Medal Play begins…Can anyone play with either U.S. teams???

Womens Tournament Action

I have just had the pleasure of doing the USA Womens opening medal game versus South Korea and the Russia versus Spain game in the same bracket. The U.S. Women continue to absolutely roll through their competition. They are the equal to the US men in their combination of size, speed, and skill. The biggest difference between the two right now simply lies in the fact that the US Women have less teams that have a legitimate shot to compete with them. AUS is really the only team that I think can play with the US and with AUS player Penny Taylor having just suffered a severe ankle sprain,  their chances look like they took a big hit.

Spain started out playing very hard and very well and Russia was sleepwalking early on as they have done during many stretches this tournament. Russia put on a huge run late in the game and ended up pulling away to win big. Becky Hammon played very well in the 2nd half setting up the very interesting matchup against her home country on Thursday.

I have done mostly Men’s games so far for our coverage on NBCOlympics.com, but I have been watching and following all of the Women’s tournament and I am very impressed with how well Team USA is playing. This team looks to be a fair comparison to the 1996 ” Women’s Dream Team” that kind of started the huge movement of women’s basketball at the professional and Olympic level. One of those 1996 team members was Americas basketball sweetheart Rebecca Lobo. Rebeccas happens to be married to my best friend Steve, so I was able to get Rebecca to be a part of my “5 questions with …” segment. Here is text of that segment:

5 Questions with Rebecca Lobo

Q1. Rebecca, what is your favorite Olympic basketball memory?

Just what you’d expect… being on the medal stand, getting the gold around my neck and hearing the anthem. It was an experience I’d dreamed about since I was a kid. There was also a sense of, ” I’m thrilled we won. I’m glad this is over.” We had trained as a team for the entire year leading up to the Games — traveled all over the world — with only a few days a month where we were allowed to go home. I was physically and emotionally exhausted after the Olympics and happy to take a break from basketball.

Q2. What was your favorite off the court Olympic memory (other event/outside tourist trip, etc?)

The opening ceremonies were unreal. As the host country, we were the last to enter the stadium. I distinctly remember thinking, “THIS is why guys play football” when I heard the deafening noise as we came into the stadium. Then, watching Ali light the torch… amazing.

Q3. Which non-American Olympic player that you played against or have watched since 1996 has impressed you the most?

Lauren Jackson is a stud. At 6′5″ she has an exciting and versatile game. I really enjoy watching her play. And — she’s got that Aussie attitude that is fun to watch on the court.

Q4. What do you feel about Becky and Chris Kaman/JR Holden, et. al. playing for other countries?

I’m torn. Becky was my teammate in New York for 3 years and I consider her a friend. But I don’t really agree with the decision to play for another country just because you want the Olympic experience. I don’t view the Games as a market for free agency. I think you play for your country’s team or you don’t play. Becky made the decision she felt was best for her — but, to me, the rules should not allow it.

Q5. Which coach who hasn’t yet been the Olympic Head Coach of Team USA do you think is deserving of the opportunity in London or a future Olympics?

Geno Auriemma was an assistant in Australia in 2004 but has never been an Olympic head coach.  CT Sun coach Mike Thibault is an assistant with this team and would be a great Olympic head coach. Dawn Staley is an assistant this time around too and is probably the leading candidate for 2012. If USA Basketball continues to ask coaches to make an extensive commitment during the winter, no college head coach will be able to lead the team. It is a bit ridiculous to think that Coach Auriemma might never get the chance when he is the best coach in the country.

Some thoughts heading into the Men’s action tomorrow:

• There is very little to be critical of with USA Basketball this time around. The leadership of Jerry Colangelo has been rock solid. He has run this organization exactly like a CEO does. He has had a blueprint for success. The organization reflects the tenets of what Colangelo believed was necessary to win the Gold and what and who was necessary to do it in a way that he and the rest of us all would be proud of. He has said that he believes that this event will the defining moment of his career and he has worked hard to make sure it is done the right way.

