The Ringer - Everything You Need to Know About the 2019 FIBA World Cup2019-09-17T15:42:58-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/205767172019-09-17T15:42:58-04:002019-09-17T15:42:58-04:00‘The Mismatch’: Spain Wins the FIBA World Cup. Plus: NBA Islands!
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<figcaption>Photo by Herve Bellanger/Icon Sport via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The guys discuss Spain’s victory over Argentina in the 2019 FIBA World Cup finals</p> <div id="p4S8j5"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/3tnf4TlPGZU77NQYPRnb7m" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div>
<p id="FbGuR0"><a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-ringer-nba-show/episodes/3fa0cfd1-2231-4aeb-b31e-9ae434fafb1b">The guys discuss Spain’s victory over Argentina</a> in the 2019 FIBA World Cup finals (0:45) before comparing their respective lists of “island” players (12:00).</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/17/20870999/the-mismatch-spain-wins-the-fiba-world-cup-plus-nba-islandsChris VernonKevin O'Connor2019-09-16T18:02:03-04:002019-09-16T18:02:03-04:00The Winners and Losers of the 2019 FIBA World Cup
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<figcaption>Getty Images/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>The United States and Australia flopped, but Spain got a kiss from God</p> <p id="CWsokW">The 2019 FIBA World Cup concluded on Sunday with two medal-round games that featured four of the best teams in the world, plenty of players recognizable to NBA fans, but nary a trace of the U.S. men’s national team, which was already flying home with an unsightly seventh-place finish stuffed in its suitcase. Before our focus shifts to NBA training camps, which open in less than two weeks, let’s put a bow on the proceedings by highlighting some of the best and worst from the FIBA fortnight, starting with—reasonably enough—the team that won the whole friggin’ thing …</p>
<h3 id="rSHfv4">Winners: Spain (Most Notably Marc Gasol and Ricky Rubio)</h3>
<p id="GpQmh9">With stalwarts <a href="http://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2019/news/spain-with-a-lot-of-options-despite-pau-gasol-out-of-world-cup-following-foot-surgery">Pau Gasol</a> and <a href="https://www.eurohoops.net/en/euroleague/726370/end-of-an-era-juan-carlos-navarro-retired/">Juan Carlos Navarro</a> off the roster, and several other key pieces of past squads (point guard Sergio Rodríguez, big men Nikola Mirotic and Serge Ibaka) also <a href="https://latinamericanpost.com/29091-spain-without-paul-gasol-and-serge-ibaka-for-the-basketball-world-cup-2019-in-china">out of the mix</a>, there wasn’t as much flash in the Spanish side this time around. But after some iffy moments early in group play, Spain found its form, leaning on an exacting defense to outlast some of the most explosive offensive teams in the draw. Spain never trailed in a decisive 95-75 win over Argentina on Sunday that delivered the country its second World Cup title—and, with it, a measure of redemption for the 2014 tournament, where, even as the host, it was eliminated by France in the quarterfinals. (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860968/team-usa-france-fiba-world-cup-quarterfinal-loss">Happens to the best of us</a>.)</p>
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<p lang="es" dir="ltr">CAMPEONES DEL MUNDO . <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FIBAWC?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FIBAWC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Espa%C3%B1aGotGame?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EspañaGotGame</a><a href="https://twitter.com/BaloncestoESP?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@BaloncestoESP</a> <a href="https://t.co/Uika4cVLOd">pic.twitter.com/Uika4cVLOd</a></p>— Basketball World Cup (@FIBAWC) <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1173243673850470400?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 15, 2019</a>
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<p id="2lJj5A">Marc Gasol wasn’t at his sharpest on the offensive end in China, shooting just 42.5 percent from the field and 22.6 percent from 3-point range over eight games. But he <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/10/20857980/marc-gasol-spain-raptors">led the Spanish charge on both ends of the floor</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1173224460695924736">getting his teammates easy looks</a> while captaining the smothering coverage that would prove to be Spain’s calling card. Gasol frustrated Serbian superstar Nikola Jokic into <a href="https://twitter.com/JoelRushNBA/status/1170694935881736194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">getting himself ejected</a> during a second-round matchup; erupted for <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1172568557785427968">33 points</a>, six rebounds, and four assists in a thrilling double-overtime win over Australia in the semifinals; and helped limit Argentine legend Luis Scola to eight points on 1-for-10 shooting in the gold-medal game, which also saw him chip in a tidy 14 points, seven rebounds, seven assists, three blocks, and two steals.</p>
<p id="V3MFg1">The 34-year-old Gasol got all of a week off after the end of his NBA season with the Toronto Raptors, but <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27606020/m-gasol-verge-pairing-wcup-nba-titles">he felt compelled to suit up for Spain anyway</a>, to show the country’s next generation the importance of commitment and loyalty. His reward: Joining Lamar Odom as the only players ever to win an NBA championship and World Cup gold in the same year. As <a href="https://www.eurohoops.net/en/fibawc/935239/marc-gasol-potentially-this-could-be-my-last-world-cup/">he said Sunday</a>, “It’s been a good three months.”</p>
<p id="tyYNzw">The summer hasn’t been too bad for his longtime point guard, either. After signing a three-year, $51 million contract with the Phoenix Suns in free agency, Rubio shined as Spain’s lead playmaker. He averaged a team-high 16.4 points and six assists per game, shot 38.7 percent from long distance and 84.1 percent from the foul line, and led the way with 20 points in 23 minutes in the gold-medal win over Argentina to earn World Cup MVP honors.</p>
<p id="0g5tBt">Eleven years ago, Rubio was a floppy-haired marvel, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2017/11/20/16671978/nba-utah-jazz-the-real-ricky-rubio">opening eyes in the States</a> with his play as a 17-year-old at the Beijing Olympics. He’s a different player now; he’s a little less audacious, and not quite the star he seemed destined to be. But the years have helped turn Rubio from a boy wonder into an established veteran, and the 28-year-old, who <a href="https://twitter.com/Eurohoopsnet/status/1173259064467439616">dedicated his MVP-winning performance to his late mother</a>, was arguably at the peak of his powers as a two-way player in China, delivering more substance than style. That could bode well for his chances of getting out to a strong start alongside young guns Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton in Phoenix, and for the Suns’ chances of putting together their first respectable season in a half-decade.</p>
<h3 id="VBEJgT">Loser: USA Basketball, and Its Status Quo</h3>
<p id="MNqTp4">We’ve <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860968/team-usa-france-fiba-world-cup-quarterfinal-loss">discussed</a> this <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cup">quite</a> a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/12/20861645/team-usa-next-generation-zion-williamson-world-cup">bit</a> since <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/11/20861238/group-chat-france-eliminates-team-usa-from-fiba-world-cup-what-now">Team USA fell</a> last week, so I won’t belabor the point. Getting better talent <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/13/20864054/team-usa-superteams-nba">can’t be the only lesson</a> that USA Basketball takes from a World Cup cycle that featured the first two losses in international competition for a U.S. roster featuring NBA talent since 2006—three, if you’re counting <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/aug/24/australia-beats-usa-for-the-first-time-ever-in-basketball">exhibition play</a>—and very nearly included <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/3/20847805/team-usa-turkey-fiba-world-cup-2019">a fourth</a>.</p>
