Welcome to the Ringer NBA Show. I'm Tate Frazier, a producer for TheRinger.com, and I'm joined by a staff writer from TheRinger.com, and that is Jonathan Charx. Charx, what's up man?

Nothing much, man. How are you doing?

Team USA, we are not on the banana boat, instead we are on a cruiser off the coast of Brazil. Charx, so far Team USA is squeaked by three straight wins.

Starting with Australia, giving them a little bit of scare with Delavadova and Bogut, you know, teaming up together to try to get their revenge against the many ghosts of their past.

And then they had a close encounter with Serbia and the young Jokic and then they had an even closer battle. I guess it was the same as a three point loss or three point win against France.

Just so far from Team USA, what kind of your take on them and what's the temperature of a coach case squad?

I mean, it's pretty surprising obviously. I don't think anyone expected them to be in so many close games, especially in pool play.

But I guess if you think about it, like if you look at the last Olympics, they're all about defense, getting in transition, turning them over.

And then they replaced Anthony Davis, LeBron and Chris Paul, starting lineup with Kyrie, Mello, and Buggy. So I guess maybe we should have explained some kind of shortfall a little bit just from that.

Yeah, I was just thinking about that yesterday. So Coach K obviously took over this team in 2006 and they had their one loss and there was some some talk, you know, back then with Coach K dealing with youth and trying to connect to the youth.

And now it's like, you know, the second generation of this team USA and there's a lot of young guys on this team. And really the only old guy that he can rely on is Mello and Mello is not a defensive presence.

You know, he's a score. So it's kind of the US is in a weird spot defensively and they've just been getting killed on the pick and roll.

And if you look at the pick and roll, that's your point guard in your center. And that's her two weakest spots and your four man, like your best defense of two in the three positions.

You've got your weakest guys at the main two spots to pick and roll.

Yeah, watching the France game, which was the last game to team USA played, which was on Sunday. Tony Parker obviously did not play in that game.

They're kind of been shorting him on his minutes. I think the most minutes he's played in the tournament was like 22 minutes or something.

But they had a hurdle. Thomas Hurtle, the point guard that came in and he just torch the US. I mean, he he torch Kyrie.

He had nine assists, just one turnover in 27 minutes. What did you see from Hurtle and like when you have a guy like that that's not necessarily, you know, a world renowned player do that to your starting point guard.

Like what's the next step for team USA is it to go all in on defense and just hope that you can put up enough points to get the win or what?

I mean, you look at it was the same thing in Australia, patty mills at like 30 points and Delhi, they would ever wanted.

And the same thing was Serbia to with Tia dosage. Yeah.

And really I'm not even sure Hurtle's worst and Tony Parker, this point their careers. Parker's looking kind of old and washed my opinion.

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