Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 413 Location: Greensboro, North Carolina
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject:
Analyze This wrote:
Another excuse has been created. It has to do with the knock out format. Every time when I see something like this, I wonder when are you going to respect the opponents. I guess when number 5, number 7 and number I don't know how much, become actually players with names. And why where the USA players already home when the gold medal was presented.
Why do you have to piss people off by incessantly rubbing in the fact that the U.S. lost and labelling any explanation for why the U.S. lost that isn't your explanation an "excuse." Are you omniscient? Folks have generally not taken your bait and have kept the discussion civil, but do you have to keep baiting people?
Every time when I see something like this, I wonder when are you going to respect the opponents. I guess when number 5, number 7 and number I don't know how much, become actually players with names.
Are you serious?
You've spent this entire thread trying to explain how the reason these teams are doing well is not so much because they've improved, but because everything is so screwed up with the American system. Others are the ones arguing the narrowing in the gap is because other countries have dramatically improved since 1992.
So who exactly is not respecting international basketball?
@ admin:I've always stated that the USA became less good in some parts of the game and the world got better. The combination of the two is what closed the gap. @Rosenbaum. To answer your question; of course not. But you should try to look at it from a non american standpoint. A lot of people here search an explanation in why the usa lost in the different rules, the knock out format, the young age of the Americans and so on. By focussing in the first place on that, like some do, you show disrespect for your opponent. It's like yeah they won but were they better? Nah it's the shedule, if we played a best of 7 they should have lost, we had problems with the rules,... Could it be that they just are a better basketball team. After all they won and the USA lost. Look there also. I have a problem with Americans who fly home and don't see the end of the competition like all the other teams, with a coach who speaks of opponents in numbers and not in names and with people who search the reasons of the loss everywhere except in the strenght of their opponents. That's arrrogance.
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 460 Location: Washington, DC
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 6:58 pm Post subject:
Analyze This: What's so difficult to understand about the reasons being presented? The US lost because of a variety of reasons. Calling them "excuses" is disrespectful to the people posting them. In my view, no one has posted their reasons in the spirit of excuse making, and no one has been the least bit disrespectful of international players. Just the opposite, in fact.
Greece was the better team that day under the international rules, in that tournament format. There are good reasons why American players aren't accustomed to playing by international rules -- namely that they don't do it very often.
As for this decline in American fundamentals -- where should we look for evidence of that? Free throw shooting in the biggest sample of numbers we have available (NBA games -- even throwing out international players) is about the same (75%) as it's been for a long time. Long range shooting (via the 3pt shot) is as frequent and accurate as it's ever been. That's not strictly because of international players. In fact, look at the data from the NBA -- it's largely because of American players. So, where do you suggest we look for actual evidence of this decline in fundamentals? Or should we just take your word for it?
Aside from that, there's the relevancy issue, which Dan raised quite well. The "fundamentals" argument is primarily an offense issue -- almost no one is talking about the defensive end when they talk about the team's "funadmentals". But offense wasn't the problem. The issue is defense, and the way to resolve that isn't to work on midrange jumpers, the international three or free throw shooting, but to have the coaches implement effective tactics and for the players to execute them. _________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
A lot of people here search an explanation in why the usa lost in the different rules, the knock out format, the young age of the Americans and so on. By focussing in the first place on that, like some do, you show disrespect for your opponent.
We are not part of USA Basketball; we are Americans, but that doesn't even necessarily mean we care if the U.S. wins. (I don't.) Greece is not "our" opponent; they are USA Basketball's.
We are, however, basketball analysts; part of that analysis includes exploring the impact of a single-game tournament; of different rules; etc.
We do these same things with regards to the NBA Finals. I'm still not of the opinion that the Miami Heat were the best team in the NBA last season. Is that disrespecting them? Quite possibly, and it's fine to argue that. What I take offense to is your notion that we are only advancing these arguments because we are Americans or that it has anything to do with the attitude of USA Basketball or the performance of the U.S. team.
