Just like Team USA at the FIBA World Cup is the real deal. It's not the A-Team of USA Basketball. It's not the names that we normally associate with USA Basketball. It's not the LeBrons or the Anthony Davises or the Kevin Durant's or even the Kyrie Irvings.
It's not any of them. But Anthony Edwards is a star and the US is 2-0 and they're going to be 3-0 and I'm not sure there's anybody out there that really can give them a game until maybe Spain later on, maybe Canada. Talk to Brendan Whitted about that, our NBA analyst, at H.U. Cosell on Twitter.
Sir, real quick just thoughts on overall what we have seen from Team USA. It's not like they've been pushed at all by, certainly they were not pushed by Jordan today. Although, wasn't there an NBA player playing for Jordan? Oh, maybe I missed. I had the game on me. I was doing a whole bunch of other stuff, but there might have been.
Maybe I missed that. Yeah, Rodney Hollis-Jefferson. Oh, yeah, he's actually had a really good World Cup. He's second in scoring in the World Cup going into today. Yeah, he's actually been really nice.
It's always fun to have that kind of stuff happen. He's a role player, right? For those that are not familiar with his game, he's a role player, kind of a defensive, dirty, a lot of dirty work. A helpful guy on the right team, but by no means is he some sort of go-to scorer. He's not going to be your first, second, or even third option on a quality team. But that's how talented these guys are in the NBA.
And that's the funny part about, I don't know how much you've seen. Just quickly, the American team has played really well. You mentioned them not having the top tier number eight stars, but these are the guys that are going to be playing that are going to be the top tier stars in the next four to five years. LeBron, obviously, is getting older.
CP3, you mentioned Steph Curry. All those guys are in the 35 and 33, 34, 35 and up. So these are the young guys, Anthony Edwards, Paulo Bancaro, who's shown a lot of really, really good stuff.
And I'm expecting, even from his rookie year, this team is the guys that you're going to be thinking about in the upcoming few years. These are the guys that are going to be taking over the mantle of best players in the game. So the Olympics, and this is also doubling as a World Cup, rather Olympic qualifier. So the Americas will get two spots. The United States is going to get one of them because they'll probably win this. But how many?
Because the Olympics are next summer and they're in Paris, so we'll be able to watch at a normal time rather than get up at four o'clock in the morning to watch USA Jordan. But how many of these players, realistically, are going to be on the roster? If LeBron James wants to play in the Olympics one final time, I mean, isn't he still a top 15 player in the league? Yeah, I'm trying to think. Well, that's kind of the important part, right? How many of these guys even want to play and do that again?
And I don't know what the answer is. If you're LeBron, you've already done pretty much everything you want to do. The things remaining are, I would think, are championships over gold medals. Not that I'm sure he re-values the Redeemed team. And you saw it in the documentary, he valued that experience and stuff. But this is what we see from older players.
They're just like, ah, somebody else got it. You know what I mean? Anthony Evans will be on there. Van Caro might be on there. Triple J might be on there considering he's the type of big man because he's able to play out on the floor when they're defensive. He's a shot block defensive player of the year. He's another guy that you probably want to see as a big because he can manipulate a lot of stuff. Those are the guys that you would see now. Jaylen Brunson, would he be on there? I mean, maybe.
That would be a little bit more interesting. Tyler Halliburton is obviously a really, really good player. I don't know if he's making the top team, but again, how much do all these other guys still want to play because they're a little bit older? Cam Johnson, by the way, on Team USA. Another former Tar Heel, Walker Kessler on Team USA.
Why did you have his side? He's a former Tar Heel. I mean, no, he's a former Tar Heel. He should have, you know, maybe, maybe play him a little bit more.
Don't put him in a four man rotation to play the power forward to center positions and as deep as Roy did. But, you know, whatever. I'm not, I'm certainly not, I'm not saying that was a huge mistake that maybe cost us a title. But, you know, it's fine. I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to bring up something that might be, might be, I don't know, give you, give you some angst here. Brendan Whitted is joining us. Of course you are.
Of course you are. Steve Kerr, I mean, it's hard to do a bad job with this team. I mean, we have seen coaches do bad jobs before. It's not always the coach's fault, right? Shout out to Larry Brown. Larry Brown and George Carr were both unsuccessful in the case. Well, they were both difficult to get along with. We know from their careers, they had been difficult to get along with, but I also think that for the most part, these things become, how can, how do you motivate players to perform at this level?
Because I've always said this. We should be able as the United States, because we have so many great players, we should be able to send what amounts to our third team and at least cruise to the semifinals against the best countries, even though the gap has closed considerably now. That might not be true against, you know, the best of Spain, but they have to have their best in order to compete.
