Team USA survived a massive scare in the Men’s Olympic Basketball Tournament semifinal against Serbia and set up a clash for the gold medal against France. Despite barely beating Nikola Jokic and Co., Gilbert Arenas believes Team USA will cruise to victory in the final.
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On the Gil’s Arena podcast, the retired star claimed the French squad lacks the offensive chops to defeat the USA. He pointed to the lack of quality guards on the roster who can push the pace and set their teammates up for easy baskets.
While Serbia showed tremendous tactical acumen and got quality looks at the basket at will, France’s ball-handlers have struggled massively to dictate the game’s pace. The roster is full of score-first forwards and guards. Thus, they can’t deploy pick-and-roll sets effectively and have to bank on Victor Wembanyama to make tough shots.
Arenas noted the hosts lack a player as dynamic as Jokic, which will make Team USA’s life easy in the final. He said,
“They can’t dribble, they can’t bring the ball up, their guards can’t handle pressure like that. They don’t have a pick-and-roll system so it’s basically try to find Wemby and now Wemby is going to go in his bag. Other than that, they don’t have anybody that, ‘We’re going to give you the ball, you need to give us buckets’… They don’t have a Jokic like that can put pressure on defense and find people ”
He also pointed to the German defense limiting Wembanyama to 4-of-17 shooting in the semifinal and the Canadians holding him to 2-of-10 from the floor in the quarterfinal. Arenas believes the 20-year-old lacks the offensive proficiency that Jokic boasts, which almost proved too much to handle for Team USA in the semifinal.
While the retired star has written France off, co-host Rashad McCants still believes it won’t be as straightforward. He argued that if they bank on their defense and keep the score close until late in the fourth quarter, they could pull off the upset.
However, he’s among the few who believe France has a chance. Most analysts, including Kendrick Perkins, are confident that Team USA will steamroll the hosts.
Perkins writes off Wembanyama and France
On First Take, he downplayed the threat Wembanyama poses on Team USA’s odds of winning the gold medal. He said,
“I ain’t worried about it one bit… Victor Wembanyama… He has had his ups and downs. When you look at the bigs that we have in Anthony Davis, Bam Adebayo, and Joel Embiid, they are gonna do a great job of neutralizing him… At the end of the day, Team USA is just too talented across the board.”
France had to pull off upset wins over Canada and Germany to make it to the final. However, beating the reigning Olympic champions might be a bridge too far.
