Hoops Tonight - USA-South Sudan Reaction: LeBron & Durant lead USA, Embiid benched | Olympics

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Slash baseball All right, welcome to hoops todaight here at the volume baoball. You guys are having a great week. As promise, we're gonna hit a bunch of games from the Olympic men's basketball tournaments today. We're gonna start with tim USA getting a much more convincing victory against South Sudan this time around, We're gonna break down the starting lineup change as well as some other details from that game.

After that, I want to hit what I thought was the most entertaining game from yesterday as Japan almost upsets as France comes back to beat them in overtime on the strength of a four point play at the end of regulation, and then some big time playmaking from Victor Webbin Yama in overtime. And then at the very end of the show, we're going to briefly talk about Canada versus Australia, some of the shot creation data coming from Shay Gildas Alexander and then Josh Giddy having an impressive

performance in international play. You guys know the Joe before we get started. Subscribe to Hoops Tonight YouTube channel so you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLTC. You guys, don't miss you announcement. So don't forget about a podcast feed where you get your podcast owner Hoops Tonight. Don't forget it's really helpful if you guys leave a rating in a review on the podcast feed and the last, but not out least,

kee dropping mailbag questions in the YouTube comments. Probably gonna hit a mail bag towards the tail end of this week, all right, let's talk some basketball. So starting lineup shift as Anthony Dave, as I've been begging for forever, comes into the starting lineup for Joel Embiid, and then Jason Tatum into the starting lineup for Drew Holliday. They immediately got off to a much better defensive start. We're gonna talk about the specifics of those substitutions here in just

a minute. The main story of this game, I thought Wassa just brought a much better defensive effort. Sauthsu Dan, I know a lot of people just because they don't have the reputation in Foba that some of these other countries that we've seen over the years have great success, like Spain and Argentina. Right, these teams that we've just seen over the years give USA bigger fights and stuff

like that. Like South Sudan may not have the history of those teams, but what they do have is probably the most athletic roster out of any of the Foba teams. They've just got a bunch of guys who are really mobile with really long wingspans that can cover ground, that

can pressure the ball. You see, how to continue even in the convincing win for USA to force a lot of turnovers and to catch guys not paying attention and to close get a just a little bit faster than guys are expecting, and just by fielding a team that has not just a ton of athleticism, but that team's athletic by NBA standards. That's a very very athletic team, and that can be a little bit of an issue to deal with, especially against USA's typical starting lineup. As

far as the ad for Joel Embiid substitution. Going above and beyond the simple fact that ad has just been a better player than Joel Embiid in terms of this Team USA context, it's also a really tough matchup for Embiid against that type of foot speed. Again, one of the big reasons why Sudan had a lot of success against Team USA in their matchup in the exhibition games is just getting up and down the floor and catching

guys just not keeping up in that pace. In addition to that, Sudan likes to shoot a lot of threes, and so it's important to close out and to make rotations and all these very important details on defense that specifically depend on foot speed and so just going with Anthony Davis, even a guy like Jason Tate in for Drew, even though Drew's probably a little quicker of foot, Tatum

just brings more length, meaning more ground coverage. And so even though Tatum still had a little bit of a struggle offensively in this game, and they're they're, the big thing with Tatum is the jump shot is just is still just way off the reservation. He got a wide open catch and shoot three in the right corner to start this game, literally hit the side of the backboard and I pulled the numbers. Per Synergy, Tatum is zero for eleven on jump shots with Team USA in the

six games that he's played in, including the exhibition. So like he's just in, He's just in a really tough space right now in terms of his confidence in his jumper. And this is on the heels of a playoff run where he took one hundred and eighty eight jump shots for only one hundred and fifty one points. That's just zero point eight points per shot. So Tatum is just in this extended slump for whatever reason. To me, it

seems to be mostly mechanical. I talk a lot about energy transfer like energy transfer is getting that power from your feet up through your release. We think of jump shooting as like a reach into the cookie jar type of thing. In terms of your release, that's just one small part of it. It's a It is a process that begins with your feet and that extends. There's a middle portion if it begins with your feet and it