<p id="KXqnal">Asked about 31 members of USA Basketball’s 35-player roster pool <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/8/5/20755033/team-usa-fiba-world-cup-training-camp">withdrawing from consideration</a> for a World Cup spot, Jerry Colangelo <a href="https://apnews.com/fe84070c59b54781a6f1d75c039a8d65">told Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press</a> that “you can’t help but notice and remember who you thought you were going to war with and who didn’t show up,” and that “no one would have anticipated the pull-outs that we had.” That can no longer be an excuse. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_FIBA_Basketball_World_Cup">next World Cup</a> will once again be held the year before the Summer Olympics. It will again be held in September and in Asia, with Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia hosting, meaning the reasons behind these withdrawals won’t be going away anytime soon. Between now and then, Colangelo and Co. must find a way to work within those strictures and produce a U.S. squad capable of playing high-level FIBA basketball—ideally, one featuring more credible shooters and versatile big men than this year’s model—and competing for gold, with or without the cream of the crop of American talent.</p>
<p id="lWYg6l"><a href="https://www.espn.com/olympics/basketball/story/_/id/27611517/pop-team-usa-critics-immature-arrogant">Gregg Popovich is right</a> when he says that the players who <em>did</em> show up—those who honored their commitment, suited up, and played their asses off—deserve respect, and have nothing to be ashamed of. That doesn’t mean, though, that Team USA brass shouldn’t be taking a look under the hood and trying to figure out how to make this the last seventh-place finish the program sees for quite a while.</p>
<h3 id="nQ07qz">Winner: Bogdan Bogdanovic</h3>
<p id="Vy5SJZ">The Sacramento Kings guard was arguably the best player in the tournament. Bogdanovic averaged 22.9 points in 28 minutes per game, the second-highest per-game average in the World Cup, shooting a scorching 53 percent from 3-point land on more than eight long-distance attempts per game. He brutalized Italy in group play, torched the U.S. in the consolation bracket, and capped his run by hanging 31 on the Czech Republic to secure Serbia’s fifth-place finish:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/LeaderOfHorde?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LeaderOfHorde</a> with 7⃣ triples to wrap-up an incredible <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FIBAWC?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FIBAWC</a> campaign . <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FIBAWC?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FIBAWC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SrbijaGotGame?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SrbijaGotGame</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/KSSrbije?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@KSSrbije</a> <a href="https://t.co/cDj0JyzKEe">pic.twitter.com/cDj0JyzKEe</a></p>— Basketball World Cup (@FIBAWC) <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1172872931912777728?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 14, 2019</a>
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<p id="DsLyxt">That’s about four spots lower than the Serbians—fresh off silver medals at their last three international competitions, with ascendant NBA star Nikola Jokic leading a deep, tough roster—were hoping to land at this World Cup. But while Serbia’s overall performance was a disappointment, Bogdanovic’s individual outing, which earned him a slot on the all-tournament team, was anything but, and marks the 27-year-old as a player worth watching on a talented young Kings team this NBA season.</p>
<h3 id="ftnKUs">Loser: Australia’s Standing in the Eyes of the Basketball Gods</h3>
<p id="E5vwn1">Australia entered this World Cup having never medaled at a major international tournament. This year, though, brought new promise. An undefeated run through group play put the Boomers on the other side of the knockout-round bracket from Team USA, and a quarterfinal victory over the Czech Republic got Patty Mills, Andrew Bogut, Aron Baynes and Co. into the final four—just one win away from a shot at gold.</p>
<p id="WXHw2u">Standing in their way was Spain, who’d knocked the Aussies off by a single point in the bronze-medal game at the 2016 Olympics. Australia led for the bulk of the game, but a late Spanish run made things tight late in the fourth. With a one-point lead in the final 10 seconds, Bogut was <a href="https://twitter.com/BaynesFanClub/status/1172474113753067521">whistled for a foul</a> that sent Gasol to the line for free throws that put Spain up by one. (Bogut would later refer to the officials as, ahem, <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/basketball/fiba-world-cup/fing-disgrace-andrew-bogut-leaves-court-in-anger-after-australias-world-cup-semifinals-loss-to-spain/news-story/d3ea3d5090b0ea6fb77f8ba922385c9b">“cheating-ass motherfuckers.”</a>) Mills responded by drawing a foul on the other end, but split the pair of free throws, forcing overtime. After two extra sessions, it was Spain who came out with the win, with Gasol leading the way to a 95-88 victory that <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/basketball/fiba-world-cup/australian-boomers-vs-spain-live-coverage-fiba-world-cup-semifinals-stream-scores-how-to-watch-tv-time/news-story/64a894e4f441ada653b7e07e8ec5849c">ripped the hearts out of the Australian side</a> and put assistant coach Luc Longley in position to deliver the quote of the tournament.</p>
<p id="LXgbfW">“It’s just a fuckin’ … I don’t know what we’ve gotta do,” <a href="https://www.foxsports.com.au/basketball/fiba-world-cup/theyre-not-kissing-us-on-the-dick-yet-luc-longley-delivered-his-unfiltered-reaction-to-the-boomers-heartbreaking-world-cup-loss/news-story/58144325b6d4a5421ee487f07fd2c597">Longley told Australian reporters</a>. “We’ve gotta find an altar somewhere and burn a sacrifice, or do something [for] the basketball gods, because they’re not kissing us on the dick yet, like they do Spain. You can print that if you want: Spain gets kissed on the dick by the basketball gods every time we play them.”</p>
<p id="i9lsQx">After that crushing defeat, Australia still had a chance to medal, and held a 15-point lead over France early in the third quarter of the bronze-medal game. But strong second halves from guards Nando De Colo and Andrew Albicy helped turn the tide, pushing France to a 67-59 win to earn their second straight World Cup bronze. Once again, the Boomers went home without a medal.</p>
<p id="20iVPu">“When you see Australia, the players, Bogut, [Matthew] Dellavedova—I know those guys and it’s awful for them,” <a href="https://www.nba.com/article/2019/09/15/fiba-world-cup-france-wins-bronze-medal-australia">said French guard Evan Fournier</a>, who scored 16 points to conclude a strong tournament. “But that’s definitely what we didn’t want, to finish the tournament feeling like [crap] like that.”</p>
<p id="n07P2k">No word yet on whether the ritual sacrifice will be taking place in Melbourne or Sydney. We’ll let you know as soon as we hear.</p>
<h3 id="Z12rRD">Winner: Argentina</h3>
