Finals in Mind: USA Beats Spain, 82-76, Gold Medal Game Next

Certainly a semifinal with plenty of Bull, Friday’s matchup between Spain and Team USA gave us the best game of the elimination round. In the end, the United States got the expected win, but it wasn’t for lack of effort from Pau Gasol and the rest of the Spanish team.

Effort seems to be something of a key emphasis in games which involve the USA men’s team. Fortunately, the effort was mostly there on Friday. Not so fortunate were Spain’s shooters in this game. The Unite States gave up 3-point attempts at a high rate, but the Spanish side couldn’t manage to make them pay.

ESP probably wins this game if they hit their 3s. Instead, 8/26 on largely open looks.
— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) August 19, 2016

While Spain struggled from beyond the arc, Gasol was thriving inside of it. In a game that featured way too many technical fouls and fouls in general, it was good to see that at least one vocally demonstrative former Chicago player was having a time of it. Pau had 23 points and eight rebounds during 28:40 of playing time in the loss.

Next: Jabari Parker Commits to Chicago

Another Bull, Nikola Mirotic, didn’t have a great day. After a massive scoring outburst against France, putting up 23 points of his own, Mirotic looked similar to the player that Chicago fans might be familiar – an inconsistent player with lots of potential, capable of big things when his outside shot is going in.

DeMarcus Cousins fouled out, having made little mark on the game and fortunately for head coach Mike Krzyzewski, he had DeAndre Jordan ready and willing to absolutely dominate. The third quarter was particularly good to the massive USA center, during which he repeatedly ran pick-and-roll action with guard Kyrie Irving and was almost unstoppable.

Jordan might have score just nine points, but he also had 16 rebounds and four blocked shots. One of the key factors for the United States heading into the Rio Olympics was going to be their inside play. The rest of world is well behind at the guard positions and the small forward position, but the frontcourt is an area where players like Gasol, Kristap Porzingis, Dario Saric, Nikola Jokic and Domantas Sabonis represent a generational transcendence of excellence.

While we’ve covered a couple of Bulls (past and present), there is one Bull that the franchise is building around for the future that we have yet to touch on – Jimmy Butler.

Of all the Bulls in this game, the least exciting stat line and general performance goes to Butler. Jimmy is certainly one of the most talented players in the league and on the Bulls, but he might be finding it difficult to fit his game in with so many other ball-dominant players. It also doesn’t help that he shot 0-for-5 against Spain.

When asked about the game, Butler said, “Our thing this game was to play really great defense, contest all their 3-point shots, because they shoot a lot of them. And then to rundown the loose balls and a lot of rebounds, and I think we did that really well.”