ends with your release. In the middle there's the gather, and in the gather, tatum has hitches in it, like multiple hitches where you like the ball stops moving, which you want to see when a player is catching and shooting, you want to see the ball just kind of go from the catch up to the release in a fluid motion, because if that momentum stops, then any sort of so for instance, like if you've got good legs on the shot and you get your lift in your base, but

then you have a hitch in the middle, you lose that power that you generate from the base and then you're trying to make up for it at the end by slinging it with your release, and that's just a lot more difficult to maintain in terms of muscle memory. If you get good footwork into a good base and to good lift into a clean gather and have smooth transfer of energy. Then by the end your hands are

basically just guiding the basketball. Any of you guys who have shot at a high level, you guys know that it's like one of those things where when you get your lift, when you get your legs underneath you, the SHOT's easy. The shot is the easiest part of it. The hardest part is in a movement situation, getting your base in an off the dribble situation, getting your base, making sure you get a clean gather. That's where the work of the shot is done. The release is the

easy part. And so right now Tatum is just in a little bit of a little bit of a working He's kind of working on his form and trying to

figure out what's going on. And the good news is is they won the title despite the fact that he was having those struggles, and so that should go a long way towards some optimism for Celtics fans, because if Tatum can get his jump shot back next season, then the whole league could be in some serious trouble because when Jason Tatum is an elite jump shooter, that's when he enters into that like five to six area of

player rankings. When he's not shooting the ball, that's when he dips down into that like eight, nine to ten area and player rankings. It's kind of a very important part of his game, especially with how often he settles for jump shots on a couple of the guys. I wanted to shout out, but again I want to just point out before we get into individual shoutouts. This was

just a much better defensive game. They gave up one hundred points to South Sudan last time, and one of their weaknesses is they don't have a ton of ball handling. They've got a lot of guys who can shoot. They have a couple of core ball handlers, but their front court guys don't handle the ball or see the floor super well. And so if you actually defend, you can get them to make mistakes, you can get them to take tough shots, you can get them to miss. They

did a much much better job of that tonight. I think I think they held them tonight to eighty six points if I remember correctly something around that area. Much much more impressive defensive effort for USA. Maam in a bio eight for ten for eighteen points also had two blocks some good switching to onto South Sudan's I thought the two corner threes he hit in the first half

were massively important. Sasudan kind of went down to a substantial deficit in the late first quarter against the Tosa bench group, and the Tosa bench group was much better than the starting group today in spite of this starting lineup change, in large part because Steph Curry had a really rough game and I thought Lebron, even though his box score looked fine, I thought Lebron had one of his rougher games with Tosa so far, mainly just in the sense that he settled for a couple jump shots

that he missed, and he also had a lot of turnovers that were live ball turnovers that led to fast break opportunities for South Sudan. So like the starters between Tatum obviously still being in an offensive funk and Lebron and Steph just having a rough game, they weren't as impressive, but that bench group just they just handled Sausudan today. That Bam a KD frontline is as good as BAM was Defensively, I want to shout out Kevin Durant as well.

Some timely shot making from from Anthony Edwards. I thought Derek White had a big game. He had three steals as well as three made three point shots. Continues to just kind of be in the right spot and do the right thing, make extra effort plays, really really impressive stuff there. The Steph struggles to me, really like when we saw this towards the tail end of last season, teams that have a lot of speed and length, especially on the perimeter, they just close in those gaps that

