No easy buckets but these

If Team USA is the unequivocal best in global basketball, why is everyone so depressed about it?

There’s an impulse to make this seem difficult. The basketball, but also the being here.

Since the Olympics started talk around the U.S. men’s basketball team has lived in a weird loop of a very particular malaise. Malaise teetering between apathy and catastrophe, and the sense that there is nothing to be done about either. Not can’t be done, but a real why bother about it.

The loop starts with something like: How good the team is and how little it matters what they do. Then moves to: How much it matters but how can it, with no real competition. Next, it splits, branching into distracted, often contradicting points like: How underrated X (name a player on the roster other than LeBron James) is. How overlooked X (name a player on the roster other than James) is. How X (name a player on the roster other than James) is in for a leap next season. Sometimes coaching factors in, like Steve Kerr being too amiable, not cutting guys soon enough (“guys”, so far, being Steph Curry), or being too …