Academic articles take months, sometimes years, to write. Newspaper articles are written far more quickly. Team USA lost a few hours ago, and although I would like to take months and years to put my thoughts down, I imagine by then people might have lost interest in this topic. So this morning I am going to pretend I am writing for a newspaper and toss out a few thoughts.
Let’s start with what we know. In 1994 Team USA won the World Championship. It looks like we are going to have to wait a bit longer to see this happen again. This morning a team of non-NBA players from Greece managed to defeat our team of NBA All-Stars. One wonders how this is possible.
Although the team lost, there were some good performances from Team USA. Against Germany our three captains – LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Carmelo Anthony – played poorly. Against Greece these three players played better. In fact, Carmelo was once again one of the best players on Team USA. Unfortunately, the rest of the team had problems. Other than Anthony, only Wade, Shane Battier, and Dwight Howard had above average games in terms of Win Score per minute. LeBron would have joined this group, but given that he was clearly not playing his traditional small forward position in this game, his per-minute productivity was below average for a power forward.
And that is the first problem you notice when you look at the statistics from this game. Team USA has four players who traditionally play power forward or center in the NBA: Howard, Chris Bosh, Elton Brand, and Brad Miller. Miller didn’t play in this game. Howard, Bosh, and Brand only played 30 minutes. So 50 minutes at power forward and center had to be played by players like James, Battier, and Anthony. These players rebounded well for small forwards, but not well for a power forward or center. Although Team USA did capture five rebounds more than Greece in this game, one wonders what this advantage would have looked like if players were not playing out of position.
Now playing players out of position has so far worked for Team USA. The strategy Coach Krzyzewski employed was to play a collection of athletic scorers – such as Wade, Anthony, James, and Joe Johnson – and win the game by forcing turnovers that could be turned into easy fast break points. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Greece to turn the ball over.
Unable to feed off of turnovers, Team USA turned to three point shooting. Greece took 18 shots from downtown, and made 8. Despite hitting 44% of these shots, more than two-thirds of all shots Greece took were from inside the arc. Team USA took 66 shots from the field, and 28 of these came from beyond the arc. If these shots went in, Team USA would probably have won. But when only 32% of these shots fell, Team USA was in trouble.
Here are some questions we have to ask after this defeat. Why did Team USA not play its big men more minutes? If Brand, Howard, and Bosh can score against NBA talent, why should we not expect these three players to score at will against non-NBA talent? And wouldn’t the NBA big men have helped a bit on defense?
Perhaps one can argue that size does not matter in the international game. I find this hard to believe, but let’s go with this thought. Given the impotence of size, you might believe that Team USA cannot win without taking an inordinate number of three point shots — and given that Team USA took 68 shots from beyond the arc in the last two games, this might be what Team USA’s brain-trust believes. If that is true, then why did Team USA choose this particular set of players?
None of the players on Team USA ranked in the top 30 in three point shooting. Now some of these players are not eligible for Team USA. And others turned down the chance to play. Still, if you believe you cannot win with outside shooting, why couldn’t you have gotten two or three of the top thirty on the roster?
Coach K is known as a great motivational speaker. But management is not just about motivating people to try harder. Management is first and foremost about decision-making. Team USA chose not to take more three point shooters. Team USA chose to play players out of position. Team USA chose not to play big men who one might expect to do well against inferior international competition. And now Team USA gets to ponder the outcome of these decisions over the next two years.
So those are my quick thoughts. I will write more on this later. If you wish to read more now, I recommend the writings of Chris Sheridan at ESPN.com. His columns are for Insiders, but I think they are well worth the money. Sheridan has received a great deal of grief for his prediction that Team USA would ultimately falter in these championships. This morning, probably much to his disappointment, the evidence has backed his prediction. –
– DJ
Wages of Wins Journal 
henry lambert
September 1, 2006
This blog is consistently excellent. I’m a huge soccer fan and I’d love to see more of your excellent analysis turned to it.
Dan Rosenbaum
September 1, 2006
For the record, Team USA’s offensive effiency against Greece was 128.1 points per 100 possessions, according to my calculations. This is better than 114.1 points per 100 possessions that Phoenix posted in the NBA last season. In fact, the difference between our performance against Greece and Phoenix was larger than the difference between the best and worst teams in the NBA last season.
Furthermore, Spain and Argentina averaged 101 points per 100 possessions in their semi-final, so it is not obvious that it easier to score in international play, especially against the good teams. 101 points per 100 possessions is lower than any team in the NBA averaged last season.
Thus, it appears that Team USA had a phenomenal offensive game against Greece.
Also, its offensive rebounding rate was 37.8% and its defensive rebounding rate was 81.8%. Both would have led the NBA by large margins last season. So we also had a phenomenal game rebounding the basketball against Greece.
(Note that because of the disparity in missed shots, simply counting up rebounds obsures how good we were on the boards.)
The story of the game was all on the defensive end. And given the way in which Greece was hurting us on the defensive end, I think it is very unclear that more big guys necessarily would have helped us on the defensive end.
And by the way, LeBron James played point guard on offense during large parts of the game, especially in the 4th quarter.
Jordan
September 1, 2006
That’s a nice post, but when you compare the international points per game to the NBA you have a problem. First of all, the rules are not the same. Intentional fouls are two shots + the ball out of bounds, three point line is closer, etc. So, that’s apples to oranges. In your other comparison, USA v Greece and Spain v Argentina, those are both samples of one. Not saying that you aren’t correct, but more evidence would be nice. Also, you’re extrapolating USA’s scoring efficiency in the Greece game out to 100 posessions, whereas you’re extrapolating Spain AND Argentina’s scoring efficiency and then comparing those two numbers. Interesting ideas though.
Dan Rosenbaum
September 1, 2006
Interestingly, the Greece/USA and Spain/Argentina games both had roughly the same number of possessions, so we can just compare points per game to determine the offensive and defensive efficiencies of each team.
Overall, in all of the games in the World Championships, offensive efficiency has been a little lower than in the NBA. And I don’t think it has been that different in the smaller sample of games between good teams. Remember the trapezoidal lane and zone defenses could push points per 100 possessions down, as well.
Harold Almonte
September 2, 2006
Everybody knew USA Team had defensive shortcomings, they were before the beginning looking for more role players, they accelerated the pace, but everybody knew they would have problems in the finals against the best truely teams. They played some kind of Louisville play without good 3p shooters (Anthony was unreal). They lost because a bad strategy given their kind of talent.