By Aris Barkas/ barkas@Eurohoops.net
MANILA, Philippines – As the FIBA World Cup starts, the US team has to bounce back from the 2019 edition of the event, in which they ended up in the 7th position.
Steve Kerr at the time was an assistant of coach Gregg Popovich.
“We struggled with injuries, Jason Tatum going down really hurt us that year”, said Kerr about that tournament.
But now he is the head coach and he can see both similarities and differences with the team he has on his hands: “It’s similar to that team. The 2019 team was also very young, we had Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown just as they were emerging, and we had some vets like Harrison Barnes and Brook Lopez… Mason Plumplee. We had a good mix of players, but every team is different. This team is probably more of a passing team, I think that team had many great individual scorers. But what’s really unique about USA basketball is that we have a new team every year”.
So is continuity an issue for the US? Yes, but as Kerr explains that applies to other teams also considering the choice of star players to put in priority the Olympics compared to the World Cup: “It’s an issue for a lot of teams, not just us especially now with the World Cup and the Olympics being played back-to-back you see a lot of star players from other teams that aren’t playing, so we are not the only team that has a new group. That’s the challenge of coaching such a team”.
Maybe that’s why coach Kerr doesn’t like the title of the favorite: “I honestly don’t know. I know we are one of them (ed. note: the favorites) and we should be. But there are great teams. Last time in this tournament we finished seventh, we lost three games, we recognize how hard this is. These are not the days of 1992. There’s a reason there are over 100 foreign players in the NBA”.
As for the first game of the tournament against New Zealand, Kerr admitted that he knows very well what playing against the US means for any international opponent: “One thing we learned is what a big is for our opponents to face us because it’s a chance to go against a team of All-NBA players and a chance to beat the United States”.
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