Joel Embiid played role in Steph Curry’s hot hand in Team USA exhibition victory over Serbia

Team USA continued its preparation for a run at a fifth straight Olympic gold medal with another exhibition game on Wednesday afternoon, winning their third straight game by defeating Nikola Jokic and Team Serbia 105-79.

The United States’ starting center, Joel Embiid however, is still battling through some “growing pains” on the international stage. Embiid scored eight points against Serbia, with eight rebounds, three assists, and a steal in 17 minutes of action. He shot just 2-for-8 from the floor, 0-2 from beyond the arc, and 4-4 from the charity stripe.

Team USA relied on two stellar performances from Steph Curry and Bam Adebayo to beat Serbia. Adebayo scored 17 points, including three 3-pointers in the win while Curry dropped 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting from the floor, knocking down 6-of-9 from three point range – with Embiid playing a pretty significant role in his performance.

Final score:

105 — USA
79 — Serbia pic.twitter.com/tcG2k0OE3E

— StatMuse (@statmuse) July 17, 2024

Joel Embiid making progress as a screener

Throughout Team USA’s first two showcase games, their offense appeared a bit clunky, which was expected considering the plethora of superstar talent on the roster.

However, USA’s offense flipped a switch this afternoon. They ran a heavy amount of staggered screen actions for Curry to generate open perimeter looks which obviously worked given the fact that 18 of Curry’s 24 points came from beyond the arc.

Embiid served as the second screener in nearly each one of these actions and given his size, it made things more difficult for Curry’s defender to navigate.

Steph Curry vs Serbia

24 points
6 3PT

FLAMETHROWER 🔥

(🎥 @Digits3App )

pic.twitter.com/TDGDXteIwR

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) July 17, 2024

This is progress for Embiid in comparison to his first couple games starting for Team USA.

If the 76ers big man continues to make strides as an off-ball screen setter, he’ll gel with USA’s starting unit at a much higher level. However, there are still points of concern that is making people question if he should be bench in favor of Anthony Davis.

Joel Embiid’s offensive struggles continued

Embiid has yet to find himself offensively throughout USA’s exhibition games and he endured even more growing pains in today’s win against Serbia. He fumbled a key pass from Steph Curry out of a blitz and on one play, threw the ball into the stands.

Embiid still couldn’t get it going from beyond the arc and was forcing shots against Nikola Jokic in isolation. He was caught ball-watching in transition, which really serves as a glaring indicator that he’s is yet to be in 100% game shape.

Joel Embiid tried to bait a foul on Nikola Jokic 😳pic.twitter.com/3yipOZro6N

— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) July 17, 2024

Joel Embiid, Steph Curry, and LeBron James clearly haven’t been able to maximize each other’s potential while sharing the floor together, but there’s still time to get things right before the Olympics officially begin at the end of the month.

The United States now heads to London for two more exhibition games, against South Sudan and Germany. From there, they’ll play three Group C games in Lille on July 28 (Serbia), July 31 (South Sudan) and Aug. 3 (Puerto Rico). The knockout rounds then shift to Paris with the quarterfinals (Aug. 6), semifinals (Aug. 8) and gold medal game (Aug. 10) at Accor Arena.

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