Oh boy, it happened again. In another embarrassing scrimmage performance, Team USA weren’t able to defeat a Select Team roster of former NBA bench warmers, G league players and international players. That’s not even telling the full story, not only did this select team beat the primary Team USA roster, but they more than doubled up on them 36-17 in what was a really heated match-up. You can watch the full game below provided by Hoop Jab.
It gets worst as you dig deeper into it. As tweeted by Sam Amick of The Athletic, the team that will be representing the USA lost not just once, but two separate 10-minute long scrimmages. Team USA closed the gap to 22-17 before the Select guys went off on a 12-0 run for that 36-17 blowout. You can hear in the video Marcus Smart voice his frustrations saying “C’mon guys, this is embarrassing!”
Team USA is led by Kemba Walker, Donovan Mitchell and Jayson Tatum but struggled mightily againt a Select Team with the biggest names are NBA journeyman Justin Anderson, John Jenkins and Travis Wear. The full roster of the Los Angeles Select Team was tweeted out by Jonathon Givony.
Given, this team isn’t the 1992 Dream Team by any measure, but they shouldn’t have been blown out by a bunch of players that aren’t on their level. There’s still time and the team is talented, but these early performances are really showing that there’s a chemistry issue and/or effort standpoint. Early on in the video, you can see hesitation to shoot and passes that should be shots at the basket.
In the video we see Walker, MItchell, Tatum, Harrison Barnes Mason Plumlee, P.J. Tucker and Brook Lopez for the majority of the defeat.
In any case, those players along with Khris Middleton, De’Aaron Fox, Jaylen Brown need to learn from these losses and they need to learn from them fast. The world still gauges themselves against the United States and will have no problems with embarrassing the team on the world stage when the FIBA World Cup begins in a little over two weeks in China.