Simon Dalton presents his prediction for the 2024 Olympics basketball match
USA
Even during the warm-up games, it became clear that this American national team is building its identity around LeBron James and Kevin Durant. The team has a strict hierarchy and clear role distribution. In the last game against Brazil (122-87), as many as 12 players got 8 or more minutes of playing time. No one is trying to show off, and everyone does their tasks, and some (like Joel Embiid) are noticeably improving from game to game. This leads to clear results. Even though, for example, Stephen Curry is having an obviously weak tournament, the USA is beating their opponents.
Serbia
The Serbian national team lacks clear structure and understanding of role distribution. How often have you seen Nikola Jokić yelling at his teammates? Sometimes, it seems like this is not his national team, but rather a team of Vasilije Micić, Marco Gudurić, and Filip Petrušev. As soon as most of the offence in the positional attack against the Australians started going through Jokić and as soon as he turned it up to 120% on both ends of the court, not minding the double, and sometimes triple coverage, the Serbs managed to find their basketball.
USA - Serbia Prediction
With Jokić on the court, the Serbs can still somehow hang in there under good circumstances. But in the nine minutes he spent on the bench, Serbia got a (-26) in the previous head-to-head match. And this is with a half-dead Embiid and with the Serbs hitting open shots, which doesn't always happen. We don't see any chances for the underdog to win here.
