America’s quest to regain basketball hegemony took another small step forward today as we we beat Angola 97-76. Angola, however, is kind of the sorry case of FIBA basketball. The system requires an African team to be in the games, and all the African teams sucks, and recently Angola has consistently gotten into the big tournaments (Olympics and FIBA World Championships) despite having a sub-par team.
Thus despite the win, I see two red flags here. One is that Team USA’s three point shooting was subpar, just 5-21 despite the fact that it should be easier to hit the shots from FIBA distance. Clearly, neither China or Angola was able to defend against us effectively anyway, but we know that some FIBA teams can put a good packed zone together that you need to be able to pick apart with three point shooting.
A related concern would be that thus far in the tournament our starting point guard Jason Kidd basically isn’t shooting at all. Against Angola he scored zero points on zero shots and took no free throws. Under a certain (wrong) conception of a “pure point guard,” Kidd is now approaching a Platonic ideal of brilliant play. But realistically, playing offense against a tough defense is hard when one of your players doesn’t shoot at all. It can get especially problematic against a true zone because, again, you really need your perimeter players to be able to knock the threes down to keep the defense honest. We have two very good backups for Kidd in Chris Paul and Deron Williams, so there’s not necessarily any need to panic over Kidd’s new nonshooting persona, but it gives me pause.
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