Steph is usually accustomed to working with. And again, like, this is not just an athletic team. This is an athletic team by NBA standards, and so I think that kind of that kind of foretells some of the struggles that Steph's gonna have in these matchups. We talked about it last year at the end of the year. It's like they play the Kings, I kind of feel like Steph's gonna struggle, they play the Pelicans, I kind of

feel like Steph's gonna struggle. Teams that have like really quick athletic guards with good length that can kind of bother him on the perimeter are gonna give him some issues. And that's just been the case. As far as the Joel and beat thing goes, Like I talked about, it was just a matchup. It's hard for him to cover ground and transition in rotation against this team played against Serbia. My guess is you'll play against Puerto Rico as well,

dott He handled it as well as you could. Obviously, if you're a recent MVP of the NBA, you're gonna be a little frustrated to be benched in a game like this, but I thought it was the right decision overall. So far through two pool play games for USAY really impressed by them. Average margin of victory over twenty and against these quality of teams, that's super impressive. I know people don't think much of South Sudan, but they're very

good teams. Serbia has the best team or best player in the world, and they should continue that dominance against Puerto Rico. And like you know, I actually figured there'd be more close games to this point, but Team USA has held up really strong. The defense has been super impressive. Even they're lesser defenders or guys that don't have a reputation of being committed to defense have been defending really well. Tmusa looking really good so far through two games.

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the hand was kind of like on the hip. Yuki Kawamura, the guard from Japan, did a wonderful job in this particular game orchestrating offense, especially after Ruiya Chimura got ejected. But I thought he got a tail end of a really tough call there on that left wing. Again, by

the book, technically hand on the hip. It's like by the book, it's a foul, but there's a huge difference between having the hand on the hip and pushing on the hip, and like that's one of those like incidental contact things that I think needs to be let go, especially in such a big moment. And again, like if France beats you because he makes that shot and then you foul and he makes one out of two free throws and then he goes down to the other end and they hit another three and they win. Fine, tip

the cat, congrats to France, they beat you. That's really tough to be at four points like that in that situation and to lose on a call like that. Was was not a fan, but Victor wembin Yama took over in overtime. There's a little post up on the right block. I can't remember exactly who was guarding him, but they tried to front the post. And when they fronted the post, Wemby just immediately spun off of it. Passes perfect to

the high point. On the catch, he at his back, turned the basket, he spun again and went right up and laid it up and the foul A super super coordinated play, really really impressive stuff, really really impressive stuff there from Victor webbin Yama. And then he missed the three on the right wing, but an offensive rebound he got another clean look from the top of the key knocked it down big time, big time play from Victor webbin Yama. The guard play from France is really where

the issue is. It's like when you look at Canada and France in particular, Canada has this incredible perimeter core, but their front line is just too small to really contend with some of the bigger front lines here in FIBA, and then you go and you look at France and they have this incredible front line. I mean even gersha Onbusel had an incredible game in this one hit a

bunch of tough mid range jump shots. Was competing, was flying around, and they have that front court presence, but they like Evan forty a and Frank Millikina, it's just it's it's not enough in terms of shot creation. Matthew Streisill had a little stretch there in the second half where he was spamming ball screens with Gobert and coming off clean on the right wing and getting some decent looks, and he hit a couple of pull up jump shots there.

But they just struggle in terms of that that guard play. Victor women Yama. One of the most impressive things that I noticed about France in the two games is they're running a lot of like kind of weird, funky like

big man ball screens. Well where they will have like Wemby at the elbow, like imagine like the left elbow, so like where the key the court, the free throw line extended kind of out to where the edge of the key is and and he'll catch there and then go Beart will come out of a triple like Wenby'll be in a triple threat and go Beart will come and set a screen. But what he'll do is he'll

deliberately screen the backside of the defender. And what they're trying to do there is most teams are gonna switch a four or five pick and roll. What that means is the power forward in the center in a two man game together. The reason why they're gonna switch that is because likely those two defenders are similar in size, and if those two defenders are similar in size, rather than allowing Wemby to come off clean as the guys in trail position, in which case, now Wenby's just going

to go right to the rim. If you just switch it, it effectively like shuts the action down right. But this is where high low basketball comes into play. High low basketball is when you have one of your big guys operating around the foul line while another one of your big guys is underneath the basket trying to obtain good post position because that center can throw good over the

top passes from that foul line area. So what they were doing, which I thought was really smart, and they did this with Gobert, but they also did it with you Bucelet and some of their other bench forwards as well. But they would have Wenby start with the ball and as Gobert would screen. He would deliberately screen the backside of the defender. And the reason why that's important is then as Wemby comes off into the switch, when he comes off into switch, the screeners defender is now on