Quote:
I've always stated that the USA became less good in some parts of the game and the world got better.
The ratio of your arguments about these two aspects of the closing of the gap in this thread has surely been much closer to 90/10 than 50/50.
Last edited by admin on Fri Sep 08, 2006 7:43 pm; edited 1 time in total
Analyze, donīt take it so extreme. Iīm not american, and I recognize USA is the best: man by man, team by team, coach by coach, play by play. But yes, you are right, rest of the world (some few countries) have got better at a level to give some surprises to USA teams/NBA players that allways have and will have troubles with casting, scouting and NBA defensive bad habits. Some guy said FIBA games are not All Star games, and of course is not like a 7 games NBA playoff. Thereīs neither place nor time (40 mins) for mistakes, and letting that Greece run....that was not a last seconds surprise shot. They lost the psyque because Greece was suddenly and surprisely overated. Even NBA stars (not Kobe) can be suggested. They were surprised by mistakes not by disrespects.
Last edited by Harold Almonte on Fri Sep 08, 2006 7:55 pm; edited 3 times in total
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 413 Location: Greensboro, North Carolina
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 7:32 pm Post subject:
Analyze This wrote:
I have a problem ... with a coach who speaks of opponents in numbers and not in names.
For the record I was embarrassed and pissed when Coach K did this. So I agree that "arrogance" and a "lack of respect" may have been part of the reason why Team USA lost. But I think you might be looking in the wrong direction when you incessantly blame the American players.
Update: After WizardKev's post I would say this is a bit over the top. I still think this was perhaps symptomatic of the problems we had in the Greek game, but "embarrassed and pissed" is a little strong.
Last edited by Dan Rosenbaum on Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 971 Location: Delphi, Indiana
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 8:49 pm Post subject:
admin wrote:
... what occurred in this tournament that convinced you they were better than Spain? Or even Argentina -- since the same theory applies to the U.S. winning the bronze-medal game.
The theory is that the shorter the contest, the more random the winner. There is some chance I will beat Lebron James in a game to 2 points, and no chance I'll beat him to 20.
I believe the NBA playoff format was changed a couple of years ago to best-of-7 in the first round, to avoid early upsets. My post was about how the results from a single (first) game are the opposite of the winner of 7 games, about 1/3 of the time in NBA. _________________ 40% of all statistics are wrong.
Joined: 05 Jan 2005 Posts: 329 Location: Columbus, OH
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:12 pm Post subject:
Mike G wrote:
My post was about how the results from a single (first) game are the opposite of the winner of 7 games, about 1/3 of the time in NBA.
But that's not a valid comparison. You are looking at the first game of a seven-game series. There is no doubt that coaches would have changed their strategy going into the game had they known it was winner-take-all.
(I do agree that the superior team will lose more often in a one-game matchup as opposed to a seven-game matchup.) _________________ Regards,
Justin Kubatko
Basketball Stats!
My post was about how the results from a single (first) game are the opposite of the winner of 7 games, about 1/3 of the time in NBA.
But that's not a valid comparison. You are looking at the first game of a seven-game series. There is no doubt that coaches would have changed their strategy going into the game had they known it was winner-take-all.
(I do agree that the superior team will lose more often in a one-game matchup as opposed to a seven-game matchup.)
I guess a relevant question to ask is what's the overall record in game ones for the home team versus the overall record in game sevens for the home team. Is it really that much different?
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 460 Location: Washington, DC
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 10:48 pm Post subject:
Dan Rosenbaum wrote:
Analyze This wrote:
I have a problem ... with a coach who speaks of opponents in numbers and not in names.
For the record I was embarrassed and pissed when Coach K did this. So I agree that "arrogance" and a "lack of respect" may have been part of the reason why Team USA lost. But I think you might be looking in the wrong direction when you incessantly blame the American players.
