I like the tone that that article sets a lot, as well, and totally agree that the potential competitiveness of the tournament will be a feature and not a bug. When other national teams are able to field a lineup that has guys who can compete at every level (particularly at the wing spots, as that's where the US has always held a pretty dominant advantage), there is going to be the possibility for the kinds of games that we saw in that second one against AUS. None of the Australian guys are stars, but they have a starting lineup full of NBA players, and many of those are NBA players with significant playoff experience contributing on really good teams. Patty Mills has been a contributor on a title-winning team. Bogut has, as well. Delly has. Aaron Baynes (kind of) has, and he and Joe Ingles have definitely played big roles on playoff teams. Bad basketball teams occasionally beat exceptionally good teams on occasion even at the highest levels, particularly when the chips aren't really down; as one of the resident Timberwolves fans on the board, I will never forget watching
Shabazz "BazzGod" Muhammed DESTROY the eventual 73-9 Warriors team, and I'd argue that the discrepancy between those TWolves and the Warriors was greater than that between this US team (especially in their, what, third game ever playing together?) and this Australian squad.
Anyway, that's all a rambling way of saying that there's no need for a ton of handwringing; this group is what it is. They're a team that is going to work hard, is going to do some cool things defensively, and when shots are falling, will look really good. But it's also a group that is going to see some really ugly offensive sequences. The US has the best talent top to bottom, but there are certainly teams that have the guys to compete, and that's cool. It CERTAINLY doesn't make this all a referendum on Pop or anything like that. This is just a really tricky group to try to pull consistent offense out of, to be honest, especially without having the option of instilling a really complex system (even beyond the fact that these aren't the most talented players in the US pool). One of the main strong points of Team USA has always been that we just have so many guys who are good options to run the offense, and that's just not the case here. Other than Kemba and Mitchell (and even Mitchell is in a heavily egalitarian offense where Rubio and Ingles did a ton of the ball-handling last year), there really isn't another guy on the team that consistently has significant ball-handling duties in the NBA season. Particularly from the wing, most of the guys are either finishers or ball movers, not initiators. That's why it's not surprising to see more iso play this year than usual as things break down. We just don't have the luxury of having, say, 4 guys who regularly run an offense (say, from a random 2016 lineup, Durant, Kyrie, Jimmy Butler, and Paul George) on the court at the same time. It's not that Pop has decided that going with an iso-heavy offense is always right, it's that when you have those types of guys, it is easier to have a prettier-looking offense. There's going to be a ton of intrigue this time around about how to generate consistently good shots against good defensive teams, and that'll be fun to watch! We've got a bunch of guys who can hit bad shots (Walker, Tatum, Barnes, Mitchell, Middleton), but when push comes to shove and we aren't hitting those, what's the move? I'm looking forward to seeing what Pop can dig up.
On a different note, I remain intrigued to see if Australia can maintain a high level of play throughout the tournament. Their biggest question marks to me are a) can Bogut stay healthy enough/find enough juice to even approximate what he did to the US in multiple games, b) can they get enough scoring from their non-starting 5+Bogut to keep them in games, and c) can Joe Ingles find his shot? If they get something from Bogey, something from the bench, and some star turns from Ingles, they can definitely hang with and beat the best teams in the world in the tournament.