Obviously USA was the best squad out there. Not so much the talent but the team ethic ingrained by Coach K and Jerry Colangelo. They have built a USA machine, which could've been built 50 years ago but wasn't.
But from the rest of the field, I was most impressed with France. They had a ton of talent and I suspect would've given USA a better game in the final than Serbia did. While France was able to rub out Croatia, Spain and Lithuania, they forgot to pull it together against Serbia in the semi-final game. Batum earned his spot on the all-tourney team and if there was a 2nd team Boris Diaw would've made that. Throw in impressive performances from Huertel, Diot, Gobert, Lauvergne and fine moments from Gelebale and Fournier, and France was a pretty solid squad. Too bad we didn't get to see them match up with USA in the final.
Serbia was solid. Teodosic was all-tourney worthy and Bjelica, Bogdonavich, Krstic and Markovic all had solid tourneys as well. They thumped Greece and Brazil, jumped out to a huge lead on France which they were able to cling to. A solid silver medal for those guys.
Lithuania upheld their proud tradition and while they were on the easier side of the draw, they took all comers (except USA) and almost pulled off the killer comeback on France in the 3rd plac game. That 3rd place game was kooky: both teams were fouling at the end so the last minute of the game took what felt like hours to play out. I can't remember a game that close, that important, where both teams fouled their way to the close. Weird finish, man, that's why I watch these games!
Spain...oh, Spain. Losing to USA in the final would've been an acceptable finish but flubbing the quarterfinal game to France must've hurt bad. The beauty of a tournament like this and that when you really get into it, then an upset like this is HUUUUUUUUGE! They had the whole tourney laid out for them, all they had to do was hold serve. Exciting game, even though it never really felt like Spain was gonna put it together. Marc Gasol was MIA, Rodriguez never got in sync, Llull failed to contribute and why on earth was Ibaka shooting all those 3's? Until that point Spain was the best team in the tourney, guard play was amazing, inside play was solid, they were killing it on both ends of the court and held the home court for every single game. They were rolling, had everything going they way. Tsk, tsk. Losing to another Euro team was just an extra knife in the back. Oh man, when Gobert swatted Pau...game over.
Of the other final 16 I thought the most impressive was Croatia. They went out to soon. I enjoyed watching them, thought they were stronger inside and out than Serbia or Lithuania. But they had a tough draw, had to play France in the round of 16 instead of skating into the quarters like the other top squads.
I wasn't as impressed with Brazil as I feel like I was supposed to be, they seemed old to me (where were Caboclo or Nogueira?). Ditto Argentina, who felt like a farewell tour more than one last run to glory (something akin to Expendables 3). You see this is soccer every 4 years: a team that has performed well in the past keeps running out their veterans instead of integrating the young talent (Spain was this year's culprit in FIFA). Brazil and Argentina showed that paradigm plays out in basketball too.
I didn't see Greece play (bounced by Serbia in the round of 16) but the stats are not impressive for Antetokounmpo, Calathes or Papanicklau. Too early for those guys?
Turkey, Australia, Slovenia played hard but didn't have the firepower to go deep.
Mexico, Dominican Republic, New Zealand, Senegal all did well just to make it out of the group stage. Senegal, perhaps, has the most upside, wonder if we'll see them in 5 years.
Surprised Germany wasn't in this field, I suspect that when they finally embrace basketball as a youth sport then they'll quickly get good just as in soccer; they have good athletes, a good system and the right kind nationalism to want to compete on the international level. Also, I wouldn't be surprised to see Angola kicking it up a notch on the international level; they have many, many amazing athletes, if they ever figure out how to play basketball they could get good right away.
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