Team USA Basketball had a weekend.
The women’s team lost 117-109 to the WNBA All-Star Team, which included Arike Ogunbowale of Dallas, Angel Reese of Chicago and Caitlin Clark of Indiana. Ogunbowale took game MVP honors with 34 points – all scored in the second half. Reese had yet another double-double, and Clark – who may have been the most notable Team USA snub – had 10 assists to offset a poor shooting night.
This is deja vu for Team USA. In 2021, they lost to the WNBA All-Stars in a similar situation. In fact, Ogunbowale won the MVP in that matchup as well. When Team USA got to Tokyo, they went 6-0 en route to gold.
The women’s team is expected to coast to the gold medal in the Paris Olympics. They have not had many opportunities to practice together as a team, and they played the best that the WNBA has to offer. A result like this is not entirely unexpected or surprising. Even Breanna Stewart, who led Team USA with 31 points, said It’s not time to panic. It’s time to learn and grow.” I fully expect Team USA to rally and get back to the podium in Paris.
Meanwhile, the men’s team had a completely different experience.
Team USA beat South Sudan 101-100 in an Olympics tune-up. This against a team whose players have a total of 12 games of NBA experience (Carlik Jones played five games with Memphis, and Wenyen Gabriel suited up seven times for Chicago).
The coaching staff has significant NBA ties. Royal Ivey is an assistant with the Rockets and Luol Deng had a great career with five NBA teams, most notably the Bulls. Deng is the president and assistant coach.
It took a layup by LeBron James with eight seconds left to clinch this win. Team USA has wins over Canada, Serbia, and Australia in pre-Olympic tune-ups already.
However, we need to stop with the comparisons between this team and other incarnations of Team USA – most notably the 1992 Dream Team. The 2024 team could not hold the Dream Team’s water.
No disrespect to the hard-working players and coaches for South Sudan, but this is a team that Team USA should dominate. I know that from a global perspective, the quality of basketball has improved exponentially since 1992. There are former or current NBA players on nearly every roster that’s headed to Paris. But beating South Sudan by a single point is inexcusable.
We could chalk this result up to:
- Lack of practice time
- The international travel schedule (prior to this game, Team USA played two exhibitions in Abu Dhabi)
- The defensive skill of the South Sudanese team (remember, coached by NBA players and the roster has international players on it)
The most egregious sight of the game was LeBron James dunking to put Team USA ahead and then having the audacity to showboat and celebrate. Are we watching the same game here? Do we have the same expectations, the players and the fans? Do the players even really care?
Enough with comparisons to 1992. Each one of these reboots of Team USA should be judged on its own merit. Remember the Athens disaster in 2004? And then the “Redeem Team” in 2008?
The United States has the best basketball athletes in the world. It’s time they start playing like it.