I may be wrong, but I think Coach K does this with college opponents as well. Perhaps that's disrespectful too, I dunno.
I do know that it's not uncommon for coaches and players to do that when they're preparing for an unfamiliar opponent. Going back a few years, when I was on a high school team prepping for a tournament, we spoke of opposing players exclusively by numbers -- it just didn't make a lot of sense to spend time learning their names. It was much more important to be able to easily identify them and know their capabilities. When we prepped for league opponents that we knew well, we referred to opposing players by name. There was no disrespect intended to the guys we referred to by number -- it was just that the names were irrelevant to the task of trying to win a game. _________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 413 Location: Greensboro, North Carolina
Posted: Fri Sep 08, 2006 11:53 pm Post subject:
WizardsKev wrote:
I may be wrong, but I think Coach K does this with college opponents as well. Perhaps that's disrespectful too, I dunno.
I do know that it's not uncommon for coaches and players to do that when they're preparing for an unfamiliar opponent. Going back a few years, when I was on a high school team prepping for a tournament, we spoke of opposing players exclusively by numbers -- it just didn't make a lot of sense to spend time learning their names. It was much more important to be able to easily identify them and know their capabilities. When we prepped for league opponents that we knew well, we referred to opposing players by name. There was no disrespect intended to the guys we referred to by number -- it was just that the names were irrelevant to the task of trying to win a game.
I can understand doing this with players, since no one expects players to spend the time to learn all of these international players' names. But after watching dozens of hours of tape on these Greek players - with many of those hours in games where they were not wearing their WC numbers - it would seem that the coaches would know these players names backwards and forwards.
But what I expect the problem is that Coach K and the other coaches have full-time jobs that do not allow them the time to watch dozens of hours of tape on the Greek players, so they are in much the same position as their players. The press conference probably just confirmed that. This probably suggests that we need at least one coach who does not have a full-time NBA or college job, someone who can devote the time to really knowing the players we are playing against. I guess Rudy T was supposed to play that role, but I doubt that at this stage of his career, he is willing to put in that many hours. And he is not on the bench during the games.
That said, Coach K probably should have had the foresight to realize that referring to players by their numbers could be seen as disrespectful. Especially since as far as I can tell, he did not do that with other teams in the WC. In most cases he was referring to NBA players or players that played college ball in the U.S., and so when it is only the Greek players who get singled out to get referred to with their numbers, it doesn't look good.
All in all, I was probably overstaing my case. This was not that big of a deal, but I think it might have been a signal that we just did not prepare to the extent we needed to playing against talented players that we don't know very well.
To quantity an issue under discussion, if team USA had shot midrange shots as well as the average of Spain and Greece for the tournament they would have gained 1.5 points per game. Not huge, many things could have this level of impact. Equal to Argentina's best, 3.3 points. But if you combined improved mid-range % with cutting quantity to be proportional to % taken by these two teams the effect is 50% bigger. Cut midrange taken to the absolute level taken by them the effect could be twice the size and could then be labelled a more prominent a loss factor. I definitely would make cutting the quantity a bulletpoint on a large blackboard game plan.
But defense remains the biggest issue. Thru 6-7 games team USA was 7 points worse of team defensive rating compared to average of these two. Looking at the 4 factors, team USA's FG% allowed was about the average of the two; turnovers forced more than Spain but Greece much higher; defensive rebounding Spain a little better than USA but Greece well behind; FTs given up is the only area USA behind both by large margin- Spain 14%, Greece 17% USA almost 25%. Defense needs improvement overall but it particularly needs defenders who can apply pressure without a lot of reaching in foul calls. Or a scheme that accomplishes that. Heavy pressure out top going for the ball creates this negative as well as opponent turnovers.
For Team USA 34% of FGAs were 3 pointers, Spain 36%, Greece 33%.
Spain played less than 40 minutes per game of players taller than 6-8. So did team USA. Is that a necessary matching practice? A good one or should they try play more tall and try to get an advantage there? If it doesnt change does that deserve 4 roster slots?
