Things have gotten off to a rocky start, at best, for Gregg Popovich’s Team USA squad this summer.
They’ve lost two straight exhibition games to Australia and Nigeria. In both, games were extremely close and down to the wire. They lost to Nigeria by just 3 points falling 90-87. The Australia loss was a bit worse with a score of 91-83.
This isn’t quite what people used to team Team USA. They were destroying teams in exhibition games in 2016. The world has gotten much, much better since then. But one would think the NBA’s brightest stars would still be a step above coming from the best league in the world.
So a reporter asked Damian Lillard about it after the loss to Australia. But Gregg Popovich didn’t like it one bit.
They got into a heated exchange in the press conference and things got pretty awkward.
Gregg Popovich gets into exchange with reporter after Team USA's loss to Australia. pic.twitter.com/5XEp114qIh
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) July 13, 2021
“The reporter: I know coach has been preaching about how much better the world has gotten over the years…what’s it like having watched some of your colleagues go through some of these tournaments and blow these teams out and now you’re having a much different, much closer and tougher experience?
Pop didn’t like that one bit. After Lillard answered the question, he went off.
“Popovich: You asked the same sort of question, the same family of question the last time, where you assume things that are not true. Where you just mentioned blowing these teams out. That’s never happened. I don’t know where you get that.”
The reporter interjected to defend the questioning, but it wasn’t caught on mic. Pop didn’t appreciate that either.
“Popovich: Are you going to let me finish my statement or not? So you’ll be quiet now, while I talk. And then I’ll listen to you. When you make statements in the past about blowing out these other teams, number one, you give no respect to the other teams. I talked to you last time about the same thing. We’ve had very close games against four or five countries in all of these tournaments. So, the good teams do not get blown out. There are certain games that might happen…where somebody gets blown out. But in general, nobody is blowing anybody out with the good teams. So when you make a statement like that, you assume that’s what’s going on. And that’s incorrect.”
WHEW. What an exchange. Sheesh. You can tell that, clearly, both sides were pretty irritated by one another.
The funny part is both sides are also correct here.
It is fair to ask about why Team USA isn’t dominating like they typically have. It’s not out of bounds. Again, during the 2016 exhibition games, there were plenty of blowouts. And Popovich is also already 9-5 in total as Team USA’s head coach. Mike Krzyzewski only lost once.
Now, is that a fair bar to live up to? Absolutely not. As Popovich said, the world is much better at basketball. There’s talent everywhere. There’s plenty of NBA talent on Nigeria’s and Australia’s rosters. They’re good! It is disrespectful to expect them to be blown out.
Gold is never a guarantee despite what people are used to from Team USA. The other team is always going to show up, compete and play hard. If the USA slacks at all, they’ll lose. That’s clear.
Hopefully, when the real competition starts they get it together.
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