Follow our Olympics coverage in the run up to the Paris Games.
LAS VEGAS — After some hugging and photo ops among teammates on the eve of training camp last Friday, the 12 stars of Team USA heard a strange message from their coaching staff.
The crowd made it feel odd. Coach Steve Kerr and assistant coach Tyronn Lue told the Olympians gathered in a room that the team that played in last summer’s World Cup had been “bullied” in that tournament, especially as the plays got closer to the basket.
The group Kerr will take to Paris includes just two players from the 2023 U.S. national team, and neither of them are forwards or centers.
nevertheless…
“They feel like we got bullied last year,” said Anthony Davis, one of the superstars on the U.S. national team for 2024. Davis has nothing to do with last summer, but the hope is that his presence will help thwart the bullying.
Last summer, size and defensive rebounding were weaknesses for the U.S. team. Jaren Jackson Jr. was the only traditional big man in the starting lineup, but he was prone to fouls and played center instead of power forward. Kerr generally played smaller lineups, and the U.S., which lost three of its final four World Cup games, often lost on rebounds and in the paint.
The size disadvantage was so pronounced last summer that the U.S. was outscored in second-chance points, 64-13, in games against Montenegro, Lithuania and Germany. The U.S. lost two of those games and has since lost three of its last four.
The Olympic team was always going to be different from the one that will represent the U.S. in the World Cup, as the U.S. men’s basketball team does, but what U.S. national team executives Grant Hill and Sean Ford came up with was almost an overcorrection: The U.S. national team goes to Paris with arguably its biggest, most talented frontcourt since sending Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O’Neal and David Robinson to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Davis is 6-foot-10 but has a wingspan of 7-foot-6. He averaged 12.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocks with the Los Angeles Lakers last season and was named to the All-Defensive First Team.
Joel Embiid is 7-foot-4 and weighs about 280 pounds. Embiid is one of the NBA’s most prolific scorers, averaging a career-high 34.7 points per game last season for the Philadelphia 76ers. (Not that Davis is a bad player.) he With the Lakers, he averaged 24.7 points, 11 rebounds and 1.7 blocks.
Bam Adebayo is 6-foot-9, small for a big man on the U.S. team, but he served as the starting center for the U.S. team at the Tokyo Olympics and was selected to the All-Defensive First Team.
“I think everybody knows I’m hard to bully,” Embiid said, “and I’m hard to bully the other guys.”
“No matter who’s in the game, we’re definitely going to set the tone early on,” Adebayo added. “It’s going to set the tone from start to finish.”
Wednesday will be the U.S.’ first chance to prove that point, in its first exhibition game of the summer at 10:30 p.m. ET against Canada, arguably the second-most talented team in the Olympics and the team that beat the U.S. in the World Cup bronze-medal game.
Size and rebounding weren’t the biggest issues in the U.S.’ overtime loss, but rather defense in general. Dillon Brooks scored 39 points and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander added 31.
“They’ve got to play defense. They’ve got to play defense,” Brooks said Monday night after Canada’s first practice in Las Vegas when asked what he thought of the crucial buildup the U.S. has made over the summer.
On paper, at least, size isn’t an asset for Canada’s post. Zach Eddy is a giant of a man, but he chose not to join the team this summer, instead playing in the NBA Summer League as a rookie with Memphis. Canada may turn to two NBA big men in Kelly Olynyk and Dwight Powell.
But Embiid, Davis and Adebayo have a chance to not only help the U.S. against bigger teams (like France with their 7-foot Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert or Serbia with Nikola Jokic in the starting lineup), but also to establish a team identity based on toughness and defense. Having LeBron James (6-foot-8, 260 pounds, who can be immobile when he wants to) and Kevin Durant (a 6-foot-11 forward with rim-protecting skills) help out on defense would only strengthen the identity the three American big men are trying to project.
Meanwhile, the 2023 World Cup team was the worst defensive team in U.S. national team history.
“Size, frame, rebounding ability, I feel like we’ve addressed those things,” said Erik Spoelstra, an assistant under Kerr and Adebayo on the Miami Heat. “We’ve got Hall of Fame rebounders on this roster.”
Lue, like Spoelstra, answered reporters’ questions after Tuesday’s practice, the final one for the U.S. in Las Vegas this summer. Asked why it was important to tell a room full of stars who hadn’t even stepped on the court for the U.S. last year that the team was crushed, he retorted, “How do you know?” When he was told players (Davis) had snitched on him, he softened his stance.
“The game is played differently over there,” said Lue, who is also head coach of the Los Angeles Clippers. “Here in the NBA, you can’t touch somebody, you can’t be physical. We learned over there that you can stomp somebody, you can use your hands, you can be physical. It’s just a different game and we weren’t prepared for it, so we talked about it (Friday night).”
Asked if he thought this USA Basketball team, with Embiid’s broad shoulders, Adebayo’s tenacity and Davis’ reach, was ready to prove it understood the points Lue and Kerr made before training camp began, Lue replied with a broad grin: “Yes, we do.”
“Yeah, I think so too.”
Every U.S. national team has better speed, 3-point shooting and ball-handling than most of their opponents, with the exception of Canada (let’s be honest: Gilgeous-Alexander is one of the best players in the NBA, and Jamal Murray is a distant second behind him). What makes the U.S. a beatable team is the size of their team. Last summer’s three losses, two of the U.S.’s three losses in 2021 (including exhibition and Olympic games), and their dismal seventh-place finish at the 2019 World Cup were all caused primarily by a lack of team size and fitness.
Those defects no longer exist.
“You look at this team,” Adebayo said in disbelief. “I have no disrespect for any other country, so don’t put that in the headline, but when you put a team together like this and you compare it to the Dream Team, it shows you how good this team is.”…
“If we put together a team like this and play the right way, we’re going to be tough to beat.”
(Top photo: Anthony Davis and Joel Embiid at Team USA training camp: Mercedes Oliver/NBAE via Getty Images)