Wemby squared up, but Gobar now has inside position. He has inside position because he's screened that backside. Then he can quick turn and seal and Wemby can throw that over the top pass and there's an automatic angle kind of bank kind of baked into the set because of the screening angle you take on the backside. There. They

got a bunch of good stuff out of that. I thought Wenby passed out of it extremely well, and so far through two Olympic Games, Victor Wemban Yama one point one seven points per shot on jump shots, which is really impressive, So great start to the Olympics for Wemby. On the Japan side of things, really was impressed by the overall ball in player movement, some beautiful stuff in five out, really smart cutting guys like I cut a couple examples in my film session today and put them

on my Twitter feed at Underscore JSNLT. But remember when I talked about in the show on Monday, the concept of like off ball cutting specifically out of the wing, and how that can when you're running a ball screen on one side, how a cut on the weak side can cause confusion for off ball defenders that are trying to sink into the paint and it's hard to track man and ball in those situations. They got good looks out of that. Their guards were quick to come off

of multiple actions. There was ball reversal, the ball was popping around. They'd have ruy As like their kind of go to like on an Island score when they needed him. But everything else was really smart five out ball in player movement, and that blender did a lot of damage to a French team that's got really good defenders between Frank Nilikina and Nick Batoum and Victor Webbin Yama and Rudy Gobert, this is a very long and athletic defensive team that Japan was getting a lot of really good

shots against. And it's just a wonderful example of the concepts that I talked about a lot on the show, in the sense that you can generate offense with ball and player movement and good schematic approach to help bolster, personnel limitations, Ruby hutsch Mura, really impressive offensive game, the face up stuff, the footwork in the post he had. He was going right around good defenders and getting into

the lane and finishing in traffic. The jump shot looks great, he's elevating, he's getting great rotation on it, he's knocking it down. The one thing and I put a little thread of about five clips together you can find on my twitter feed. But Ruey is really struggling on defense with Japan, specifically off the ball tracking shooters. And remember this was the specific issue that he ran into in the playoffs against Denver when he was tracking Michael Porter Junior.

He had a couple of massive mistakes on that and including one in Game five that might have cost them the game where in a semi transition said he just wasn't paying attention and he lost Michael Porter Junior for three huge moment. The Lakers had a chance to send that thing back to the to LA for Game six, and Rui's just attention to detail in those situations just has to get better. It's tracking through screens, it's the relaxation as as soon as his man gets up gives

up the ball. He gave up two threes to Evan Fournier where he got switched on to Fournier. But then as soon when Fournier gave up the basketball, Fournier just cut to a different spot on the three point line and Ruy wasn't paying attention and Fourtier got clean looks from three and so like I like, in order for Ruey to be the type of player that the Lakers need him to be, those are things that he has

to sharpen up. Shout out to Ukava Moura the quickness and pull up shooting he showed, especially to try to close out that game after Ruy Hachimura got eliminated or excuse me ejected on that second on sportsman like foul and Rudy Gobert. I had so much fun watching him in this game. He was an absolute warrior, kept his team in it. I think he had like twenty eight

twenty nine points, super super fun game. And then one last guy I wanted to shout out, Hugh want to not be I'm assuming related to Utah want Namby, but he had two huge blocks, including this one in regulation where he came down from the left wing when Rudy Gobert had a deep catch and Rudy Gobert loaded up for his like two hand slam and he comes flying in and just barely gets a piece of it at the end. Ends up being a huge play that gave

Japan a really good chance to win this game. And it's such a great example of what I talked about after Kevin Durank got dunked on by Anthony Edwards, which is, guys, getting dunked on is a sign of being a great defender. That's something that you have to that's a commitment that you have to make. You have to be willing to risk what could happen if you get dunked on in order to bring that next level of rimp protection at another big week side block in the overtime period as well.

