It will be funny to see the Kings playing Bogdanovic only 20 minutes because they have Hield, Ariza and Barnes.
When they compile a "team of the tournament" I don't think there'll be a USA player on it, and I don't think that's Pop's fault. This also makes me think it's about time the All-Star game was USA vs. World. Then players might actually care.
agree..when you have average players theres a good change the result will be average. For the team, including coach. If you are a coach blessed with supers stars it makes their job so much easier, but like Olympic Spring Board Diving you are judged by the degree of difficulty for the dive. IMO, POP couldn't get any more out of the Blazers as Terry does.
Last year's "world" team would've been very heavy on bigs. Jokic, Embiid, Gobert, Vucevic, Capela. Giannis at forward, of course; Horford too (and Dirk, I guess). But who would the guards for the world team have been? Simmons and Kyrie? Dragic maybe? Rubio? I guess Doncic and either of the Bogdanovichs?
Does Joe Ingles get in for being one of the best three point shooters in the NBA? I think the hard part is that NBA form doesn’t necessarily show what the players can do, especially with non-USA players. They’re often made to be role players by their coaches (which they accept just to stay in the best competition in the world), when they’re actually capable of more. Take Patty Mills for example. He’s in the running for tournament MVP, yet Pop said there’s no way he’d let Patty play this way in the NBA. To be fair, I don’t think Patty could do this game after game in the NBA, but he could do more than he does, if he was allowed to. So if you’re going to be looking at a “World” team of NBA players, then I think you have to include FIBA form in your decision making.
Batum's another one. The Hornets started playing him more like France uses him, but both McMillan and Stotts tended to use him simply as a 3-and-D player.
I'm sorry but it would be lame to have a bunch of mediocre NBA players get to play in the All-Star game just because they needed positions to fill out a world roster.