<p id="FxLDOx">Just a week ago, the odds of Argentina winning the World Cup were <a href="https://twitter.com/golfodds/status/1171089504288927745">100-to-1</a>, a lack of faith best explained by a roster devoid of players currently in the NBA. Argentina’s most recognizable face was a <a href="https://twitter.com/YourManDevine/status/1171403783575937024">graying 39-year-old</a> who’s been playing in China for the past two years. But the Argentines are heading home with silver, thanks to a lovely playing style that prioritized ball movement, cohesion, and activity.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/facucampazzo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@FacuCampazzo</a> e-mails it to <a href="https://twitter.com/gabriel_deck?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@gabriel_deck</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/cabboficial?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@cabboficial</a> fans are loving it . <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FIBAWC?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FIBAWC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ARGESP?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ARGESP</a><br><br> <a href="https://t.co/U6RPjx3FuZ">https://t.co/U6RPjx3FuZ</a> <a href="https://t.co/YXHoOgDqKL">pic.twitter.com/YXHoOgDqKL</a></p>— Basketball World Cup (@FIBAWC) <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1173215756391051267?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 15, 2019</a>
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<p id="Ff4zoC">Point guard Facundo Campazzo shone so bright <a href="https://twitter.com/KellanOlson/status/1173209480248475648">with the ball in his hands</a>—62 assists, <a href="http://www.fiba.basketball/basketballworldcup/2019/playerstats">second most in the tournament</a>, including some real <a href="https://twitter.com/CoachMarchand/status/1171522547973640195">stunners</a>—that he sent many onlookers (myself included) to Google to find out how long his contract at Real Madrid runs. (The answer, sadly: until <a href="https://www.realmadrid.com/en/news/2019/08/official-announcement-facundo-campazzo-renewal">2024</a>. He has an <a href="https://www.talkbasket.net/48974-facundo-campazzo-i-used-to-be-obsessed-with-the-nba-but-not-anymore">NBA out clause</a>, but is reportedly <a href="https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1143875919083425792.html">in no rush</a> to move on from a great situation in Spain.) Reigning Spanish League MVP Nicolás Laprovíttola and young ball handler Luca Vildoza joined Campazzo in a dynamic backcourt, while forward Gabriel Deck flashed a hard-nosed, do-everything game, and Luis Scola became the talk of the tournament by continuing to produce at a high level even after the rest of his “Golden Generation” compatriots have retired from international play. Watching the 39-year-old Scola dominate a French team led by Rudy Gobert, just one round after Gobert hammered Team USA, was truly wild, and inspired an awful lot of takes like this one from Montenegro/Orlando Magic center Nikola Vucevic:</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">When I grow up, I want to be Luis Scola</p>— Nikola Vucevic (@NikolaVucevic) <a href="https://twitter.com/NikolaVucevic/status/1172506642589597696?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 13, 2019</a>
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<p id="3ADtuJ">You’re not alone, Vooch. Shouts to one of the coolest stories, and the most fun team to watch, in the World Cup field.</p>
<h3 id="biKsMa">Loser: Canada</h3>
<p id="yyB18U">I almost forgot to include our neighbors to the north here, in large part because losses to Australia and Lithuania in their first two games in a brutal Group H essentially ended their World Cup before most of the world was even really paying attention.</p>
<p id="NCJRUn">The Americans and the Canadians had the <a href="https://www.thestar.com/sports/basketball/opinion/2019/09/03/canadian-men-will-never-win-short-handed-in-basketballs-league-of-nations.html">same trouble</a> getting top talent <a href="https://www.thestar.com/sports/basketball/opinion/2019/09/03/why-change-must-start-at-the-top-after-canadas-fiba-world-cup-letdown.html">to turn out</a>, with NBA players Tristan Thompson, Jamal Murray, Andrew Wiggins, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Trey Lyles, Dwight Powell, Dillon Brooks, and Chris Boucher, as well as first-round draft picks RJ Barrett, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Brandon Clarke all opting out of the Canadian squad. The result was a severely outmatched roster led by Kings guard Cory Joseph and big men Kelly Olynyk (who <a href="https://www.nba.com/heat/news/kelly-olynyk-injury-update">missed the tournament after suffering an injury in exhibition play</a>) and Khem Birch. Canada stumbled to a 2-3 record in China, good for 21st place in a 32-team field.</p>
<p id="1mDYaX">If Canada wants to make the field at next summer’s Tokyo Olympics, it will have to win one of four Olympic qualifying tournaments in July to earn a spot. Given how much Canadian talent continues to enter the highest levels of pro basketball, and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/6/17/18681436/toronto-raptors-nba-champions-we-the-north-drake-basketball-city">how much passion there is for the sport in the wake of the greatest Raptors season ever</a>, that’s not exactly the situation in which Canada Basketball hoped to find itself after this summer—and it’s one that could keep Canada from making its first appearance in the Summer Games since 2000.</p>
<h3 id="wsxpJj">Push: France</h3>
<p id="cb1NMF">The glass-half-full take: France earned bronze at its second-straight World Cup, returned to the medal stand after a disappointing 12th-place finish at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroBasket_2017">EuroBasket 2017</a>, and scored a historic victory over Team USA in the quarterfinal round. Glass half-empty: They followed that giant win with an underwhelming performance against Argentina in the semifinals, with Gobert and Nicolas Batum combining for six points on nine shots, Fournier battling foul trouble, and the offensive dynamism and defensive intensity of the U.S. win largely absent.</p>
<p id="6Tfovo">Twenty-nine other teams would gladly swap places with France and take their bronze medals home. But considering this collection of talent, how good their defense looked for long stretches of the competition, and how high they were riding after the Team USA win, a double-digit semifinal loss that knocked them out of the running for their first gold in any competition since EuroBasket 2013 had to feel somewhat disappointing.</p>
<p id="WL6xnT">“I think that we could get a better color,” Gobert said after beating Australia for bronze. To get one in Tokyo next summer, France will have to avoid the inopportune letdowns that have plagued them at times over the years, and again in China.</p>
<h3 id="7yKVTW">Loser: Giannis Antetokounmpo</h3>
<p id="QQXCbR">Heading into the World Cup, we wondered whether the NBA’s reigning MVP might be enough of a game-breaker to lift Greece to its first medal at a major international competition <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EuroBasket_2009">in a decade</a>, and to put his country on the short list of teams capable of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/8/29/20837355/team-usa-fiba-world-cup">toppling the best in the world</a>. Instead, Antetokounmpo’s light kind of got buried in China.</p>
