During the remainder of the Olympic men's basketball tournament, FanHouse will give you 5 Things to watch for in each game.Can the Team USA transition game be stopped? Through five pool play games, no one came even remotely close to slowing Team USA's fast break. The central challenge, beyond the overwhelming speed and finishing ability of every single player in red, white and blue, is that the Americans get out in transition so freaking often. The pickpocketing ways of Dwyane Wade and Chris Paul make up one avenue. LeBron James has been an interior disruptor, and the team flies off his deflections, steals and blocks. The team runs out on defensive rebounds, with Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh looking for an outlet guard, and those guards (Jason Kidd and Kobe Bryant, mainly) getting the ball up the court quickly. Even on the rare opponent make, the Americans push. How do you stop all that? You don't. You try to limit it as much as possible, by protecting the ball and slowing the game to a crawl. But nothing you do will prevent a few breakaway dunks from going down.
Can Australia be effective in the half-court offense? The wonderful Xs and Os of Basketball blog took a detailed look at Australia's versatile half-court offense recently, showing how many different ways the Aussies set up shop. Certainly, it's a better system than Germany or China offered, and it's a slower, more deliberate movement-driven offense than Spain runs. (Spain tends to be a bit free-wheeling and quick; Australia is closer to the old slow Princeton ... though there are serious differences.) The United States hasn't been tested in the half-court, really -- it has blown its opponents up way out at midcourt and built big leads before the foe can get settled. With Patrick Mills running Australia's show, the Boomers should be able to get into their offense early. At that point, it will be up to the Americans to show they can play real halfcourt defense.
Is this the biggest challenge to the Americans? Kevin Pelton has done tremendous work over at Basketball Prospectus this week, offering up advanced metrics as the tournament rolls on. One dumbfounding note: Australia, the 4th seed in Group A, has been the third best team in the proceedings based on points margin. Australia's efficiency differential (14.2) is behind only the U.S. (a whopping 39.6) and Argentina (18.4). Now, Spain and Greece narrowly trail the Aussies in this measure, and Australia had the pleasure of avoiding the Americans in pool play ... so it might not be so easy to assert. But consider the margin, that Australia has one of the better point guards in the tournament, is young, and has some measure of confidence against Team USA. This might be the toughest test the U.S. will see the rest of the tournament.
How long is Kidd's leash? In the elimination round, Team USA can't really afford not to be at its best. Starting Kidd over Paul and Deron Williams means the team is not at its best. Williams has been spectacularly solid, Paul has been spectacular. Kidd has been OK. Given a choice between spectacular and OK, there should be no debate. Paul needs to play twice as much as Kidd, and Williams should be #2 on the depth chart.
Will Bogut matter? Andrew Bogut missed the U.S.-Australia exhibition. We'll find out Wednesday how much that hurt the Boomers. My early guess: not as much as you'd think. Australia hung tough because Mills was a beast; if Bogut is instead touching the ball every time down, maybe Mills doesn't go off. In total, Australia's obviously much, much better with Bogut. But on a game-to-game basis, there could be mitigating factors which would lead to evidence otherwise. If nothing else, the re-addition of Bogut gives the U.S. something else to figure out -- Bogey's the best shot-blocker the team will face this tournament. (Herr Kaman would figure there, but his spirit had been broken by the time he entered the game against Team USA.)
The game will be broadcast on NBC at 8 a.m. Wednesday, live on the East Coast and in the Central time zone (where it would be 7 a.m.). It has been protocol for the weekday games to be shown live to Mountain and Pacific fans on USA (that'd be 5 a.m. on the West Coast, 6 a.m. in the Rockies), but it's not clear whether that will continue into the medal round.
