USA vs. Serbia game:

He’s not going to get that call at the international level. They don’t give anyone that whistle and they let the players play. Would be great to see that in the NBA at some point in the near future.

It’s been a mixed bag with Joel in these exhibition games. He’s clearly not in shape and not playing full throttle and got put in the spin cycle by Jokic in the first half. The team is learning how to play with one another, no duh. He had a nice faceup earlier and set some good screens, a hard double drag for a Steph Curry bomb in one of those sequences. You see a bit of that, then other times he’s kind of slow and plodding and looks off the pace. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? He doesn’t have to be a primary offensive weapon. If he plays his typical stout defense, sets screens, moves the ball and finds his teammates, then that’s all he really needs to do at this level. Leave the scoring to the myriad guys around you with championship rings. It should be fine. They open the Olympics with this Serbia team and then they’ll destroy South Sudan and Puerto Rico. Then it gets real.