<p id="TomlSC">The combination of a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/4/20847912/giannis-antetokounmpo-greece-world-cup">roster that lacked enough shooting and creativity to unleash him</a> and a <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2019/9/10/20855719/giannis-antetotkounmpo-greece-fiba-world-cup-2019-its-ok">FIBA rule set, court size, and playing style</a> that mitigated his strengths helped shackle the Bucks superstar. Antetokounmpo averaged 14.8 points, 8.8 rebounds, 2.4 assists, and 2.4 steals in 24.9 minutes per game, and only really made his outsized presence felt against New Zealand, when he scored 24 points with 10 rebounds and six assists to help Greece advance to the second group stage. He was quieter, though, against Team USA, and wound up fouling out (on what looked like a bogus call) late against the Czech Republic, which helped scuttle Greece’s chances of making the knockout round. It’s not entirely Giannis’s fault that he didn’t shine brighter. Even so, his run came off as something of a bummer.</p>
<h3 id="f6RuYA">Winner: Continuity</h3>
<p id="vV18ef">Spain featured six players who had suited up for multiple tournaments together before this summer. The main stars (Gasol, Rubio, Sergio Llull, Rudy Fernández) were all well versed in the coach Sergio Scariolo’s preferred playing style, and knew how to work off one another. Argentina had Scola, who’s got more experience in his pinky finger than most entire national teams, along with Campazzo, who first suited up for Argentina in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, and four other players—Laprovíttola, Deck, Patricio Garino, and Nicolás Brussino—carried over from the 2016 Olympic squad. Argentina also brought its top players to both <a href="https://www.providencejournal.com/sports/20190804/team-usa-routed-by-argentina-in-pan-am-games-basketball">this year’s Pan Am Games</a> and the World Cup, giving the roster more time to work out the kinks on both ends of the court and jell in time for the main event.</p>
<p id="DVha1y">Spain, Argentina, France, Australia, and Serbia—all of the top finishers at this World Cup—featured multiple players with a ton of experience not only in international competition, but in navigating those treacherous waters together.</p>
<p id="TZpNID">“If you look at a lot of these teams and how they played, they’re able to fall back on their system,” U.S. forward Harrison Barnes <a href="https://www.nba.com/article/2019/09/14/team-usa-postmortem-world-cup">told John Schuhmann of NBA.com</a>. “They’re able to fall back on things that they know, things that they’ve run, guys that have been playing together for five, six, seven years. For us, we had to put our hat on defense. That was what we kind of made our calling card. Offensively, we knew we weren’t going to ever get to that place where, ‘OK, here are two or three quick-hitters.’ But we did the best that we could.”</p>
<p id="34SNac">Athleticism, explosiveness, and talent can get you a long way; when the relative strangers taking the court in red, white, and blue are megawatt superstars like LeBron James, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Anthony Davis, and Stephen Curry, the other stuff doesn’t matter as much. But when the talent gap isn’t massive, that stuff—knowing where your teammate’s going to be before he even starts to make his cut, where he likes the ball when he’s spotting up on the weak side, how to shade your man to push him into the waiting help defense—can matter a lot, especially in single-elimination tournaments against opponents who might not have all that much institutional memory to draw on. It can produce something greater than the sum of its parts, and <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2019/9/14/20865604/fiba-world-cup-2019-argentina-vs-spain-luis-scola-marc-gasol-familiarity">this year’s finalists stand as living proof</a>.</p>
<h3 id="zyL18t">Loser: FIBA’s Shuffled-Up Calendar</h3>
<p id="tSk1ed">The idea behind FIBA changing its qualification system dates <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/nba/2012/11/11/3630506/fiba-adopts-major-world-cup-qualification-changes-putting-nba">all the way back in 2012</a>, it seems, was to steer the Basketball World Cup clear of competing with <em>that other</em> World Cup for attention, eyeballs, and dollars every four summers. We’ll have to wait to find out whether the 2019 tournament was successful for the international basketball federation. Given the awkwardness of shifting qualifying windows into the regular seasons of major domestic leagues without international breaks, and the number of high-profile players from all over the world who declined to participate this year, the shift doesn’t seem like it was worth the trouble.</p>
<p id="p3Z8cB">“The FIBA calendar proved to be wrong in any competition they have organized. From the national team windows in the middle of the season, till organizing the World Cup one year before the Olympics,” EuroLeague CEO Jordi Bertomeu <a href="https://sportando.basketball/en/jordi-bertomeu-fiba-calendar-proved-to-be-wrong-in-any-competition-they-have-organized/">said</a> last week. “FIBA should make a deep reflection about that, looking at how many players dropped from their national teams. The logic says to return to World Cup in even years.”</p>
<p id="C0Fb4I">Logic doesn’t always win out, though—especially when the “illogical” move is one of the most competitive, compelling, and unpredictable World Cups in recent memory (if you’re not a U.S. fan, at least). Which brings us to our final winner … </p>
<h3 id="WqZ1p6">Winner: Global Basketball</h3>
<p id="DMUbKH">After the U.S. won gold at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, continuing a run of five straight undefeated runs to glory in international play starting in 2008, USA Basketball’s Colangelo levied a challenge to the rest of the world to <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2016/08/22/usa-basketball-chairman-jerry-colangelo-wants-other-countries-to-step-up/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_source=Twitter&utm_term=Autofeed#link_time=1471881075">“get their act together and become more competitive.”</a> Well, the world has accepted that challenge. Just ask Pop.</p>
<p id="z5Srsb">“Better teams got to the finals, and that shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody, because there are a lot of great teams in the world,” Popovich <a href="https://theathletic.com/1210599/2019/09/14/better-teams-got-to-the-finals-world-cup-is-over-for-team-usa-and-now-its-time-to-face-some-hard-truths/">told reporters</a> after the U.S. won its seventh-place game against Poland. “It’s not written in stone that the United States is supposed to walk to a championship.”</p>
<p id="w6jAv6">It’s felt that way over the past decade, but not any longer. Even the more star-studded U.S. squads that have turned out to the last three Olympics have had to sweat out one- or two-possession wins, and the rest of the world is only getting better. As my <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cup"><em>Ringer</em> teammate Zach Kram recently noted</a>, roughly a quarter of the players in the NBA were born somewhere other than the U.S.; as <a href="https://twitter.com/TommyBeer/status/1172512595854745602">Tommy Beer of <em>Forbes</em></a><em> </em>noted, that includes the league’s reigning MVP (Antetokounmpo, Greece), Rookie of the Year (Luka Doncic, Slovenia), Defensive Player of the Year (Gobert, France), and Most Improved Player (Pascal Siakam, Cameroon).</p>
<p id="ILDqgD">The U.S. still has a major advantage in depth of talent. But when you combine the rising quality of international players, the number of players well-drilled on the differences in the FIBA game, and the dwindling mystique associated with playing against U.S. teams, the distance is getting smaller and smaller. The American empire might strike back next summer. Beyond that, though? The future of international basketball could be more up for grabs than ever before.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="wpd1tA">“I think in the beginning [of the tournament] I said there are five, six, seven teams that can win this thing,” Popovich said. “And I think it will be like that all the time.”</p>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/16/20869234/2019-fiba-world-cup-winners-and-losersDan Devine2019-09-16T06:30:00-04:002019-09-16T06:30:00-04:00Should the Celtics Be Worried About a Team USA Hangover?
