Thanks To The Celtics Team USA Destroys The Czech Republic To Open FIBA Play
Call me crazy, but starting your run to gold with a 21 point win seems like a great way to kick things off. I don’t really care that the US should dominate the Czech Republic, it’s not like we haven’t seen this tea underachieve before. Ever since that loss against Australia all I’ve seen on Twitter is how this team is doomed because they are comprised of mostly Celtics. I said it before the tournament start that the best part of all four making the roster was that Celtics haters were going to have to either root for the Celts to do well or turn their back on America. Their tears while watching Team Shamrock carry the US to greatness would be especially delicious.
Well, today was one of those moments.
Let’s just say, the Celtics carried Team USA. They accounted for just under a third of their points, they shot 50% as a group, played fantastic defense, and Kemba won the game’s MVP. I dunno, that seems pretty good. Not too many people on Twitter getting their anti Celtics jokes off this morning, you love to see it. This first taste of FIBA action certainly won’t be the hardest things get, let’s not get crazy. They’ll still have to play better if they want to win gold, but in terms of starts, this gave us everything. Tatum and Kemba carried the early, Smart and Jaylen played with great energy, there weren’t mental mistakes, and you could see the chemistry between the four bursting. That’s really the most important thing of this group being together, and so far it looks like they’ve been playing together forever.
So like we do after every performance, let’s see how everyone did
Kemba Walker
I mean he’s a captain, he’s been the best player for Team USA since camp opened, it made sense that he once again proved he cannot be guarded and was the best player on the floor for Team USA. In his 18 minutes we saw Kemba finished with 13/4 on 6-8 shooting and he gave us a little taste of everything. There was his patented hesitation early, then he gave us a little bit of his craftiness while getting into the lane, followed by a devastating dribble stepback three. Offensively he’s been efficient, getting to the rim whenever he wants, and doing a better job of not getting baited into bad midrange. This is an offensive talent Brad is going to love to have.
But we know Kemba can score. I was most impressed with how well he seemed to do against Tomas Santoransky whenever he posted Kemba up. Teams are going to do that a bunch while Kemba is on the floor, so if he can hold his own defensively against bigger players on the block like he did today, well that’s a pleasant surprise. I also enjoyed how Kemba once again didn’t really turn the ball over. For someone who is going to have the ball in his hands a lot, he seems to take really good care of it.
Jayson Tatum
Make no mistake, the last few times we’ve seen Tatum hit the floor for Team USA, he has stunk out loud. Especially offensively. His jumper wasn’t falling, he didn’t seem to be taking it to the rim with confidence, he looked rough. Well today was the exact opposite. This looked so much more like the Tatum we’re used to. In his 17 minutes he was aggressive right from the start, finishing with 10/4/2 on 4-11 shooting which isn’t all that great but that’s mostly due to some misses once the game was already out of hand. Tatum started off great knocking down an off ball three, but immediately following that we saw a player that put his head down and attacked. One of the questions for Tatum is if this season he’ll be able to drive and still be strong with the ball. We got that today.
We also got more evidence of Tatum’s expanded offensive awareness. He is finding weakside shooters in the corner on a regular basis, which makes him an option as a playmaker in Brad’s offense. If Tatum can get to the point where they give him the ball and let him attack, if he’s showing that he can not have tunnel vision and understands rotations at a fast enough speed to make the right play in real time, well that’s a facet to his game that he didn’t really have last year. We’ve seen stuff like that throughout this tournament so far.
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Jaylen Brown
A quiet night in terms of the box score, but he did have that nice ass block early
and I thought he played with great energy all night. He only took three shots, but he was active on the glass, didn’t have any mental lapses which is his biggest thing, and was just one of those guys who accepted his role for this game and didn’t mess anything up. No problem with a night where Jaylen does most of his work and makes an impact doing the dirty stuff. At least he didn’t force things.
Marcus Smart
This was just your typical Marcus Smart performance. Good defense, some rebounding, some creating for others, then a couple of baskets that make you excited about his progress as a scorer, with a positive +/-. That’s why he’s on this team, that’s why he’s officially been named Captain America, and it’s performances like this that tell me he’s 100% back from his calf injury. I much prefer when Smart had his hand in a little bit of everything than when he’s just a scorer.
My favorite part of his night had to be on an offensive rebound it was passed back out to Smart who could have very well taken an ill advised three. He was open for a second but instead took his time and made a great extra pass to Joe Harris who knocked down the three. It’s a small play to most, but for us Celtics fans who have lived and died with Smart’s shot selection, any sort of progress in that area is a positive for me.
They weren’t perfect by any means. Team USA definitely had a stretch where they relied way too much on jumpers in that first quarter, but their defense settled down, the Celts did their thing and we’re off. They have Turkey up next on Tuesday, they just beat Japan and have guys like Ilyasova, Cedi Osman, and former Celtics legend Semih Erden. That will at least have a few more NBA players which means it’ll be a better test.
So say thank you America, the Celtics have you standing at 1-0.