Team USA Scouting Report: Serbia’s Bogdan Bogdanović Discusses Looming Showdown

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LILLE, France — Bogdan Bogdanović is a smart man.

He knows how intensely competitive NBA greats can be, how all it takes to get the best out of themselves is the slightest sign of disrespect from an opponent. The 31-year-old Serbian star knows this, of course, having built a highly respectable career in the Association over the past seven seasons, playing for the Sacramento Kings and Atlanta Hawks.

When Bogdanović was asked on Friday whether he believed Team USA was beatable at these Olympics — a pertinent question given that the Nikola Jokić-led Serbs face the LeBron James-led Americans on Sunday to open Group C’s pool stage — the sharpshooter most astutely and strategically sidestepped the question.

“I know what you mean, but I’m not going to say anything because I don’t want to motivate them even more,” Bogdanović said The Athletics with a smile as he stands outside the Espace Maurice Herzog gym after his team’s training. “We certainly believe in it, but I don’t want to give them extra motivation.”

As Bogdanović surely noted, Team USA is coming off a series of narrow exhibition victories against South Sudan (101-100) and Germany (92-88) that left their coach, Steve Kerr, deeply concerned. After so many weeks of comparisons to the ’92 Dream Team and a 105-79 exhibition win over Serbia in Abu Dhabi that sidelined Bogdanović (and Miami Heat’s Nikola Jović) that preceded the aforementioned Team USA nail-biters, the mediocrity that has followed is enough to make you wonder if this team is more vulnerable than most thought.

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But Bogdanović, who was part of the Serbian team that won silver at last year’s FIBA ​​World Championship without Jokic (who went to Germany) and the team that lost the Olympic gold medal to the Americans (with Jokic) in Rio in 2016 know better than to poke this red, white and blue bear. As he walked away, it was hard to miss his obvious choice not to create counterproductive headlines in the run-up to their showdown.

“There’s still time for a cup (later),” he joked as he walked to the team bus.

Translation: Winning would be the best way to make a strong opening statement here.

But as Bogdanović knows, the outside world doesn’t give the Serbs much of a chance to pull off an upset here (they’re double-digit underdogs in Vegas). They went 3-2 in exhibition games against a variety of NBA role players and stars.

The victories came from France (Victor Wembanyama, Rudy Gobert, Nicolas Batum, lottery pick Bilal Coulibaly, Evan Fournier), Japan (Rui Hachimura) and Greece (Giannis Antetokounmpo), while they lost to the Australians (Patty Mills, Josh Giddey, Josh Green, Joe Ingles, Dante Exum) and Americans (that list is too long). In the game against Team USA, Jokić went from the field only 6 of 19 times and did not play in the fourth quarter (he finished with 16 points, 11 rebounds and only two assists). Steph Curry (24 points) and Bam Adebayo (17 points) led the Americans.

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With a total of 12 teams competing, the top two teams from each of the three groups and the top two third-place teams will advance to the quarterfinals. The Americans and Serbia will share Group C with South Sudan and Puerto Rico.

Team USA remains the clear favorite here, but the continued absence (and questionable status for Sunday) of Kevin Durant due to a calf injury, combined with the narrow wins in the exhibition games, has led to some criticism. Still, Bogdanović used to be If we are willing to debate this, this early perception that Americans are vulnerable may be even stronger in the media than among their rivals.

“No, I think they’re still one of the best teams ever to play in the Olympics,” he said. “Everybody knows that, but nobody’s going to just give up and not play. Everybody’s going to try to play against them as best as they can, that’s for sure. I think (exhibition) games are preparation games, but there are a lot of veterans there.

“They know how to switch it up when it’s time to play. You could see that they didn’t want to lose when they were down 15, 16 against South Sudan, or down a little bit against Germany. You could see that they just stepped it up a little bit, played a little bit more team basketball and then they won.”

But if we break that trend, Serbs can answer the question in question without saying a word.

(Photo of Stephen Curry of Team USA and Bogdan Bogdanović of Serbia after the practice match in preparation for the Olympics: Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images)