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<p>No NBA team was better represented on the U.S.’s roster than the Celtics. Will the historic low at the World Cup mar what was supposed to be a fresh start in Boston?</p> <p id="wmC2bx">No NBA team had more representatives on Team USA’s roster than the Celtics. Which is to say no team had as much of a hand in its failures than Boston. Four Celtics—Kemba Walker, Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, and Jayson Tatum—made the trip to China, and all four were featured heavily in the rotation when healthy. Walker led the team in scoring at 14.4 points per game, and averaged the third-most minutes. Brown and Smart added 7.9 and 6.4 points per game, respectively, with Brown adding just over four rebounds per night. Tatum, limited by an ankle injury, scored 10.5 points with 7.5 rebounds across two games.</p>
<aside id="bq8gpn"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Team USA’s Loss Was Predictable, Not Shocking","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cup"}]}'></div></aside><p id="DOdBHG">Unfortunately, the games were hardly a springboard into the Celtics’ first season out from under Kyrie Irving’s puzzling leadership. The U.S.’s roster <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/8/19/20811547/team-usa-worst-ever-2019-fiba-world-cup">rivaled the worst squads</a> in Team USA history, and the team’s seventh-place finish was its worst ever in major competition. With so many dropouts before training camp last month in Vegas, there were plenty of opportunities for any of the young Celtics to help carry this year’s U.S. team to a title, and set themselves up for an even bigger season in Boston. Instead, they exit the competition having been part of the most disappointing unit in American history, with nagging injuries to two of its <a href="https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2019/09/03/jayson-tatum-fiba-world-cup-ankle-injury">best</a> young <a href="https://celticswire.usatoday.com/2019/09/11/report-team-usa-shuts-down-marcus-smart-for-remainder-of-world-cup/">talents</a> and a potential hangover looming.</p>
<p id="kQolsY">Walker is new to Boston, having signed a max contract in free agency, but the other three Team USA Celtics should be familiar with disappointment by now. Last season, the Celtics were a popular NBA Finals pick, coming off a 55-win season in which they fell one game short of the Eastern Conference title. But Boston fell flat. Infighting sprung up practically from the jump, and the team that many expected to be a <a href="https://twitter.com/billsimmons/status/1084283640127750144?lang=en">67-win juggernaut</a> stumbled to 49 wins and a second-round playoff shellacking at the hands of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks.</p>
<p id="KJ3DbD">Gordon Hayward’s falloff following a gruesome injury in 2017 and Irving’s unique approach to motivating teammates were major reasons for Boston’s disappointing season, but the big concern moving forward is how little progress its young core made after breakthrough 2017-18 campaigns. Tatum shone as a rookie in Hayward’s absence, looking like a potential superstar to open the season before cooling and finishing third in rookie of the year voting. But his shot selection drew ire as a sophomore, and his improvement failed to match his lofty expectations. Brown and Smart, meanwhile, saw their contributions reduced in correlation to their playing time. </p>
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<p id="J0Cp3p">All could be reset for the young Celtics now that Walker is taking Irving’s place; a rash of stories came out of Team USA training camp talking up the unique opportunity the four Celtics had to build chemistry. But without a medal to show for their efforts, it’s starting to feel like four key members of a team expected to compete in the East added a bunch of extra miles on their legs for nothing. Last season, Walker ranked fourth in the league in total miles logged (209.3), covering more ground for Charlotte than similar do-it-all players Paul George and Damian Lillard did for Oklahoma City and Portland. Tatum topped Boston’s leaderboard, running more than 180 miles, and Smart and Brown clocked in third and sixth on the team, respectively. Not only did they run hard during the season, but they added miles over the summer. Meanwhile, other teams’ stars were home resting and recovering. </p>
<p id="jjaf2K">Tatum’s sprained ankle kept him out of the U.S.’s last six games of the tournament, though reports seem to indicate the injury isn’t serious enough to threaten the start of his season. His coach, Brad Stevens, <a href="https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2019/09/03/jayson-tatum-injury-brad-stevens-team-usa">told <em>The Boston Globe</em></a> on September 3 that he didn’t think the injury was significant. He added that he was glad his players were getting international experience.</p>
<p id="AuDIMv">“I always say the first road game of the year hits you like a ton of bricks. These guys are doing it in late August [and] early September,” <a href="https://www.boston.com/sports/boston-celtics/2019/09/03/jayson-tatum-injury-brad-stevens-team-usa">Stevens told the <em>Globe</em>.</a> “At the end of the day, they’re going to be playing 5-on-5 other places. I don’t think you can get any better prep than doing what those guys are doing.”</p>
<p id="RWtVMT">That’s the optimistic interpretation of this summer’s tournament. Despite the ugly finish, Walker was the U.S.’s most consistent offensive weapon for the majority of the World Cup, reaching double-digit scoring in each of his seven games on 48.6 percent shooting from the field, and 38.5 percent from beyond the arc. At times, Brown and Smart looked superb during the tournament, providing lockdown wing defense. Each had his own highlight moment, with <a href="https://twitter.com/taylorcsnow/status/1169598750983147520">Brown swiping the ball against Japan</a> and going coast to coast, and <a href="https://weei.radio.com/blogs/nick-friar/celtics-takeaways-fiba-world-cup">Smart frustrating Antetokounmpo</a> in a second-round win over Greece. Even Tatum managed some flashy buckets before exiting the competition.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Jayson Tatum gets fancy on the finish. <br><br>(via <a href="https://twitter.com/NBATV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@NBATV</a>) <a href="https://t.co/XpB1igXPDy">pic.twitter.com/XpB1igXPDy</a></p>— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBAonTNT/status/1160032220872155139?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 10, 2019</a>
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<p class="c-end-para" id="15IeoU">If the Celtics once again experience a sluggish start to the season, fans and pundits alike will point to the minutes logged by their four representatives this summer as a cause. How dare they put their bodies on the line, they’ll say, when they could’ve been preparing for a grueling NBA season. If they start the season blazing hot, their Team USA experience will be lauded, with the players commended for pushing themselves against superior competition. As is true in the debate over the merits of success or failure in the preseason, it matters only if it proves what you think is right. Otherwise, it was just an exhibition.</p>
<aside id="XcP4zR"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/16/20867920/boston-celtics-team-usa-kemba-walker-jayson-tatumShaker Samman2019-09-13T08:40:29-04:002019-09-13T08:40:29-04:00Team USA Can Learn Something From the NBA’s Superteam Era
