Team USA proved too much as Great Britain suffered a 118-78 loss on Thursday evening at the Manchester Arena, Manchester.
In front of 17,000 fans, USA showed why they are the team to beat at this summer’s Olympics, displaying their elite athleticism, depth and savvy on their way to a 40 point victory. Despite GB holding their own for portions of the first half, in the second it got ugly, as USA had countless dunks to wow the crowd.
“It’s not what we wanted the score to be,” explained a disappointed Luol Deng after the game. “We’ve gotta do a better job of not turning the ball over, they put the pressure on us and we couldn’t handle it. They got a lot of lay-ups and easy baskets.”
GB were forced in to 26 turnovers allowing the USA to get out in transition, much to the pleasure of the home crowd.
“I don’t think they’ve faced anybody as athletic as we are,” a complementary Coach Krzyzewski said in the post-game press conference. “I talked to Luol after the game and I said ‘I really like your group and your toughness’…and he said they have just never faced that speed and quickness. You can’t practice that, you can’t simulate that. I thought it was a great experience for them, and us.”
Joel Freeland, who signed a contract with Portland Trailblazers last week, had a tough welcome to the level of NBA talent he will be going up against next year and was evidently upset with his own performance against the world number 1 team.
“The game was tough for us, obviously,” the 6’10 Freeland explained. “We had to be more prepared mentally. I think we gave them way to much respect through the whole game, me personally, way to much respect, and collectively.”
“Obviously it was a disappointing performance in the way that the second half unfolded,” said GB coach Chris Finch after the game. “I thought that the inability to stay away from compound mistakes really hurt us, a turnover, a missed defensive assignment, stuff like that kind of snowballed out there.
“But I think the biggest benefit for us playing this game was to a play a team of this caliber and being able to kind of “case harden” ourselves for the Olympics. Our guys should have learned through this process, we played well at times through the first half but in the second half we never really got into the game.”
And despite the scoreline, Coach K believes GB could be one of the teams to provide an upset or two at the Olympics.
“I think Great Britain has a chance to do some damage in the Olympics in men’s basketball. I think they’re tough and they’re well coached and Luol’s a great player.”
USA played unselfish ball, registering 39 assists whilst turning the ball over just 9 times.
Luol Deng had 25 points to lead GB, whilst Pops Mensah-Bonsu added 12 points and 9 rebounds. Deron Williams and Carmelo Anthony had 19 points each for USA.
GB will now head to Belgium where they will play Tunisia and Belgium this coming weekend before their Olympic journey begins.
Notes
- Kobe got the most love in the building, by far.
- A lot of people been getting on the announcer for pronouncing Deron Williams’ name ‘Darren’. It is pronounced Darren.
- When the crowd actually made noise, it was the loudest basketball crowd I’ve ever heard in the UK. However, most of the time they were pretty quiet. Must be a British hoops thing.
- The athleticism of USA is just crazy. The speed in which they got up and down the floor was just ridiculous and will be totally unrivaled at the games.
- USA’s ball pressure just killed us in the back court. Despite Andrew Lawrence playing with real fearlessness, we really struggled.
Did you watch the game? Thoughts?
Image: (Photo by Mansoor Ahmed/Mansoor Ahmed Photography)
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
The game was amazing, because for the first time you saw a bunch of NBA all star play 100% (not like what we have seen in those nba pre season games
But couples points from me
1. The commentator needs to be fired ASAP…..the amount of mistakes he made through out the night was ridiculous ( #1 being the Steve bucknell shout out….which wasn’t even Steve ….wooooow)
2. Why doesn’t Andrew Sullivan get my minutes, with the little mins he had he played well with 11pts
3. Westbrook is a defensive machine lol
4. Hopefully GB can take something away from this which will help them in the future
We saw a lot of young GB players play there heart out, you couldn’t really of asked for more, especially first quarter
Watched it on TV. A couple of things stand out to me:
- If Deng has to work that hard in every one of our games and we still get blown out, that doesn’t bode well. I know the US is a special opponent, but still…
- Pops is a firecracker! He seemed to have a great motor and good athleticism, but not a lot of control. Every spin move he tried ended in a turnover.
- Were the refs paid per foul call? Lots of whistles…
- Could we have tried to post up some more? The US team is supposedly undersized…
- Anthony Davis is really good at basketball.
