Paul George Mistakenly Thought Team USA Was ‘Going to Dominate’ in Rio Olympics

Paul George had dreams of coming to Rio to help Team USA dominate the Olympics, but things have proven much more difficult in the real world.

Paul George continues to be candid about Team USA’s struggles. Or, more accurately, Team USA’s relative struggles.

The reddest, whitest, and bluest basketball team in Brazil is still undefeated and remains the overwhelming favorite to soon be the goldest.

But PG was outspoken after a near-loss to Serbia, saying that the team cannot “keep playing like this.” He said the offense was too iso-heavy and that players were not displaying the necessary trust in one another.

Now, Paul George is admitting — after a too-close-for-comfort win over France — that he didn’t think the competition was going to be this hard. The Indiana Pacers captain said, per Michael Lee of The Vertical, that he thought Team USA would dominate, just like it had almost exclusively since 2006.

"“I think to start out, personally, I thought we were going to dominate and these games were going to be easy,” said Paul George. “We started playing better competition, I think you see, across the board, these teams are pretty good. The luxury they have is they’ve been together for so long. You really can’t stress that enough. You see it. They just read each other so well. I think that’s the biggest thing that really separates us from them.”"

This isn’t 1992 anymore, and Paul George isn’t alone in trying to stress the improvement in talent that we’ve seen all across the world since then.

Chris Paul recently said something similar, noting that “everyone is getting better” at basketball and that “now it’s the world’s game.”

In addition to improving quality, Paul George highlighted Team USA’s lack of continuity and experience together. Fixing these issues was a key objective for USA Basketball after it revamped the overall approach to the national program following the embarrassing bronze medal showing in the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

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Authorities made sure to get full buy-in from those who would be heading to Beijing in 2008, desiring a real commitment rather than the half-hearted and never-certain approach to roster construction that had developed since 1992. There was a sense in the late 1990s and early 2000s that guys would just show up when called and enjoy a free trip to a foreign nation without really wanting to give up their summer for training.

That was kiboshed. The program started to bring player in early — establishing a feed Select Team — and looking for players who could contribute over a longer-term time frame. It has helped counteract the rising sense that the United States was not sending a real team but rather a collection of All-Stars.

And to the credit of those who weren’t fully committed this summer, they all backed out rather than agreeing to join the team in Rio just to go through the motions. They stepped aside to let the new guard start to gel and figure out how each part could fit into the larger machine.

Still, turnover is inevitable. This house-cleaning that saw Team USA largely fielding a roster with no Olympic experience in Rio was going to happen at some point. There is no way to get experience together than actually playing together.

It’s just too bad, from a dominance perspective, that it had to coincide with a time when so many non-defending ball-handlers were the ones who agreed to go. As good as all the talent is on Team USA, there is a bit of redundancy and, seemingly, an unwillingness by Coach K to not play the likes of Kyrie Irving, Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and DeMarcus Cousins together at the same time.

It just seems natural to let, say, Paul George or Jimmy Butler anchor the two-guard next to Kyrie to make up for some of his defensive limitations. Or to play DeAndre Jordan, not Boogie, if Melo is going to start at the four.

There certainly needs to be a bit more defensive cohesion and clear strategy when guarding certain actions (something that in practice looks haphazard all too often). But just pairing the personnel better — rather than trying to start the five best guys — would probably do wonders.

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Ultimately, Paul George was wrong.

These games are not easy for Team USA. And it’s partly due to an improving world stage, the personnel on this roster, how those players are being paired together, individual performances, and Coach K’s inability to get these lineups to play to their full potential.

But now that they’re in Brazil, there is no easy solution that will guarantee gold.

They just gotta play better.