I don't know that the United States does. I think that what we saw with the Redeemed team was a big, was as much about, yes, the talent needs to be there. So you got Kobe, you got Wade, you got LeBron, you got Melo, but it's also the organization of, Hey, we're going to do more than have these guys scrimmage a couple of times before they head into these, into this tournament.
And that was kind of the bigger thing of having guys have some sort of cohesion playing together at some point, because a lot of these international teams do play together and they are more familiar with one another. So even if there is a talent disparity, some of that is, can be negated or mitigated by the fact that I'm just more comfortable playing with my teammate than you are with yours. So even if you are more talented, I know how he is going to respond in this scenario.
I know how he's going to respond in that scenario. He knows how I like where I like to catch the basketball, where my scoring zones are small stuff like that adds up. If you're talking about like, Oh, we can just roll the ball out there and play for, for a large segment of basketball history.
That was true, right? You saw the actual dream team when they started sending the pros out there, it was just 35, 40 point blowouts, not close folks taking pictures at halftime. They just happen to be there. It's not the case anymore.
You look at Embiid or you look at a yo kids or you look at Luca. This is a really an international game in a way that it simply wasn't 30 years ago, which makes all the commentary about if this is, if the NBA can call itself the world champion of basketball, that makes it a little, a little bit funnier because it's like, well, we are taking the best from the world. I can understand the statement of, Hey, you're, you're essentially playing in just North American, American cities, but these are the best players in the world. And you're starting to see more and more people, not from United States of America dominant coming to dominate.
Yeah. I wasn't here when I was on vacation, I guess, when that was a thing, when the Noah Lyles thing hit. And I mean, other than the fact that the NBA does not call itself the world, it's not a world champion, it's an NBA champion of finals, you know, you won the finals. The reality is, is like, are we really having a debate as to whether or not the team that won the NBA didn't win the best league in the world? I mean, what are we doing?
Why do we, we shouldn't, we shouldn't be afraid to speak the truth about something as silly as that. Let me, let me move on to real quick thing about the Hornets. PJ Washington has been a guy that I think you as a Hornets fan, somebody who has followed them, closely reported on them, talked about them incessantly on podcasts. I mean, he's a very good player. He signed a three-year contract extension for $48 million, I believe. And all I could think of was like, did they lowball him? What, when I looked at it, I thought, isn't he better than that? That's Timofey Moskov money.
He's better than Timofey Moskov. So did they get, did the Hornets get away with one here? I think they did 16 years.
Now, look, it's for three years. And I'm certain that he wants more stability than that, but once he comes out of that, he'll be right at kind of his peak, I think 28 or so. And that'll be kind of right at his, his peak at his highest, at least physical earning potential. He, he had a, you know, I think he played better this year at a career high this year. He shot 35% from three on about five, make five attempts a game, 15 points for the, for the season, his career high. Like this was a good season for him. What is interesting to me is what some guys I think played better when there's nobody around, they call it like kind of, kind of like a thief in a riot.
Like, Oh, you know, somebody had to get this. And so therefore he gets these points because obviously the injuries, the plethora of injuries, the Hornets suffered, and he was one of the healthier guys. But I think he's actually one of these guys who reminds me a little bit of Rui Atamura, where we saw, you know, what he was with the Wizards and like, he was a good player, you know, mostly a pick and pop guy, a bit of a tweener, not really a five, but you know, more of a four or three, depending on your lineups. But when he gets with the Lakers suddenly, he's like, man, he kind of won them that game where he kept them in the court.
Like, and those are things that you don't really see unless you get a chance to play on a good high level team. I am interested whether it is with the Hornets and at three years at 16 mill, 16 mill annual, that's a really good tradable contract. Whether it's with the Hornets or not with the Hornets moving forward. I'm interested to see if he gets on a better team, what kind of contributions he can make because to me, he's one of those guys because of his ability to space out and shoot. He's gotten better defensively, still not great, but a better, a solid help defender. Like this is a guy that could help a real legitimate team. He's not going to be much from wins and losses for a team like the Hornets or for a really good squad.
He could, he could really help somebody. As we say goodbye to Brennan Whitted, my takeaway is that the Hornets are not a really good team. That's unfortunate. All right, man. I appreciate your time as always. I'll talk to you soon. Looking forward to it. Thank you, man.
You got an at H you can sell on Twitter. I mean, I don't, I don't think I was wrong there. He basically said he could help a really good team. I don't think he'll help the Hornets. I don't know. It just sounds to me like he just called the Hornets, not a really good team, which is also accurate.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-08-30 19:34:51 / 2023-08-30 19:40:14 / 5