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<p>Instead of loading up on as many stars as possible for the 2020 Olympics, USA Basketball should copy the game plan of some of the NBA’s top contenders</p> <p id="rQ62pg">After 13 years of international dominance, the U.S. men’s national basketball team is now on a losing streak. One day after a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860968/team-usa-france-fiba-world-cup-quarterfinal-loss">10-point loss to France</a> knocked it out of medal consideration at the 2019 FIBA World Cup, Team USA suffered a second straight defeat, this time at the hands of a Serbian squad whose coach had, tongue-in-cheek or not, <a href="https://www.eurohoops.net/en/fibawc/917112/serbia-coach-djordjevic-if-we-meet-team-usa-may-god-help-them/">called this particular shot</a> before the teams ever got to China. A dispirited and depleted U.S. unit stumbled out of the gate, a step slow to contest and engage as Serbia raced out to a 32-7 first-quarter lead that it would not relinquish.</p>
<p id="hAGV3l">The U.S. now heads into a Saturday meeting with Poland that will determine whether it finishes in seventh or eighth place. Either way, it’ll be the <a href="https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1172137387390054400">second-worst finish to a competition in USA Basketball history</a>. That’s a cold cup of coffee for a national program, the kind of thing that makes everybody involved take a long, hard look in that <a href="https://youtu.be/tujLEFMtaVA">deep, dark truthful mirror</a>.</p>
<p id="mRbhUW">Right?</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">This should be a really short article, right? <a href="https://t.co/Y4fRbnachK">pic.twitter.com/Y4fRbnachK</a></p>— Robin Lopez (@rolopez42) <a href="https://twitter.com/rolopez42/status/1172174967561043971?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 12, 2019</a>
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<p id="8FJNIe">A lot of people may have responded to Team USA’s losses with the same sort of arched eyebrow and yawn implied by the great Robin Lopez here. The answer to how the U.S. gets back on top doesn’t seem all that complicated—just get the best American talent to turn out for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. But there’s a danger in letting “get better players” be the only lesson from this stumble.</p>
<p id="BHd2P2">As the business of basketball continues to boom around the world, and as international talent gets better and better, future U.S. teams—the ones beyond 2020, which almost certainly won’t still have LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and James Harden in <a href="https://www.usab.com/mens/national-team/roster/2019-20-roster.aspx">the pool</a>—won’t always be able to rely on having the best player on the court. When those days come—as they did against France on Wednesday and Serbia on Thursday—Team USA will need players who fit together better than this year’s model. The whole process has to be more intentional than just, “Who’s still willing to say yes?” In a sense, the challenge and the project share similarities with the rise of the superteam era in the NBA last decade.</p>
<p id="vMxSm3">The Celtics became an instant champion by importing two future Hall of Famers to add to the one already in the building. But Boston was an instant monster specifically because its pieces fit so perfectly together: Kevin Garnett commanded the defense and served as the offensive nexus in the frontcourt; Paul Pierce was the primary wing creator and late-game go-to scorer; Ray Allen was the secondary perimeter option, persistent catch-and-shoot threat, and constant floor-spacer. The role players fit, too: Kendrick Perkins set brick-wall (often moving) screens and cleaned the glass, Rajon Rondo initiated the offense and spread the ball around, and everybody else skated their respective lanes.</p>
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<p id="bFl41z">The story was the same in other constellation cities. The Big Three Heat, the Big Three Cavs, the Strength-in-Numbers Warriors all figured out the championship formula not just by stacking stars, but by finding the right complementary fits around them. Now, though, we’ve reached a new state of play in the NBA, one in which Big Threes and Big Fours have given way to dynamic duos. That’s thanks in part to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/7/11/20689887/kawhi-leonard-free-agency-dynasty">the ever-quickening pace of player movement</a>, which has made it difficult to hold on to a star for more than a couple of years at a time. But you might also chalk it up to a <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27533126/is-big-two-better-big-three-nba-teams">shift in front-office thinking that sees greater value</a> in surrounding two superstars with a handful of competent role players than in selling out for three stars and scraping to fill out the rest of the rotation while avoiding luxury tax payments.</p>
<p id="THfXXO">USA Basketball’s brass doesn’t have those sorts of financial concerns; without salary caps to consider, managing director Jerry Colangelo and Co. just have to get the guys to commit. In the post–Redeem Team era, that’s allowed Team USA to just do what every NBA GM would love to do—hoard as many stars as possible with relatively little worry about fit or function. In the beginning, that was no problem: Multiple megawatt stars made multiyear commitments to show up not only for major international competitions, but also for annual minicamps and meetings and such. But after a decade that saw the U.S. firmly reassert itself as the sport’s dominant global power, and with many players from the recent gold-medal squads aging out of the program or dealing with injuries, USA Basketball needs new blood. As we saw this summer, getting the transfusion is proving tricky.</p>
<p id="m977lX">“Going forward for USA Basketball, we’re going to need the cooperation of teams, agents, and then there has to be communication with players one-on-one to solidify those commitments,” Colangelo <a href="https://apnews.com/fe84070c59b54781a6f1d75c039a8d65">told Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press</a> on Thursday. “I am going to be anxious to see how many players reach out early to indicate that they wish and want and desire to play.”</p>
<p id="SOrZKm">It’s possible that a bunch will, whether because they want to restore the program’s pride after the losses, or because they’re now lining up for one tournament instead of two. The World Cup being moved from its standard every-four-years schedule (which would’ve had it held in 2018) to this summer meant players committing to it would have to sign up to go from a full NBA season to a major international competition, then right into NBA training camps (which start in three weeks), then (hopefully) into a long playoff run, and then right into preparation for the Summer Games. USA Basketball has grown accustomed to building World Cup squads without the top players from the Olympic teams, but such little downtime in a two-year span is a big ask, <a href="https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1158755852511301633">even for the non-megastar types</a> who typically populate the in-between rosters—especially with “load management” now a watchword around the league.</p>