- It turns out my despising Kobe isn’t just because he’s a Laker. He pissed me off in US colours too! It makes it worse that he’s so darn good!
All in all, it looks like we have some talented guys, but they need the mental strength to compete on a higher level. Confidence will help. Deng can’t bail us out every time…
I think we posted up just about as much as we could have. Our guys just played soft in the post, pounding the ball and not making quick moves.
You’re right about Pops though, for all his athleticism, he still doesn’t have the controlled post game that he needs to be successful at a really high level.
The announcer called Carmelo Kevin Durant! and he said Steve Bucknall was “the first player in the league” LOL
It is about time we got realistic.
Without Deng (who played with so much passion, although arguably tried to do too much) and Freeland inside we have very very little to offer.
No point in criticising or otherwise the other players as I am sure they all tried as hard as they could – even though, as a team, they were obviously nowhere near fit enough.
It was a pure basketball clinic, to which we had no answer.
Agree re the commentators. They were very poor and showed little insight into the game.
Disgraceful that DVO was not in the team.
I agree about DVO!
Also – the commentators need to learn their stuff…
It’s not good that John Ameachi say’s things like…… Sam Perkins was in the original Dream Team and I wonder what type of conditioner James Harden uses in his beard! For very different reasons, not what i as a basketball fan want to be listening to!
Quite sad that with 17,000 people in the stands that when watching the game on TV you could head the players talking on the court, but like Sam say’s – maybe thats just a Brittish thing?
Overall though, fantastic for our sport!
U honestly think DVO would make a bigger difference? oh wait they’ll lose by 35 nxt time. Team GB should never exist and the only reason they got to play us is only the pure fact that they are hosting…. But other than that they’ll never rightfully qualify in any other major global basketball tourny….Maybe the euros but not the WBC or future olympics…I’m sorry but lets get real for a sec
this will be the weakest olympic tournament in basketball of all time
out of the only 12 teams there…only about six can play the game: usa, spain, lithuania, argentina, russia, brazil and just about australia……china try but have no talent, nigeria have talent but no professionalism or history,, .only God knows how tunisia, got in…great britain maybe the weakest ‘european’ team to be allowed in…they didnt even qualify…eurobasket and the world championships are much stronger than this joke of a tournament…
GB will be fortunate to win one game (possibly againt China?). If the team can not win against teams such as Tunisia then there would seem to be little hope.
With the exception of Freeland (who will learn a lot about inside play when he starts up in the NBA) our big men are both slow and play very poor defense.
Our guards are not very capable of protecting the ball against pressure and are not able to advance the ball up court with any degree of safety or quickness.
Fast breaks are a no-no.
It is difficult to see what offence(s) the team has, as it is to determine what out-of-bounds plays and special situation plays it has.
As has been mentioned, take out Deng and we have a team that can not play at this level of competition
The one good thing that hopefully will come from the team competing in the Olympics is the publicity that it will generate for the sport in general, although, one must hope this will be positive rather than negative.
Let’s hope the team surprises everybody.
yi jianglian will go off on gb and score 40 ….plus beat GB by 20….cmon, they cant even beat tunisia for crying out loud lol
Unfortunately no surprises !!!
Achara played well. Where was he in the previous games?
Where WAS the publicity?
According to John Amaechi, “that was not a foul, it was only minimal contact”.
Interpretation of minimal contact?
Unfortunately no surprises !!!
Achara played well. Where was he in the previous games?
Where WAS the publicity?
According to John Amaechi, “that was not a foul, it was only minimal contact”.
Interpretation of minimal contact?
with Deng, Freeland, Clark and Lenzly missing we didn’t beat Tunisia. Funny I seem to remember us beating China last year.
Maybe its time to rethink our strategy in England/GB basketball. Instead of getting 15 young players at the U15 development camp why not get 20/30 and see who develops over time. My son went last year and got cut after the first camp, he has improved on all aspect of his game since and is becoming a really good player for his local club (one of the top 5 according to his coach). He was naturally upset that he got cut and has took a negative view of the system. If they had kept him on over a few more camps maybe they would have seen him develope. He has also grown about 5 inches since he last went down and is now standing at 6’5″ and is still only 15. If he gets selected again there is a chance of him not going as he doesn’t want to be cut again.