comeback from the disappointment of 2002. Required for America to qualify for the Olympics through next summer's FIBA tournament – now known as the AmeriCup – America put together a roster of five members since 2002—03 All-NBA teams plus Future Hall of Famer Ray Allen and potential Hall of Famer Vince Carter. That group won the tournament, beating Argentina 106–73 in the final. America seemed to have regained its place in the basketball world.
Until the Athens Olympics next summer, the U.S. The roster was too small. Just three players returned from the 2003 Tournament of the Americas roster, as Allen, Carter, Kidd and Tracy McGrady all dropped out along with many other NBA legends. In their place, the U.S. sent a team with rising stars, including future Olympic building blocks Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James and Dwayne Wade. But the inexperienced group consisted of six players aged 22 or younger.
As it happens this summer, the 2004 U.S. The team was hardly devoid of major talent. Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson, who collectively won three of the last four NBA MVP awards, headlined the roster. But they were the only two Olympians who were All-Stars during 2003–04. Collectively, the 2004 group ranked the U.S. in terms of my wins above replacement player (WARP) metric in the previous season. Produced so far - before and after roster.
Notably, this year's US roster includes only two players who produced at least 10 WARPs during the 2020-21 regular season: Damien Lillard (14.8) and Jason Tatum (10.1). Bradley Beale (11.0) would have been a third if he had not been forced to withdraw due to health and safety protocols, while Kevin Durant only missed due to injuries that limited him to 35 games. Nevertheless, there were four such players on the 2004 roster: Duncan, Stephen Marbury, Shawn Marion and Lamar Odom. Meanwhile, late this year replacements for Team USA, Keldon Johnson and Jewell McGee, produced less WARP than anyone on the 2004 roster.
The lack of consistency is another point of comparison between the 2004 and 2021 rosters. Both teams played the U.S. in a senior international competition. Looking at his first action for the eight players shown. In contrast, all 12 players on the 2008 "Redeem Team" had previously represented USA Basketball at the senior level, as did 10 of the 12 players in 2012.
Team USA's defeat on Sunday was preceded by a loss at the exhibitions played in Las Vegas, first a 90–87 loss to Nigeria on 10 July and then a 91–83 loss to Australia two days later. In 2004, when Team USA suffered its first defeat with a roster of NBA players at an exhibition in Cologne, Germany, against eventual silver medalist Italy, it was easy to excuse these performances as tuneups where the result was a match for the Olympics. Less important than preparation. .
In both cases, the results of the exhibition proved to be telling after the Olympics began. The same was true in 2019, when the US lost to Australia in the lead-up to the World Cup. Although games themselves may not count, there certainly is some predictive power to exhibitions.
As the 2004 Olympic team is discredited relative to its peers, the group produced some decent results. The United States handed their only defeat in the quarter-finals to top seed Spain from Group A in Athens. And after losing to Argentina in the semi-finals, Team USA returned to win a rematch with Lithuania for bronze – having defeated the Americans in group play.
However, USA Basketball teams with NBA players are judged on a pass-fail scale, with a gold medal being the only satisfactory result. Given that bar, the unpredictable nature of playing single-elimination knockouts at the Olympics might actually work in Team USA's favor this time around. We saw in an 83-76 win over Spain to end the exhibition game in Las Vegas that this roster can beat any competitor when things go right.
America can count on the better performances of Devin Booker and Khris Middleton, who scored a combined 1-for-8 off the field on Sunday in 24 minutes of action, a day after arriving in Tokyo from the NBA Finals that concluded on Tuesday. (Jew Holiday, the third player on the U.S. roster to play in the Finals, did much better with 18 points in 28 minutes shooting 5-of-13.)
Big roles for Booker and Middleton could help Greg Popovich remove Johnson from the rotation, as his nine minutes of action on Sunday saw the U.S. was outsourced by 11 points. Foul trouble also restricted Durant to 21 minutes, less than he would play ahead.
At the same time, winning gold in Tokyo may not be the best thing going forward for USA Basketball. After years of progressively less-talented rosters at the World Cup and the Olympics, it appears time for America to reset the program as it did under Krzyzewski and managing director Jerry Colangelo – who will take the post after this year's Olympics. Planning to leave - Between 2004 and 2008. America would be wise to follow the same path.