Team USA Is Tearing Through Its Olympic Tune-Up Games. What Has Stood Out?

The 2024 Olympics iteration of the USA men’s basketball team has no conceivable flaw. There’s shooting, intelligence, championship pedigree, balance, acuity, athleticism, size, speed, and power. The talent is overwhelming. The versatility is unprecedented. The résumés are iconic. Add it all together, and this team can earn its place in hallowed debates about the greatest rosters ever assembled.

One loss ends that conversation, of course. But so far, Team USA has won all three of its exhibitions—including victories against last year’s NBA MVP (Nikola Jokic, Serbia) and runner-up (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Canada)—without Kevin Durant, USA’s all-time leading scorer, who’s been sidelined since training camp with a calf injury. This is an absolute juggernaut, people.

But in a tournament that will eventually be decided in a single-elimination format, against some of the stiffest competition in international basketball history, Team USA still has work to do. This team has so much to gain and even more to lose; here are a few observations and story lines to look for in the days and weeks ahead.

Joel Embiid Is Stumbling

The most significant and somewhat predictable takeaway from Team USA’s tune-up slate has to be how awkward Embiid looks. Bound by the FIBA rule book, suddenly featured on a team that doesn’t need to run its entire offense through him, the two-time scoring champion has seemingly misremembered how to score. Unlike in the NBA, where his efforts to manufacture unnatural contact are rewarded with a nightly parade to the free throw line, Embiid’s attempts to bait the officials have not worked.

Suddenly, he’s out of place, surrounded by players who don’t need him to create an advantage, on a team that’s virtually unbeatable when everyone embraces an unselfish mentality that affords a wave of open looks. His touches, shots, and minutes were always going to drop in this context, but an even more important adjustment for Embiid is shortening the length of those touches, too. He’s not a high-volume play initiator on this team. He’s a finisher.

But Embiid loves having the ball in his hands and shoots more than pretty much every other NBA player. Philly’s entire playbook essentially doubles as his personal menu. On Team USA, he’s still learning how to cram that expansive skill set into a cage, restricting and simplifying his own ability for the greater good.

Starting ahead of Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo, Embiid has looked lost with his reduced responsibilities. He fouled out against Canada and saw his role diminished against Australia and Serbia as Steve Kerr spent minutes in the second half getting a look at Davis and Adebayo with the other four starters.

This doesn’t mean Embiid can’t impact winning. His size still matters when he’s protecting the rim and cleaning the glass. He can still create significant issues in the paint and physically dominate opposing front lines. His occasional post touches are still a devastating change-of-pace tool, so long as they don’t bog down a system that peaks when the ball hops.

But the version of Embiid that won NBA MVP in 2023 isn’t a seamless fit here. It makes more sense to use him primarily in the pick-and-roll, as a spot-up option, off-ball screen setter, and looming threat around the dunker spot. Embiid hasn’t forgotten how to shoot, pass, or be humongous. He’ll figure it out, whether in the starting five or coming off the bench.

LeBron James and Steph Curry’s Chemistry

Team USA opened its win against Serbia with unguardable two-man synergy. On one early possession, they ran an inverted pick-and-roll in which Curry set a ball screen for James. LeBron drove into the paint, collapsed the defense, and kicked out to Embiid for a wide-open corner 3. Halfway through the second quarter, the longtime rivals turned co-captains hooked up again, except this time Curry started with the ball. He skipped a pocket pass to a rolling James, who converted an and-1. When LeBron first corralled Curry’s pass, he also had Jayson Tatum wide open in the weakside corner.

Early in the third quarter, LeBron called Curry up to set another ball screen. It discombobulated Serbia’s defense and opened a wide driving lane for James to score at the rim.

For all the star power on Team USA, it’s the two oldest players who generate the most unstoppable two-man game in the entire tournament. It’s a beautiful thing watching Curry and James elevate each other. These are two basketball revolutionaries with more than three decades of combined experience at the NBA level, still creating problems other teams aren’t creative enough to solve.

The passing. The shooting. The muscle. The way they arm all their teammates and force opponents to engage in a losing game of Whac-A-Mole whenever they interact with each other. It’s incredible. (When they included Embiid in a stack pick-and-roll, with Curry setting a back screen on Embiid’s man and LeBron dribbling at the top of the key, they cut through the defense like butter.)

As individuals, Curry’s and James’s impact is second to none. Together, they generate efficient shots before the defense can blink. This just might be the bedrock of Team USA’s offense. It’s what Kerr will lean on if and when they find themselves in a crunch-time situation. It’s how they’ll step on the gas to build insurmountable leads. There’s no stopping Curry and LeBron when they’re making each other even better than they already are.

Anthony Edwards’s Self-Awareness

Edwards is the youngest player on Team USA. His game is inspiring, bold, and, at its peak, chock full of adrenaline. But when you look past the eye-popping athleticism and stunning shot-making (he leads them in scoring!), Ant’s ingenuity shows. Edwards can turn entire defensive strategies into whipped cream, but there are glitches—from a rushed one-on-four fast break to the antsy lunges that result in backdoor layups—that presuppose a supreme talent trying to prove something outside of a team-first dynamic.

Watch Team USA play, and it’s jarring when its offense doesn’t create an open look with time on the shot clock. Edwards is a smidge too eager to go a different way—it’s not that he can’t make a contested pull-up 2, it’s that there’s almost always a better option.

On one fourth-quarter play against Serbia, Edwards caught a kick-out pass behind the 3-point line and, instead of taking the open jumper, decided to record-scratch the possession, let the defense recover, and then airballed a more challenging shot. On another play, he pulled up in transition, even though Team USA had a three-on-one advantage.

A 6-foot-4 glue trap, Edwards’s defense is menacing when his man has the ball. But he doesn’t consistently box out or hustle in transition. There was one sequence against Serbia when he passed to Tyrese Haliburton and then, instead of getting back on defense, put his hands up in the air to celebrate a shot that didn’t go in. Serbia scored off the rebound about three seconds later.

This might be the most confident player on earth, which is a blessing in Minnesota but occasionally a bitter pill on Team USA, which doesn’t need an alpha protagonist. He’s potent enough to take games over, and athletically looks otherworldly. But sacrifice and modesty go a long way in the Olympics. They need his buckets. But when Edwards moves the ball and runs the floor, good things happen.

Team USA’s Defense Is Ridiculous

Team USA’s offense will garner headlines it deserves. But if the team obliterates every opponent that stands in its way, it’ll be thanks to a defense that makes scoring in the half court a near-impossible feat.

Kerr’s decision to bring Davis and Bam off the bench was somewhat forced by Durant’s injury. But, ostensible spacing issues aside, it looks like a stroke of genius. As two of the most intimidating anchors in the world, they’ve essentially become the Bash Brothers. How do you attack a versatile, long, focused group that has two centers flying around, blocking shots, switching screens, and snatching boards off the glass? Against Australia, they spent some time beside Jrue Holiday, which, how is that fair?

The weakest individual defender is Haliburton, who may not be in the rotation when Durant returns. The next closest things to a liability are either Curry or Devin Booker, who both know how to hold their own on elite defenses. Everyone else ranges from “pretty good” to “that guy who just made an All-Defensive team.”

Team USA’s offense is an avalanche. But this team’s ability to completely shut the water off puts it on another level.