After a pair of early blowouts, Team USA has found it much tougher with a trio of tight wins. The inevitable questions have started, and Charles Barkley thinks the issue is inherent in the roster.
Barkley told Sports360AZ.com that the Americans play too much isolation.
“It’s not a good team to put together,” Barkley said, via ESPN. “If you take away DeAndre Jordan, every guy on that team is a ball-dominant guy. You see them playing a lot of one-on-one basketball.
“That’s the thing I’ve noticed more than anything. Like, you have to understand when you put a team together like that, you have to have some role players.”
Barkley thinks the team has too many players who want to shoot.
“You take a guy like Kyle Lowry, who is a hell of a player, he wants to score. Kyrie [Irving] wants to score. Kevin [Durant] wants to score. DeMar [DeRozan] wants to score. So, I think they have been really stagnant offensively.
“When they put that team together in the future, they have to realize we can’t have just really, really great offensive players. They gotta have players that if they don’t get a shot, they’re not just gonna stand around and mope.”
At least one of Team USA’s players has diagnosed some of the problems. We’ll see if they have an easier time with Argentina on Wednesday.
