Ginobili, Scola agree: Only a lack of focus will stop Team USA from winning gold
Their upcoming competition confirms what we all know to be true
By
Zach Harper
•
3 min read
USA men's basketball is as good as it wants to be. This is the belief of almost every competitor in the world. When Team USA wants to be the best by approaching things the right way then there really isn't anything any other country can do about it. This isn't a secret by any means, but it's also not just a switch the U.S. players can flip in order to dominate the rest of the world. If it were that easy, Team USA would've dominated their 5-0 group play instead of merely getting the outcome they were supposed to get.
It takes a mistake from the U.S. to have the embarrassment of not winning the gold medal. Argentina faces them on Wednesday and they're very aware of the predicament they're in. If USA finds that on-court understanding and chemistry in their quarterfinal matchup against Argentina, this will be a blowout similar to the friendly exhibition we saw within the past month between the two countries. If not, Argentina could be in a position to shock the world like they did in 2004 when they ended up with the gold medal in Olympic basketball.
Argentina guard Manu Ginobili knows that when the U.S. respects the competition and process in front of them, there's not much you can do. There is just too big of a gap between the talent, size and athleticism of the U.S. and every other country. Via ESPN:
Not if the Americans start gelling like a team with that much talent conceivably could at any moment.
"First of all, it's because they have way more talent, size, athleticism ... everything more than us," Ginobili said. "I think they had a period of five, six years in which they ... I don't know if it's they didn't care enough or they didn't respect the rest [of the world] enough. But now they got past that stretch -- far."
Pulling off the upset is a daunting task. When it clicks for the U.S., they're more likely to flirt with a 50-point win than worry about losing. But the defense hasn't been crisp or sharp enough at all during their first five Olympic games, and it left them in a couple of nail-biters that could've given the rest of the world a lot of hope that 2004 is here again. Teams like Australia, Spain and France will all hope to be the team that has a chance to ruin expectations of gold for USA Basketball.
Argentina big man Luis Scola knows that it isn't up to those countries though. It's up to Team USA, who Scola believes is the only team who can decide the outcome of these competitions.
Scola said he continues to believe that the United States is the only team that can decide how the United States will do in international competition.
"There was this time that the U.S. kind of got bored of the FIBA thing," Scola said. "And they didn't put a lot of effort, didn't put a lot of work on it. They didn't really commit to it. And those years they lost. And then they said: 'Stop. Enough.' So I believe it's pretty much up to the U.S.
"If U.S. takes this seriously, and they really put work into it, and they put their minds and their bodies into it, it's going to be very, very hard to beat them any year they come and play. They have so many good players. They have so many athletes. The difference of the athleticism between those guys and everybody else is very, very big. So if they really focus on it, it's going to be very hard to beat them in any tournament. It's been like that forever."
The question now is whether or not those opportunities will present themselves. If Argentina can't do it, then it will be up to the winner of the game between Spain and France. If neither of those teams can pull it off, either Australia, Lithuania, Croatia or Serbia will hope to shock the basketball world.
It's up to Team USA how much confidence any of the teams will have moving forward.
