School of hard knocks

Team USA learned plenty of tough lessons in win over Greece

Tim Duncan is still getting used to the international game. AP

And so it has come to this for the United States' men's basketball team: It is happy with a grind-it-out victory over Greece, a nation that certainly knows pita but not pick and rolls. What did we learn from Tuesday night's 77-71 victory over our hosts besides the reality that there is booing -- and lots of it -- at the Olympics?

Here's what we learned:

• The United States is in deep, deep trouble in this clambake. My conclusion after two games and 38 missed (of 45 attempts) 3-point shots is that, while it will not be a shock if the U.S. wins the gold medal, it is no longer the clear favorites. And if the Americans were in Group A instead of Group B, they would stand an excellent chance of not making the medal round.

• A serious review of the selection process, supervised by USA Basketball, a group all but unknown to America's basketball fans, will follow hard upon these Games. Without prompting, coach Larry Brown brought it up after Tuesday's game. "We have to find role players, but that's not the way our team has been picked," said Brown. How much input Brown himself had, though, has never been clear. He hints none; representatives on the selection committee hint some.

• Tim Duncan, unanimously considered the most reliable member of this patchwork squad, is having a hard time figuring out how to operate in this international game. He's a smart guy and he'll eventually do it, but it's not been easy. Duncan, playing with his back to the basket even though he plays mostly a faceup game as a power forward in San Antonio, is surrounded by at least two players on virtually every play. He is by nature a team player who gives up the ball in those situations, but he knows now that he's giving it up to poor shooters. If Duncan puts his head down and bulls his way to the basket, he knows he will end up on the free throw line and that is the Achilles heel (requisite Grecian cliché) of his game.

Duncan will face bullish centers most of the time in the Olympics, and he is by and large a finesse defender. He's capable of muscling up, but when he tries to do that he hears questionable whistles. The U.S. lost him to five fouls with 3:52 left against Greece.

• Brown has clearly not arrived at a suitable substitution pattern. He'd love to shrink his rotation to maybe eight players, but he's afraid he'll get in foul trouble down the stretch and, wisely, doesn't want to suddenly insert a player who hadn't gotten any early time. Why Brown didn't use LeBron James more against Greece, was a mystery. He was America's best player (10 points on five-of-six shooting from the floor) on Tuesday, but he never returned once he had been taken out with over nine minutes to play. Brown was not mad at James, though, and praised his play after the game.

• The same cannot be true of Brown and Carmelo Anthony. Unless a heart-to-heart between coach and player happens soon, Anthony will be buried on the bench so deeply you're going to need a miner's helmet to find him. Brown has talked and talked about how the U.S. shouldn't take rushed shots in the set offense and, in his five minutes of action, Anthony took three of them. And Carmelo: Take the damn towel off your head before you enter the game. This isn't a heavyweight fight.

• Much of the heat for America's bad play against zone defense will rain down on the head of forward Richard Jefferson, who has so badly missed all 13 of his 3-point shots that he may become the sixth O ring on the Olympic logo. I feel for Jefferson because he's a good all-around player who was not added to the team for his perimeter marksmanship. But he's facing a dilemma. He doesn't want to shoot -- and Brown doesn't want him to shoot -- but teams are sloughing so far off of him that he it's almost embarrassing when he doesn't take the shot. The best solution is to put him on the bench until he finds his touch.

• The U.S. still has little clue of how to play against a zone, refusing to duck into seams and take pull-up jumpers or drop the ball off. Dwyane Wade constantly gets by the perimeter defense, then takes it all the way into traffic. Lamar Odom constantly drives too close to the basket on the baseline. And that's not to pick on them. They are two players who, all in all, have done a good job, particularly Odom, who gutted it out against Greece despite being awake most of the night with severe stomach pains, brought on by bacteria.

• Rest assured, though, that the U.S. will beat Australia on Thursday and all but clinch a spot in the medal round.

I think.