Written by Aaron Torres at FoxSports.com
If you’ve been following Team USA men’s basketball, there’s no doubt that the last few games have been a surprise. After opening the Olympics with dominant victories over China and Venezuela, the Americans have stagnated with three straight uninspiring wins against Australia, Serbia and France.
Yes, the U.S. enters the medal round undefeated, but it has real questions. And like many of us (myself included), Charles Barkley believes he knows the issue: the team’s construction.
He went on the Sports 360 AZ radio show Tuesday and explained in greater detail:
“Well, I hope they win gold. I want always us to win the gold medal. It’s not a good team to put together. I don’t think they did a good job because if you watch all those guys — they’re all good players, don’t get me wrong — they all need the ball.
“If you take away DeAndre Jordan, every guy on that team is a ball-dominant guy. You see them playing a lot of one-on-one basketball. That’s the thing I’ve noticed more than anything. Like, you have to understand when you put a team together like that, you have to have some role players. … But you take a guy like Kyle Lowry, who is a hell of a player, he wants to score. Kyrie wants to score. Kevin wants to score. DeRozan wants to score. So, I think they have been really stagnant offensively.
“When they put that team together in the future, they have to realize we can’t have just really, really great offensive players. They gotta to have players that if they don’t get a shot, they’re not just gonna stand around and mope.”
While Barkley does occasionally get in trouble for saying things that seem out of line, in this case, he’s 100 percent correct.
I personally have been arguing since the day the team was announced that it was poorly constructed; that it was filled with point guards who look for their own shot first (instead of someone like say, Chris Paul), shooting guards who can’t actually shoot (Jimmy Butler, DeMar DeRozan), redundant wing players (Kevin Durant, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony all have relatively similar skill sets), and a low post player who is limited offensively. And I’m certainly not the only one who feels that way.
Furthermore, the construction of this team also goes against everything that Coach K and Jerry Colangelo have built since taking over the Team USA basketball program back in 2005.
That’s because while all the focus is on the star players who aren’t in Rio (LeBron, Steph Curry, Russell Westbrook etc.), what everyone has forgotten is that in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics (where the U.S. won gold), they had rosters filled with both star power and key role players.
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