USA Basketball faces Mexico as elimination round begins
BARCELONA – It's do-or-die time for Team USA.
With the single-elimination, Round of 16 portion of the FIBA Basketball World Cup starting Saturday and USA set to face Mexico (10 a.m. EST, ESPN2), the team's managing director, Jerry Colangelo, took a moment with Paste BN Sports to give his updated assessment of this squad that is so different than the one we thought we'd see at this point.
Yet even with Paul George having gone down in such devastating fashion with his leg injury at Las Vegas training camp last month, and with the likes of Kevin Durant, Kevin Love, LaMarcus Aldridge, Blake Griffin, and Kawhi Leonard not taking part like it seemed they would, there's one key similarity between this group and the ones that have been winning gold again in recent years: they're dominating.
In wins over Finland, Turkey, New Zealand, the Dominican Republic, and Ukraine, Team USA has won by an average of 33.2 points.
Today's outcome should be no different, as the top-ranked Americans take on a Mexico team that is ranked 24th in the FIBA world rankings. No better time then, as Colangelo sees it, for this team to take things to the next level that he is sure exists.
"We're pleased with the progress that has been made, but getting the consistency and the familiarity that you would like to have with a young group is a challenge," Colangelo said. "Yet we've made a lot of progress, and for us what we really need to do is to pick it up now that we're in Barcelona. Everything is at stake every night with the you-lose-you're-out (format), but we have to make progress. That's our goal. That we would make progress every night.
"You can see a lot of signs (of progress) during the course of a game, like the game against Turkey when we got off to such a poor start the first half (trailing 40-35) and then in the second half it was like (flips a switch). If you would have reversed the halves, nobody would have talked about how Turkey had this gameplan. We haven't come out of the gate quickly enough in a few games, but once we get going it happens. So we need to get more consistent, and of course the pressure builds for everybody."
WHO IS TEAM MEXICO?
The Mexican team is just happy to be here, and who can blame them?
It has been 40 years since their national team qualified for the FIBA tournament, and this marks the first time that they have ever qualified for this stage of the tournament.
They earned the invite by pulling off a surprising win at the FIBA Americas championships in Venezuela last summer, when Team USA was at home after earning its early qualification by way of the 2012 gold medal at the London Olympics.
They got to this point by recovering from a bad start: after falling to Lithuania and Slovenia in their first two games, Mexico won two of its last three games in group play (wins vs. Angola and Korea with a 70-62 loss to ninth-ranked Australia in between). By doing so, history had been made.
"Today was a very important day for the history of Mexican basketball," Mexican forward Marco Ramos said after the 87-71 win vs. Korea that clinched the Round of 16 berth. "We are very proud, we're a very proud country, a very proud team, we have a great coach and great coaching staff, and today we made history."
The Mexican team has two players with NBA experience in free agent center Gustava Ayon (who was the FIBA Americas MVP last summer) and Brooklyn Nets point guard Jorge Gutierrez. Yet as Team USA coach Mike Krzyzewski noted in his scouting report, their talent pool doesn't end there.
"Ayon (who has played parts of three NBA seasons with the New Orleans Hornets, Orlando Magic, Milwaukee Bucks and Atlanta Hawks) is a gifted player and a great competitor," Krzyzewski said. "I think his injuries have stopped him from being a really outstanding NBA player, but still he has played well. Gutierrez is obviously with the Nets, and again when I think of them I think of (how) they are very competitive.
"They are very unselfish, they share the ball, take good shots, really well coached. (Hector) Hernandez at that stretch four (power forward position) presents a problem because he's as good a three-point shooter as anybody on their team. I thought they played really well in their pool play, and were in a position to win one or two more games than they actually did."
KEY QUESTION
With Spain still looming large as a likely gold medal game opponent, does this Team USA group need a close game to learn about playing together in clutch situations? Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry doesn't think so.
"Well I'd rather not go through that (a close game) if we don't have to, for sure," Curry said. "I'm sure there will probably be a situation where we're going to need to put together a good three or four minutes in clutch situations to seal a game, but if we can take care of business early in games and leave our mark sooner (rather) than later, then we should be able to handle that.
"But definitely the approach for each game sets you up for those moments. It's not so much that you have to go through it, but you're prepared by how you run through practice, how you run through your offense and execute, the discipline you have regardless if you're up 20 (points) or two, you try to play the same way and have the same mentality so that when it does become a clutch situation that everybody is in sync and on the same page."