What Team USA learned: the link between Steph Curry and LeBron James, a spark plug, and big changes

For most of the night, coach Steve Kerr started Stephen Curry, Devin Booker, LeBron James, Jrue Holiday, and Joel Embiid in front of the bench. As expected, Canada got off to a quick lead, but the team kept turning the ball over and was clearly not paying attention.

The second team was led by Anthony Davis and had Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, Jayson Tatum, and Bam Adebayo as well. With Kevin Durant out and Derrick White still to come in, it was a clean 10-man rotation.

You could see people hesitating and throwing too much in the first 10-minute quarter; no one wanted to be too direct. During that time, only Curry made a field goal for the leaders.

“Well, you know, we’ve only been practicing for four days,” Kerr said. “On offense, you can see the rust.” A good number of mistakes in the first half.

Kerr told reporters not to worry too much about which group will start the exhibition games because he will change things up before the team goes to Paris. You can see where Holiday fits in terms of ball pressure, though. He’s the wing defender, and the first unit needs that with Curry and James getting older.

“This group makes it hard to make a bad choice for a starting lineup,” Kerr said. “I think I told you guys the other day that I was going to do something different.” We’re going to try a few different sets for the next two games before deciding on one.