Serbia's Late Game Collapse & KD's Defensive Impact
Transcript
00:00I cannot believe, to be honest with you, that Serbia unraveled.
00:10They had them.
00:11They had them right where they wanted them.
00:12They were playing off screen, getting wide open looks, ball movement, wide open threes.
00:18They had hit 15 out of 30 at one point, 50% from downtown, and then they missed seven
00:23in a row late in the game.
00:25And then they had the turnover on the backcourt violation.
00:28They unraveled.
00:30They had the game won, and they literally blew it.
00:34Scott, how many times in all of your years of watching Kevin Durant, which goes back
00:40at least to 2007 when he was the National Player of the Year at Texas, did you ever
00:45— how many times did you ever think of him coming in for defense?
00:49Because that's what happened.
00:51That was the best or first great coaching move in this series, in the Olympic Games,
00:58that Steve Curry made, which was to put KD in, have him guard the ball a lot.
01:04He guarded Misic a lot at the start of the quarter.
01:08Then he switched over to Bogdanovic and really shut him down.
01:12And it was KD's defense that was the biggest difference in that game.
01:16I know Steph Curry was the biggest hero, not only for scoring 36 points, but also for scoring
01:21some of the biggest baskets in that huge steal and coast-to-coast layup that he made late
01:26in the game.
01:28But KD's defense, putting him in the game and saying, we're not doing this anymore.
01:32We are not getting beaten from the perimeter like we were.
01:36I think what we saw today — and I don't know how much it'll matter.
01:39I imagine France is going to give us — give the United States a heck of a go.
01:44I think you've got to consider taking Drew Holliday out of the starting lineup and put
01:48Kevin Durant in there, because right now he's as good a two-way player as they have.
01:52Yeah, I thought Holliday, despite that corner pocket three he hit, which was big, and then
02:00Booker hit the big three off of the inbounds, off at a joker foul, off at a KD three on
02:09the wing.
02:10That three was huge.
02:11The foul was huge.
02:12Possession.
02:13Inbounds.
02:14Corner, top of the key three.
02:15But I did not think — and I'm being frank — I did not think that Booker or Holliday
02:21played well in the game.
02:22I thought Holliday was aggressive defensively.
02:26I thought he tried to play aggressive defense.
02:30I just didn't think either one of them were really effective in the game.
02:34I agree with you about Durant.
02:36The thing that I noticed about them was that, you know, LeBron obviously had a triple-double.
02:43They needed that.
02:44They needed him attacking the rim and late in the game, because they were missing too
02:48many shots and making too many mistakes.
02:50But I thought that all of their star players, frankly, did nothing in the game.
02:56I thought — I mean, at one point they were all sitting over there, Durant, AD, Ann Edwards,
03:01Halliburton, and none of them were going in the game at all.
03:05Well, you can't blame Halliburton for this, because he's not putting them in the game.
03:10I said early in this process that they made the decision that they valued defense over
03:18ball movement.
03:19And I think in a circumstance like this, when you have so many gifted scorers and you need
03:25someone to bring definition to the offense — because there's nobody you can say,
03:29oh, you shouldn't take that shot.
03:30You can't say that to anybody almost.
03:33It may be Bam Adebayo taking the second-half three, and I'll say, don't take that shot.
03:38You're not that guy in this game.
03:40But for the most part, you have to understand that KD taking a shot off the dribble, OK,
03:46he's KD.
03:47And same for so many others.
03:49And that's why Halliburton made such a defense early in this process.
03:53And then he abandoned him after the difficulty in the South Sudan game in the showcase series.
04:01And since then, he's gotten almost no run, and they've gone with Derek White.
04:05Derek White was an absolute disaster today.
04:08He was embarrassingly bad.
04:09And in a game where they needed good defense, he was — I believe I checked — he was
04:14a minus 16 in six minutes.
04:19And offensively, he was poor.
04:20Defensively, he was disastrous.
04:22I didn't think there was any excuse for putting him back in.
04:25And thank goodness that Steve Kerr got that message and rode with KD in those minutes.