• The makeup of the team, when final selections were announced, was one area that had brought some second guessing from analysts and fans. The two areas consistently mentioned were concerns over whether there were enough 3 point shooters and enough size and depth at the center position. Tyson Chandler was the player most often mentioned as someone the team might have needed inside while there were a handful of shooters often mentioned when lack of shooting was discussed.

• Jason Kidd has probably been the player most often mentioned as someone who could have been replaced for either another big or another shooter. His age, his lack of shooting ability, his poor play for Dallas were all factors that had people questioning his selection. I think all of those question marks are fair topics of concern. It appears though that Colangelo and Coach K valued his “pass first” (and then pass second and pass third and only shoot it if you have a wide open layup) mentality. Kidd has never lost a game in International competition and he was named Captain of the team so I don’t think USA basketball was ever close to not selecting Kidd. Boozer, Prince and Redd have been the three players usually last to enter games so you might infer that those were the three most likely on the bubble selections. If you replaced Redd with a big guy, you would certainly have concerns about perimeter shooting. If you replaced him with another shooter, you would just be swapping shooters. The same thing applies to Boozer. If you replaced Boozer with a shooter you would have no depth whatsoever inside, and if you replaced him with Chandler or another big you would have just swapped one big for another and still been a little thin at that spot. Speaking of thin, Prince really seems to be the guy (assuming that Kidd was off the table) that would make the most sense to look it. Everyone values his length and his defensive ability, but this team is so incredibly athletic at every single spot that there just isn’t a need for another athlete. Coach K can trot out a lineup of Williams at PG, Wade at SG, Kobe at SF, LeBron at PF and Howard at C and there is not a team in the universe that can get up and down the floor, guard the perimeter and use their quickness, strength and leaping ability like that lineup. (If Bosh replaces Howard and Paul replaces Williams and Melo replaces either Wade or Kobe you certainly don’t have much off a dropoff). So in my opinion Kidd and Prince are the 2 guys who I would have had to look hard at when compared to adding a Chandler and a shooter.

• One of the interesting facts is that LeBron led the team in assists last year at the Qualifying play. He has the ball in his hands a ton and when surrounded by other great players he plays like a prototypical true point forward. In many ways you can say that the US has four distributors with Williams, Kidd and Paul, along with LeBron. This is even more reason why another big or another shooter might have made more sense than Kidd.

• Speaking of Kidd, I really wonder if Dallas isn’t headed for a dramatic downturn in wins over the next two years. Kidd is gobbling up a ton of salary cap space and looks to be losing a lot of his game, Dirk has played poorly at times in these Olympics (to be fair most of it is due to constant double and triple teams) and seems to still be having some permanent hangover from the soul searching Australia days. The off the court attention Josh Howard has been garnering can’t help make staff and fans in the Big D feel any better. It will certainly take some time with Carlisle coming in to have the new system operating at maximum efficiency. Dallas, especially Kidd and Howard, wants to run but there are those who think Carlisle will not give them the freedom they are hoping for. Certainly one of those who thinks that is Lithuania’s own Sarunas Jasikevicius, who played for Carlisle in Indiana and is a player who I really thought would be a better NBA player than he ended up being. He certainly doesn’t think Carlisle or his style of play helped his game. This is from the Dallas Morning News Basketball Blog:

Jasikevicius doesn’t mince words: He blames most of his problems on former Pacers and current Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle.

“Obviously, the (up-tempo) style of play Rick promised me was never there, the opportunities to play were never there, and the players who were supposed to be gone by the time I came were still around,” he said. “Rick did a great false recruiting job on me, like college recruiting where they say, ‘If you come here, we promise you the world.’

“But Larry (Bird) being such an honorable man, and (then-president) Donnie (Walsh), too, they hire the coach and let him coach the way he wants. Rick’s a half-court man, no question.”

• It will be interesting to see how that goes in Dallas. It could be that the Wild, Wild West isn’t as wild this year. Phoenix is getting older and now has Shaq in the middle calling for the ball and clogging up space. Portland is presumably going to have more of a post up influence with Oden in the middle. San Antonio and the Lakers are most effective in half court, Minnesota is most effective throwing it into Big Al and playing off of him. We might end up seeing a little shifting of styles and tendencies in the conferences this year.