<p id="dhLu4T">Whatever led to the dropouts, the U.S. still had more talent top to bottom than any other nation in the field—no other team could boast 12 NBA players—but pounding that point elides another very important one: FIBA basketball is, y’know, <em>not NBA basketball</em>. Case in point: Giannis Antetokounmpo is the NBA’s reigning Most Valuable Player, and is on the short list of the very best basketball players in the world. Greece still failed to advance to the knockout round because the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/4/20847912/giannis-antetokounmpo-greece-world-cup">Greek roster lacked enough shooting to unleash him</a>, and because FIBA’s <a href="https://www.sbnation.com/2019/9/10/20855719/giannis-antetotkounmpo-greece-fiba-world-cup-2019-its-ok">different rule set, court size, and style of play</a> help mitigate some of what makes Antetokounmpo damn near unstoppable with the Bucks.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="NDpzTG"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"It’s Time for the Next Generation of Team USA to Step Up ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/12/20861645/team-usa-next-generation-zion-williamson-world-cup"},{"title":"Team USA’s Loss Was Predictable, Not Shocking","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cup"},{"title":"Team USA’s Nightmare Scenario Happened. Now It’s Time to Figure Out What’s Next.","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860968/team-usa-france-fiba-world-cup-quarterfinal-loss"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="C2Y9tJ">Kemba Walker, in a vacuum, is a better basketball player than any of the French guards who carved up the U.S. on Wednesday. But in a structure that prioritizes side-to-side movement and the ability to create for others in the drive-and-kick game, Evan Fournier and Nando de Colo can look like superior options for stretches. Australia beat the U.S. in exhibition play largely because Patty Mills went nuts in the fourth quarter; Mills <em>can</em> go nuts for Australia, in a completely different way than he can for the Spurs, because the Boomers have a bunch of other table-setters, shooters, and screeners to set him free. Turkey, a team nobody pegged to threaten the mighty Americans, came within a free-throw-clanging apocalypse of beating them, because they had the right kinds of players and playing style to give the U.S. problems. As much as the U.S.’s benighted World Cup run laid bare the importance of the U.S. bringing top talent to international competition, it also underscored just how much context, continuity, and fit matter in these tournaments.</p>
<p id="OyFLM3">For France, Australia, and Turkey—the teams that pushed the U.S., sometimes past its breaking point—the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There’s real talent on all of those rosters, but it’s the harmonic convergence of the individual pieces that created something Team USA couldn’t quite match.</p>
<p id="ngYm42">The U.S. needs great guard play, but not <em>just</em> guys who can break down a defender one-on-one and get to the rim. One star point guard and a bunch of solid combo guards—few of whom even have much NBA experience, let alone international experience—doesn’t really cut it anymore; you need multiple bona fide facilitators capable of creating clean looks for others. One wonders how the U.S. offense might have looked had Kyle Lowry, who withdrew to recover from surgery on his left thumb, was able to suit up and calm things down, or if De’Aaron Fox hadn’t pulled out just before the team left for Australia for reasons that remain a bit foggy.</p>
<p id="DJnwO2">The U.S. also needs shooters who can actually shoot. Non–Joe Harris/Kemba players have shot a combined 29.4 percent from the shorter 3-point line at the World Cup, contributing to an American attack that ranks a paltry 18th in the 32-team field in half-court offensive efficiency, according to Synergy Sports Technology numbers <a href="https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27595211/how-team-usa-roster-issues-ended-gold-medal-run">cited by ESPN’s Kirk Goldsberry</a>. After watching Brook Lopez and Mason Plumlee provide precious little in the FIBA fortnight, the U.S.<em> badly</em> needs bigs who can do more than just be big—centers and power forwards who can make plays with the ball, whether facing the basket or with their backs to it.</p>
<p id="zUC1zf">Team USA can certainly find those players. Some could come in the form of superstar veterans who have declined recent invitations, like James Harden, Anthony Davis, and Damian Lillard. (A playmaking big like Draymond Green or Blake Griffin sure would’ve been awful nice in China.) Some, as my <em>Ringer</em> teammate <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/12/20861645/team-usa-next-generation-zion-williamson-world-cup">Jonathan Tjarks suggested Thursday</a>, could come from young rising stars like Trae Young, Devin Booker, Zion Williamson, and Jaren Jackson Jr. There are shooters, defenders, and playmakers galore in the U.S. ranks, ones whose games can dovetail and overlap to create the sort of scorching offenses we’ve seen in the past but that belonged to countries like France and Serbia this year. But the process of putting them together has to be much more intentional than just “grab the best name left.”</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="uULDcz">It won’t take much to put USA Basketball back on the top of the mountain next summer. To keep it there, though, the U.S. is going to need a a better plan, and a smarter approach to building a roster than ever before.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/13/20864054/team-usa-superteams-nbaDan Devine2019-09-12T06:10:00-04:002019-09-12T06:10:00-04:00It’s Time for the Next Generation of Team USA to Step Up
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<p>Zion Williamson and the best U.S.-born up-and-comers need to take the reins of USA Basketball to avoid another ugly international defeat</p> <p id="yB0oUa">There was one clear lesson from <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860968/team-usa-france-fiba-world-cup-quarterfinal-loss">Team USA’s 89-79 loss to France</a> at the FIBA World Cup on Wednesday: <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cup">They didn’t have enough talent</a>. The Americans were ravaged by withdrawals and injuries, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/6/20851941/team-usa-fiba-world-cup">forcing them to rely on a group of flawed players</a> whose weaknesses were exploited by a well-coached French team with an NBA-caliber player at every position.</p>
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<p id="lG5PPD">The best U.S. players have always preferred playing in the Olympics over the World Cup. That didn’t matter at the 2010 and 2014 World Cups (then known as the World Championship) because Team USA used those tournaments to prepare the next generation of great players. The problem this time around was that many of the best young Americans weren’t in China, either because they chose to stay at home or they weren’t quite ready to play on the international stage. The difference in 25-and-under talent in 2019 compared to 2014 and 2010 is striking:</p>
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<li id="6a51Oc">
<strong>2010:</strong> Steph Curry (22), Kevin Love (22), Kevin Durant (21), Russell Westbrook (21), Derrick Rose (21)</li>
<li id="ReahrP">
<strong>2014:</strong> James Harden (25), Klay Thompson (24), DeMarcus Cousins (24), Kyrie Irving (22), Anthony Davis (21)</li>
<li id="KCB3da">
<strong>2019:</strong> Donovan Mitchell (23), Myles Turner (23), Jaylen Brown (22), Jayson Tatum (21)</li>
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<p id="KSUjzr">Mitchell did his part. He had 29 points, six rebounds, and four assists against France, and was Team USA’s best all-around player. But Tatum played only two games before spraining his ankle, and neither Turner nor Brown did enough to establish themselves as mainstays going forward. </p>