But alast Victor webbin Yama made the two big plays in ot and they got out of there. All right, Let's move on to Canada Australia real quick before we get out of here. So Shaka as Alexander picked up two quick early thousand. There's only five thousand foeba, so he had to sit for a little bit. That allowed Australia to take a little bit of an early advantage, but in the early fourth quarter Canada ends up pulling away.

Dylan Brooks made a couple of plays, a little triple threat ball screen out of the right corner where I believe I can't remember who it was, the big man for for Canon, I'm blinking on his name now, but he slipped the ball screen. Dylan hit him perfect, he got a layup, and then he hit a little mid range jump shot. And then right after that, Jamal Murray made a couple of plays and ICEO will close out

attack to get RJ. Barrett a wide open three in the corner and then kind of like one of those classic Jamal Murray ISO pull up jump shots around the foul line. All of a sudden, like that, Canada was up by eleven and the game was over. I wanted to talk a little bit about the shot creation data for Shay, Jamal and then Josh Gitty. So, Shay has been brilliant so far in Olympics play. He's run twenty five ISOs for thirty six points including passes. That's one

point four to four points per possession. And he's personally on his own shot attempts out of ISO shooting seven for twelve, So Shay's locked in looks fantastic forty one total ISOs, post ups and ball screens in Olympic play for fifty six points. That's one point three seven points

per possession. Really impressive stuff from Shay. Jamal Murray made some big plays in this particular game, like we talked about earlier, but shooting just two for ten on jump shots so far in Olympic play, and I'm wondering if he's still a little banged up. I was, I was talking to some of my Nuggets guys, and the word

on him is that he's just not in shape. And if that's the thing, if Jamal's just not in shape, that's kind of disappointing because that's becoming kind of a reputation for him, that he's showing up into season and playing his way into shape. And like one of the things is like that sort of thing can lead to injuries when you're trying to play your way into shape, when you're playing with more weight, when you're playing super

intense games, when your body's not prepared for it. So that obviously was a little bit concerning Josh Giddy, though really impressive so far for Australia thirty four pick and rolls, ISOs and post ups for thirty nine points. That's one point one point five points per possession. He's big, he's handling the basketball while he's really good at protecting the basketball, really good with like behind the back tribbles and then using his shoulders to protect. He can make all the

reads deadly with his floater. He's five for seven so far in the Olympics on floaters. That's seventy one percent. And then what he'll do a lot of times in switches when he sees a small guard in front of him, there was a hard dribble move like into their chest and then just gather right around ten feet and rise up over the top of them and go to his

little floater. Canada was doing some switching against him in this game, and he ended up beating it with a step back three as well as a driving floater against Jamal Murray. Really impressive shot making from Josh Giddy. I'm curious to see how it translates to the NBA level in a bigger role with Chicago next year. Last thing before we get out of here, is Canada a threat. Like I mentioned earlier as good as they are on the perimeter, they're just not big enough on the inside.

One of the specific changes with FIBA that's been a challenge for USA is the defensive three second rule and the idea that you can park a center underneath the basket and kind of gum things up and force them to rely on perimeter jump shooting, where USA it can go cold sometimes, Although I think Kevin Durant fixes that problem.

With that being the case, Canada just doesn't have the interior size even if they do part guys under the basket to bother the bigger American athletes as they're going downhill, and so as good as Canada is on the perimeter, I just don't think they're big enough underneath the basket to make any sort of real problem for USA. All right, guys,

that is all I have for today. We're going a little quick because I'm just about to hop on a call with Colin Cowhard and we're going to hit a bunch of Team USA topics, So keep an eye on the Colin Cowhard podcast feed to see that in the coming days. And then we're not going to cover Puerto Rico versus USA this weekend, will in all likelihood will be doing a mail bag on Friday, in addition to probably covering one or two more FEVA games in that show.

As always, I appreciate you guys for supporting the show, and I'll see you guys then the volume. What's up guys? As always, I appreciate you for listening to and supporting OOPS tonight. It would actually be really helpful for us if you guys would take a second and leave a rating and a review. As always, I appreciate you guys supporting us, but if you could take a minute to do that, I'd really appreciate it.