The USA coach had the best words for Lithuania after their team’s victory, Steve Kerrhighlighting the difficulties his team faced, while also focusing on the differences of basketball played in FIBA competitions, compared to the NBA!
What the USA coach said in detail:
“It was a great match. Lithuania caught fire at the start. We fought, we competed like crazy, but it wasn’t enough. Fortunately, the loss doesn’t hurt us in terms of the gold medal goal, but it does help us gain experience in FIBA basketball. There are great teams performing, Lithuania were superb tonight and deserved to win.
We didn’t communicate well in defence, but we improved in the second half, we played harder and had our chances. But Lithuania made difficult shots, off balance. I give it to them. We will learn from this match, we will see the video and what we need to fix. And we’ll continue from there.
We didn’t play well against Montenegro, we wanted to be better, but Lithuania punched us in the mouth. It’s not that we weren’t ready. It’s that Lithuania played the perfect first quarter. He showed us how to play to achieve our goal. We played a lot with two talls in the first half, we have combinations, the thing about FIBA basketball is that you have to change something, when you feel like you have to change something. Some of our choices were not successful, we changed five players, we had a good second half, but we were far behind.
It wasn’t a good night for Austin Reeves, I took him off because he was fouled, but I’m not worried about him at all. We were told we had qualified for the Olympics, but that doesn’t ease the pain of this loss. At least we don’t have to enter pre-Olympics, but I’m not even thinking that far. I only watch the World Cup.
I like what happened tonight, because everything happens so fast this year. It’s a different basketball than the NBA, we talk about it every day, all day. We have to understand how good the other teams are. Like Lithuania who shoot, cut and are well coached. We will not sleep tonight, I hope this is a lesson for us. I can’t say what I would do differently if I played this match again, because we might face Lithuania again.”.
Source: Sport Fm
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