Team USA and Serbia comfortably knocked Italy and Lithuania, respectively, out of the 2023 FIBA World Cup today. Team USA played what was easily their best game of the tournament so far, but how much stock should we put in it?
Serbia executed a near-perfect game plan against Lithuania. Was this victory a one-off performance or does it make them favorites to advance to the gold medal game? We'll discuss that and more in today's three points.
Three Points: Team USA flexes a new gear, is this sustainable? Serbia forces Lithuania into their worst game at the worst time
Team USA flexes a new gear in a bounce-back annihilation of Italy
Team USA finally showed another level as they beat Italy 100-63. It took the loss to Lithuania to get this out of them, but it was an entirely different team out there today. Josh Hart stayed in the starting lineup, and the Americans finally had a good start.
It was back-and-forth basketball with Italy leading 8-7 through the first five minutes but that quickly turned into a 14-8 lead for Team USA who led 24-14 by the end of the first quarter, and by 22 at halftime. Mikal Bridges was the star man with 24 points and 7 rebounds on 8/11 shooting, and Tyrese Haliburton supported him off the bench with 18 points via six three-pointers and 5 assists.
What was the difference for Team USA today? They cared. Particularly on the defensive end, they had much more purpose. They lost to Lithuania because they left their shooters so wide open in the first quarter that you had to ask if Team USA bet the over on the game. Lithuania knocked down the open looks and was confident in their ability to make shots when the game got tougher down the stretch.
Italy did not get a similar red carpet treatment today, and even though shooting is one of this team's strengths, it wasn't today. They shot 7-of-38 from deep and had very few wide-open looks. They never found their rhythm and Team USA dominated the dance floor like Kevin Bacon in Footloose. (I don't know why I said that -- I'm not actually old enough to understand that reference. Anyway, back to basketball.)
Is this victory a sign of things to come for the semis and potential gold medal game?
It can be difficult to nitpick a 37-point victory, but we're going to do it anyway. Italy was a good match-up for Team USA, you could argue it was perfect. The Italian team is talented, no denying that, but they haven't played a pure center for the majority of the tournament because they simply don't have one.
Nicolo Melli and Giampaolo Ricci are good players, but they're not Jonas Valanciunas, Donatas Motiejunas, or Nikola Vucevic. Italy did not have the personnel to exploit Team USA's biggest weakness and it showed.
The Americans adjusted to getting out on shooters, and Italy didn't have another option like Montenegro and Lithuania did. Team USA was much better on the backboards today, outrebounding Italy 51-33, but Jaren Jackson Jr. still only finished with three rebounds, albeit in 11 minutes, and also finished with three fouls.
Bobby Portis Jr. and Mikal Bridges led the way with seven rebounds a piece, but this is not sustainable. Team USA will likely see Germany -- who play Daniel Theis and Johannes Voigtmann together -- and then potentially Canada, who plays Dwight Powell and Kelly Olynyk together.
Jackson and their entire frontcourt have failed in every significant match-up so far. Today's victory was nice, but does nothing to address those concerns. Perhaps Team USA has a solution, but they haven't shown that so far, and if they lose one of the next two games because of a failure to address it their gold medal hopes are over.
Serbia is playing their best basketball of the summer, Lithuania played their worst
Germany is the only undefeated team standing after Lithuania lost to Serbia by a final score of 87-68. It's a gutting defeat for Lithuania, who had not only beaten Team USA before this but were generally hooping at a level that only Germany had matched before today.
But that's do-or-die basketball, one bad shooting day and you're quickly going home with nothing after having your eyes on everything. Lithuania shot 9/28 from three, 32%, which is 15% worse than their tournament average. Jonas Valanciunas and Donatas Motiejunas never got comfortable down low, and their offense was subpar for the entire 40 minutes.
This wasn't just bad shooting, though. It was Serbia, who were in perfect sync on the defensive end as a team. Watching them it looked like they were being told what Lithuania was going to do a second before it happened. When Lithuania ran pick-and-roll they dropped, tagged the roller, and recovered out to Lithuania's skip passes perfectly and sometimes even intercepted them.
When Lithuania tried to feed the ball down the low Nikola Milutinov stood tall. He and Filip Petrusev made Valanciunas and Motiejunas work for every inch of post position they got. By the time either of them received the ball to attack, they were exhausted, help was coming, and Serbia knew exactly where to rotate when the ball got kicked back out.
They applied heavy on-ball pressure. Stefan Jovic and Aleksa Avramovic harassed Rokas Jokubaitis and other ball handlers with frightening persistence. They forced turnovers, and when they didn't they made Lithuania take precious seconds to get into their sets. These margins matter and often help you make one less rotation when the shot clock is winding down.
Bogdan Bogdanovic led the way with 21 points today and he was trailed by Petrusev who finished with 17, but this was a team win for Serbia and it started on the defensive end. If they have another performance like that, they could easily be heading to the gold medal game on Sunday.
2023 FIBA World Cup Line of the Day:
Mikal Bridges with 24 points and seven rebounds. He was due for a breakout game, better late than never.
2023 FIBA World Cup Play of the Day:
Yes, this is showboating. But showboating is fun.
2023 FIBA World Cup Quote of the Day:
Gianmarco Pozzecco is sometimes wrong (calabrones -- hornets -- can fly), but always entertaining.
What's coming tomorrow at the 2023 FIBA World Cup?
Dennis Schroder's Germany faces Davis Bertans Latvia at 4:45 a.m. ET and Luka Doncic's Slovenia faces Shai Gilgeous-Alexanders Canada at 8:30 a.m. ET. We've picked Germany and Canada to advance, but anything is possible.
A final note here, a key takeaway we should all have from this summer's tournament is how much the talent field is evening out on the global stage. Especially after the top 15-20 players or so for each country. It's not just Team USA's loss that's a proof point, but also the early eliminations of France and Spain. A lot of countries can hoop now, and the easy wins stop a lot earlier than they used to in these tournaments.
