Watch out for Team France at the Olympics

The men's Team USA basketball team won their first scrimmage last night against Team Canada. Let’s discuss.

Team USA looked a little discombobulated at times, but they also looked good. Anthony Edwards played a solid game. LeBron and Steph seemed to have nice chemistry. All the bigs, with Joel Embiid being the exception, played okay. Embiid had a rough go, but I feel like he will figure it out.

This is a good group of pros for this team, and I do feel like they should be the favorites heading into the summer olympics. This will not be an easy go though. I understand we didn't have our absolute best at the FIBA Championships last summer, but they did not medal. That was worrisome. Germany is good. Spain is solid. Brazil has some decent players. Canada is loaded. But, I think the biggest obstacle, the hardest country to play is going to be France.

France is stacked. They have current and former NBA players up and down their roster. They have youth and they have size. They have chemistry. They play loose and have fun. They are not the favorites going into these games, so they are playing with house money. I had to look up their roster just to see how well put together it actually is. This is a solid group of players. Rudy Gobert, Victor Webanyama, Evan Fournier, Nicolas Batum and Bilal Coulibaly are all currently on NBA rosters. Gobert, for all of his warts, is a very, very, very good defender. He has multiple DPOY's. He is one of the better rim protectors currently in the game. He can rebound and he can run a pick and roll. Wemby is the best young prospect in the NBA. He is the unicorn of unicorns. He is my favorite player to watch. He literally does it all. He is already as good a defender as Gobert. He is an excellent rebounder. He can shoot the three and attack the glass. He is an amazing player to watch and will be for a long, long time. Fournier and Batum's best days are behind them, but they always up their game in the Olympics. They can both shoot, and Batum plays solid defense. Coulibaly is coming off an okay rookie season, but he is playing with his home country and teaming up once again with Wemby. They have wonderful chemistry and they made the Metropolitan 96ers a team to watch last season. The rest of their roster is full of overseas pro players. The overseas players play on some of the best pro teams overseas and are integral parts of those teams. This France roster is almost as well constructed as Team USA. The French roster has much better chemistry than the US. These dudes use their offseasons playing together. They get together and work on their team building. They know how to play off one another. They have set plays that have worked time and time again. There is something to all of that. It is useful to have that kind of camaraderie and knowing your teammates abilities.

Team USA has some time to get a bit of chemistry, but it is not like the years that all of these other countries have played together. The US is going in as the betting favorite, but it is going to be an absolute bloodbath. They are going to play at their peak night in and night out. And even if they do that, France is going to come to play. I would not be shocked at all if these two meetup in the gold medal game and France won. That is how much respect I have for their roster. The US cannot go into a matchup with France and expect to win. They need to be ready for everything the French will throw at them. And I cannot wait to watch. 

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing, the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast, and the greatest basketball writer on the internet.

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