Tuesday, 15.08.2006	posted by Georges Eddy 02:37 am
Category: FIBA World Championship

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"MONEY TIME IS COMING"

Get ready, the real games are about to start and that's when we'll be able to see where Team USA really is!!

As expected, the Lithuanians with their strong inside game but weak outside game were less of a challenge then Brasil-more balanced but nervously self-destructing in the closing minutes vs. USA-and since I doubt that the game against S. Korea will provide alot of info to the Team USA staff, things are pretty much set for Japan.

Another semi-diplomatic injury, this time to Arenas, will again facilitate Coach K's tough job of reducing the group to twelve.

I was going to write this article about why Arenas, with his poor percentage, tendancy to throw stupid touchdown passes, launch useless 30 footers and his lack of adaptation to FIBA style basketball should be eliminated instead of his Wizard teammate, Jamison, who has found his niche intelligently as a 3 and made the second most three pointers and is the fourth leading scorer shooting 58 percent for Team USA.

It seems evident that the last player cut will be Bowen who hasn't scored in four games and 27 minutes of p.t., going zero for four on threes and getting only one steal and he's 35 years old! I still feel that the Americans should have worked a little bit on some type of zone but like John Thompson in Seoul in '88, the USA wants to live and die with their sacred man to man defense(Yuk)!

The French coach has a similar dilemma(this is when the job is no fun) concerning the final twelve because he announced that he would eliminate a center, Petro or Julian, but since they both proved they can score inside( a luxury the French team has rarely had in the past), now it would seem more efficient to cut the young Bokolo who has hardly played and let Diaw play more wing than strong forward to balance out the team.

Boris, who is a little overweight is finding it hard to score points(0 pts.vs. Australia in defeat) because the French team is full of finishers and not altruistic passers like Nash and the Suns! The French have lost four of their last five preparation games showing dramatic inconsistency and a tendancy to get complacent when they build early leads.

These are typical weaknesses for a young team which could be costly in an elimination game! Luckily Tony Parker is in much better shape than the first week of last summer's Euro championship but his teammates have to take their responsabilities and not stand around and watch him do all the work on offense!

So far as I look over the preparation games, Brasil, Australia and a renewed Serbia are better than expected, Spain and Greece are as good as expected, Argentina, Lithuania and France are disappointingly inconsistent, Germany, Slovenia and Italy could be surpringly good or surpisingly bad, all the other teams are just hoping to make it to the second round and last but not least, Team USA is a big mystery to me still because of the small number of preparation games and the weakness of their opponents! Whatever, let the games begin!