Well....they better get their act together. Up next, the defending World Champs. On the plus side....Serbia is missing several of their top players from 2002.
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BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (AP) -- After two games of their pre-Olympic swing through Europe, it's already clear that the U.S. men's basketball team lacks experience, doesn't have many great shooters, isn't all that tall and is a month behind the competition in terms of preparation.
Now, they're about to face the defending world champions. And after listening to what the players and coach said Thursday, it's a safe bet that things could get worse before they get better.
``We've basically been trying to just pass, pass, pass to the point where we've been overpassing, because we're trying to play the right way, the way our coach wants to play,'' Stephon Marbury said. ``But there has to -- there's going to be -- a break-off , where we're just going to have to take those shots that we normally take and make.''
Marbury's comments appeared to be a telltale sign that the U.S. players still aren't on the same page with the coaches.
Only Allen Iverson, Tim Duncan and Richard Jefferson have played under Brown before, and the learning process for the other nine members of the team is coming along as slowly as an Angolan fast break.
The American players looked utterly flummoxed when confronted by the tightly packed zone defense that Italy played in Cologne during the first stop of their five-game exhibition tour of Europe, though the ball movement and shot selection improved in a last-second victory over Germany.
Those two teams, however, do not represent the type of top-echelon competition the Americans will face Friday night against Serbia-Montenegro -- or in Athens against the likes of Lithuania, Spain, Argentina and others.
The Serbian team, which won the World Championship in 2002 on U.S. soil in Indianapolis, started its Olympic preparations on June 28 -- almost four full weeks before the Americans opened training camp. All of the other top teams were practicing and playing in warm-up competitions throughout July, too.
``Our tactical level is much better than the American team's. That's reality,'' said Serbian assistant coach Igor Kokoskov, who worked under Brown last season with the NBA's Detroit Pistons. ``No question the Americans have great names, great potential, but it takes time to put a team together.''
That fact was well known to Brown, his assistants and the team architects for USA Basketball who were under the impression a year ago that the team that qualified in Puerto Rico would return largely intact for the Olympics.
But a series of defections and rejections left only three returning players, and Brown is now confronted with the task of fielding a team that's as unfamiliar with each other as it is with the competition.
Many of the American players divulged Thursday they had little or no idea exactly who is playing for Serbia-Montenegro, or what schemes their upcoming opponent tends to favor.
``We've still got a lot to learn, but we're getting better,'' Dwyane Wade said. ``We've got so much talent on this team, but we're not using that talent to the best of our abilities.''
Like the Americans, the team from Serbia-Montenegro does not have its full complement of the country's best players. Among those sitting out are Peja Stojakovic of the Sacramento Kings, Marko Jaric of the Los Angeles Clippers, Darko Milicic of the Detroit Pistons and Vlade Divac of the Los Angeles Lakers.
But the Serbians have used their practice time and their years of familiarity with each other to bond into a cohesive unit, one that executes its plays to perfection, analyzes its opponents on film and in person, and pays attention to the message of its head coach, Zelimar Obradovic.
Brown's rants have clearly fallen on a few pairs of deaf ears.
``We're trying to make them aware, but I don't know if they understand,'' Brown said. ``I think we made progress after the Italian game. They saw players from other parts of the world who can really play, and that was enlightening to a lot of our young kids.
``They saw guys really play as a team as a result of playing together for a long time, and because they take so much pride in playing for their countries, so I think all those things were kind of new to our guys. They might have heard it from us, but they've got to experience it firsthand.''
Much to the dismay of the folks watching in America, that learning experience has been a painful one to behold. The only saving grace is that the Olympics are still more than a week away, and whatever happens in exhibition games won't matter in Athens.
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