Joe Viray on Team USA rectifying past shortcomings by literally not being short

Defensive versatility -- and size -- has been the name of the game.

• Video highlights (sorry NBC won’t allow embedding)

In a somewhat stunning reversal of fortunes, the country that often bullied lesser countries found themselves being the bullied party. Of course, the country I’m talking about is the United States of America — but no, I am not referring to anything of the geopolitical sort.

The bullying refers to dominance on the basketball court, a dominion Americans have historically lorded over for a couple of decades. For years, no non-American team has collectively out-dribbled, out-passed, out-shot, out-skilled, out-sized, and out-physical’d Team USA — mostly because they had a head-start on everyone else. During the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, the Dream Team was so far ahead of the rest of the world that their victory was a foregone conclusion even before they stepped inside a plane.

The world was both awed and motivated after seeing the likes of Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird win gold. International teams were hit with a eureka moment of sorts and realized a couple of things — two of which have formed the basis of their player development and team-building approach:

1. They were never going to be more athletic than the Americans; matching speed with speed and being caught up in Team USA’s pace would run them out of the gym faster than it took for them to enter it.

2. They would not only need to slow the pace to a crawl — they’d need to have versatility and size at every position. They may not be able to become faster than the Americans, but they can certainly get bigger and stronger.

Thirty-one years after the 1992 Olympics — and a few disappointments and near-fiascos along the way — the Americans find themselves facing a world that is no longer awed and even more motivated to kick their faces in every time they see opponents wearing a USA jersey.

Based on a couple of games from last year during the FIBA World Cup, opponents did just about everything short of literally kicking faces — as evidenced by how they chose to attack a roster with a plethora of guards and wings with slight body builds. Take for example, in Team USA’s group stage game against Lithuania, how Austin Reaves (listed as 6’5” and 206 pounds) was zeroed in by the Lithuanians as a target:

Such is the pitfall of a switch-everything defensive scheme that teams with burly frontcourt players can easily set a screen, bait the switch, and take their smaller prey deep in the paint, as what happened to Reaves above when 7-footer Donatas Motiejūnas (remember him, Warriors fans?) seals him deep and uses his height advantage to score on a hook shot.

While it may not be representative of how Team USA may have met its match in a holistic sense (after all, the World Cup roster was comprised of high-level NBA role players, B-level stars, and — at the time — only two All-Stars), the tactical superiority the Lithuanians displayed was a cause for concern. It re-shone a light on what has historically limited the USA Basketball program: an abbreviated build-up, roster building built upon reputation rather than fit, and the lack of continuity with each new iteration of the team.

There was also the size concern. American guards — while becoming more athletic, faster, smarter, and skilled across the board — were finding themselves physically outmatched, especially in this day and age of heavy switching. An evergreen truth about basketball evolution is that innovation breeds innovation; when a team does something everyone else has trouble dealing with (switching everything), the trouble is lessened the more it is seen — usually by doing another new thing that puts a stop to what was previously novel (creating mismatches out of those switches).

The Lithuanians drew up the blueprint for Team USA in 2023, which Germany — in their semi-final matchup with the Americans — used to bully smaller players:

A common solution to eliminate paint/post mismatches such as the ones above is to bump the guard off of the bigger man via a “scram” switch, which requires size, timing, and recognition to pull it off. Readers may be familiar with this concept due to how Draymond Green has often employed it with the Warriors — and saved smaller teammates from having to deal with bigger assignments:

The problem with scram switching when it came to the 2023 Team USA iteration, however, was that there was no player on the roster possessing the wherewithal of a Draymond Green to recognize mismatches and attempt to bump smaller guards off of them. Furthermore, take a close look at the setup below:

Jaren Jackson Jr. is the only viable scram-switch candidate on the floor, but he’s too far away from the strong side and runs the risk of leaving his man wide open. The other three players — Mikal Bridges (6’6”), Anthony Edwards (6’4”), and Tyrese Haliburton (6’5”) — won’t fare much better if they bump Reaves off of his bigger man.

That is a problem on multiple fronts: tactical (i.e., lack of communication and awareness), coaching (i.e., fielding a small lineup that isn’t very versatile defensively), and roster building (i.e., lack of quality and top-end talent). Even while USA Basketball has historically treated the FIBA World Cup as a less-prestigious tournament compared to the Olympics, it’s still not a pretty picture whenever the best basketball country in the world fails to play basketball well.

As such, Team USA sent out the best of the best as a response. These Paris Olympics have more shine, more prestige, and more value to the best American players in the NBA, as it always has; luring talent was never going to be a problem. The familiarity and continuity concerns, while still not ideal, have been partly solved by bringing back five 2021 Olympians (Kevin Durant, Jayson Tatum, Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker, and Jrue Holiday) and two 2023 World Cup members (Edwards and Haliburton) to comprise more than half of the roster.

More pronounced than the return of players from the past three years was their quality. While Green — a two-time gold medalist — wasn’t included in the pool of players considered, he has a pretty serviceable substitute in terms of defensive IQ and floor awareness: none other than LeBron James.

It was quite telling that after switching an empty-corner ball screen, Booker was told by James to switch off of South Sudan’s Wenyen Gabriel and pass him off to James that this was a much different team, both in scram-switch capability and intelligence across the board:

James also has the important quality of being 6’9” and 250 pounds. He’s representative of the overall versatility of this roster, which makes a switch-everything scheme more viable and allows the coaching staff to shuffle between coverages with little risk and drop-off.

When Brazil tries to run action against Team USA below, watch who James starts out on (for context, it was Holiday who started the game defending James’ initial assignment below):

James defending the smaller Marcelo Huertas has a layered purpose. If Holiday stayed on Huertas, Team USA either would’ve had Joel Embiid play drop coverage (which Huertas had no problems with during previous possessions) or have him switch out with Holiday guarding the bigger Bruno Caboclo on a potential seal in the paint. While Holiday is more than capable of holding his own against bigger men, it’s still a mismatch.

As such, having James out there to switch onto Caboclo means the seal in the paint can be better dealt with — or taken away altogether, as what happened above. Embiid switches onto Huertas and proves himself capable of defending out on the perimeter.

James isn’t the only intelligent defender on this roster. Holiday — along with his perimeter partner-in-crime in Derrick White — is a massive improvement over the likes of Reaves and Bridges, in the sense that they are both physically and mentally capable of handling multiple coverages, especially switches. The opportunity to scram switch won’t always be there, which necessitates players such as Holiday and White who will fare much better in seal situations in the paint.

You’d rather have Holiday or White deal with possessions like the one above. But when the opportunity to bail them out is there, having Adebayo and Davis around to recognize and react to such opportunities is a luxury most other teams aren’t fortunate enough to have:

Luxury is a term that can be applied to almost every aspect of this roster, but in that regard, Team USA is better equipped to overcome past shortcomings, simply through the minimization of being literally short. Which also raises expectations — and while they are still heavy favorites to win the gold medal, anything short of that would raise a ton of eyebrows.