No team USA player played near 30 minutes a game. Greece and Spain each had one. Not sure if that is significant. It wasnt the star scorer; it was a rebounder/defender and a passer. Otherwise the minute distribution is fairly similar between the 3 teams- 5-6 at 20+ minutes 9-10 players getting 10+ minutes.
But would team USA do better giving even bigger minutes to the 6-7 best players? More like in NBA?
Last edited by Mark on Sat Sep 09, 2006 5:16 pm; edited 2 times in total
Joined: 03 Jan 2005 Posts: 460 Location: Washington, DC
Posted: Sat Sep 09, 2006 1:26 am Post subject:
Against weaker opponents, the US could probably divide minutes by drawing five names at random and they'd be fine. Against a good team like Greece, Spain or Argentina, they need to operate like a real team. That would mean the lion's share of the minutes going to the best 5-man units. To get guys used to that, it would probably mean establishing some kind of rotation in preliminary games. Maybe some guys not part of that main rotation wouldn't like it, but that's the way it goes sometimes. If, that is, the goal for USA basketball is to win games. If the goal is to run it like a youth league and make sure everyone gets minutes, then there's not much point in the rest of the discussion. _________________ If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.
Wizardskev I've already stated that there will be several factors that had an impact in the three knock out international losses of the USA. I will not quote myself but I could do that to answer almost your whole post. I also wrote in this topic (in detail) that my belief that some (not all)fundamentals (offense and defense) of the top USA players have weakened is based more on observations than on statistical evidence, because there is no information available that shows how effficient different generations were in shooting the 2p shot (how many 2p were jumpers and which % were post moves or penetrations). I only showed the decrease in ft%, because that is available. People here are very quick to point out that this is a statistical forum, and we need rational evidence when we make a claim. Well I have not seen for example a study that shows me the impact of the fiba rules on the performance of the Americans. I only have seen opinions concerning some (!) reasons you lost. I also wrote before that allthough several reasons will have had an impact on the international losses in my opinion one of the major ones is overlooked (fundamentals). Perhaps the opinion that the fiba rules have had an impact is valid, perhaps not. I can understand that people search differrent reasons for what happened. I can not understand that most of them primaly search the reason for the loss not with the strength of the opponent or with shortcomings of the own team but with every other possible reason. It seems like everything that could have had an impact (an almost none of these reasons are backed up with evidence, allthough I agree with some like I also posted before) is put into a spotlight so that the strength of the opponent or problems with some aspects of the own game can be largely ignored or at least made less important. If you do that in my opinion you are making excuses. You are also diminishing the value of the performance of your opponent. On truehoop I read a remark of a different ballsize that could have had an impact. After research with the producer of the basketballs that idea was put to rest. This whole thing is also an example of an attitude. Just like not staying for the end of the tournament like the other countries, or naming people with numbers. In my opinion it's a form of disrespect and misplaced arrogance. And to use an expression of mister Rosenbaum that pisses me off.
You have also some people on this forum who zoom in on what's perfectly clear namely that there was a defensive problem with the USA. But when they search reasons of why this happened they are again very quick to blaim it on a lack of practice time or because the Americans are not used to defend some European systems. They are almost not considering that perhaps it could simply be because the players have worse defensive fundamentals. So possible reasons are again put into the spotlight and others are almost ignored. And because it was so obvious that the defensive efficiency of the Americans was bad, they ignore also that some offensive aspects of that game (or other games) could have been much better. I have not stated that the USA can not score effficient but I think that the different ways in which they can do that efficient are diminishing. Just like I think that the defensive problems have more to do with weaker defensive fundamentals with a lot (but not all) of the players than with other reasons that could or could not have played a role.
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Every time when I see something like this, I wonder when are you going to respect the opponents. I guess when number 5, number 7 and number I don't know how much, become actually players with names. And why where the USA players already home when the gold medal was presented.