<p id="xGisCx">The future of the program is in flux. The players from the 2010 team have stopped competing internationally, and there may not be any left from the 2014 team, either. Harden, Davis, and Irving have already won Olympic gold, while Thompson just tore his ACL and Cousins has suffered too many injuries to list. There could be plenty of spots available on Team USA for players in the next generation. </p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="WLWRL1"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Team USA’s Nightmare Scenario Happened. Now It’s Time to Figure Out What’s Next.","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860968/team-usa-france-fiba-world-cup-quarterfinal-loss"},{"title":"Team USA’s Loss Was Predictable, Not Shocking","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cup"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="mk7agh">International basketball has changed since the days of the Redeem Team. Giannis Antetokounmpo could be <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/4/20847912/giannis-antetokounmpo-greece-world-cup">the best player in the world for the next decade</a>, while many of the best young prospects in the NBA, from Luka Doncic to Kristaps Porzingis and Karl-Anthony Towns, don’t play for the U.S. The Americans have to focus more on finding players who complement each other instead of just gathering as much talent as possible and seeing what sticks. </p>
<p id="pHGChM">The good news is the outline of the next version of Team USA is already coming into focus. There are four young players who stand out as potential cornerstones, all of whom fit well together:</p>
<h4 id="PJNrFR">Trae Young (20)</h4>
<p id="jWHQzL">Young is coming off a brilliant rookie season with the Hawks, when he averaged 19.1 points on 41.8 percent shooting and 8.1 assists per game. He played for the U.S. Select Team this summer and had an outside chance of making the World Cup roster before withdrawing with an eye infection. His combination of unlimited shooting range and elite playmaking makes him a perfect fit for Team USA. The Americans don’t need a big-time scorer at point; they need someone who can create easy shots for teammates in transition and shoot defenses out of zones in the half court. And while Young will have issues on defense, the Americans should have more than enough long and athletic perimeter players to protect him, from returning players like Mitchell and Tatum to a Select Team player like Jonathan Isaac.</p>
<h4 id="Bvnqax">Devin Booker (22)</h4>
<p id="2ZVHXr"><a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/8/27/20834419/devin-booker-workout-video-phoenix-suns">Booker is one of the more polarizing players in the NBA</a>, but there’s no denying his growth in his first four seasons. He went from a shooting specialist in college to an elite scorer (26.6 points per game on 46.7 percent shooting last season) who stretches out the defense (6.5 3-point attempts per game) and makes plays for his teammates (6.8 assists per game). A backcourt of Young and Booker would open up the floor and prevent defenses from playing zone. Booker’s individual stats have benefited from receiving the Suns’ constant green light, but he would have a better reputation around the league if he were playing for a well-run organization. He fits the profile of a young star on a bad team who could get a wandering eye after his time on Team USA. </p>
<h4 id="JtB7G3">Zion Williamson (19)</h4>
<p id="43BnsI">Williamson, despite being a teenager with no NBA experience, could have been a difference-maker in China. At 6-foot-7 and 285 pounds, his combination of size, speed, and athleticism would have posed matchup problems for most of the teams in the field. At the very least, he would have been a better fit than Harrison Barnes as a small-ball 5. Williamson isn’t just an athlete—he’s a skilled player with a high basketball IQ who knows how to maximize his physical gifts. His ability to pass out of the high post would have been huge for a team that struggled to make plays against zone defenses. Williamson is one of the most exciting prospects to enter the league in a long time. There is no telling how good he will be by the time the next World Cup rolls around in 2023.</p>
<h4 id="Urlvw9">Jaren Jackson Jr. (19)</h4>
<p id="c5EnSa">Jackson is the next great American unicorn after Davis. Team USA will need a 7-footer with his type of length and athleticism to match up with guys like Giannis, Nikola Jokic, Towns, and Porzingis in future international tournaments. Jackson was the best rookie big man of the five taken in the top seven in the 2018 draft, and he should be even better in Year 2. Everyone knows about his ability to shoot 3s, protect the rim, and defend on the perimeter. Now, after serving as an understudy to Marc Gasol and Mike Conley Jr., Jackson will get the chance to show that <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/8/15/20806125/rookie-curve-ja-morant-jaren-jackson-jr-grizzlies">he can also put the ball on the floor and create his own shot</a>. He can do almost everything on a basketball court at a high level, and his versatility on both sides of the ball would add an element that the latest version of Team USA was sorely lacking.</p>
<p id="39NQMI">That may not be the most awe-inspiring list in comparison with the Redeem Team generation, but this foursome’s style of play is a better fit for the international game. The best defensive strategy against the Americans has always been to pack the paint to neutralize their athleticism and turn them into shooters. The best scorers in the next generation are all volume 3-point shooters, which means the U.S. won’t have to rely on shooting specialists like Joe Harris and Brook Lopez to be zone-busters anymore. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="FOYIYj">Players like Young, Booker, and Jackson grew up watching Steph Curry. Shooting 3s from all over the floor is second nature to them. That shooting ability, in turn, will create massive openings at the rim for players like Williamson. Team USA always brings the best athletes to international competitions. Now we will have the best shooters, too. </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/12/20861645/team-usa-next-generation-zion-williamson-world-cupJonathan Tjarks2019-09-11T12:46:40-04:002019-09-11T12:46:40-04:00Team USA’s Loss Was Predictable, Not Shocking
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<p>The U.S.’s defeat in the World Cup quarterfinals may seem like a calamity on par with 2002’s sixth-place finish, but there were clear signs recently and in recent history that an international failure was on the horizon</p> <p id="aN4gt3">Here’s the strange thing about Team USA’s surprising, but not really all that surprising, defeat in Wednesday’s World Cup quarterfinal: In six World Cups (née World Championships) with NBA players, the United States has now lost as many tournaments as it has won. Gold medals in 1994, 2010, and 2014 sit alongside disappointing finishes in 2002, 2006, and now 2019.</p>
<p id="Eia43N">It may sound as if the sky is falling. But by that logic, the sky has fallen before: in 2002, when a misshapen roster finished sixth, and in 2004, when the U.S. failed to win Olympic gold, and in 2006, when the U.S. lost an elimination game yet again. For three cycles, the U.S. national team was in crisis—and then Team USA rebounded to win every game it played for more than a decade. With the basketball resources at the country’s disposal, the sky can easily be raised again, and the victorious cycle can begin anew. The struggles in this tournament were predictable, however, and reflect a key development for both the U.S. national program and the rest of the world.</p>
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<p id="4hHEtq">From the American perspective, Wednesday’s 89-79 loss to Rudy Gobert and France is merely the latest and most humbling instance of a foreseeable outcome. There were warnings for a month or more, as a lengthy succession of players declined to join, producing <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/8/19/20811547/team-usa-worst-ever-2019-fiba-world-cup">the least talented Team USA roster</a> in modern history—and, ultimately, one of the least successful. (Heck, even the 1998 roster, which had to use non-NBA players because of the league’s lockout, at least reached the semifinals and won the bronze medal.) The Americans escaped what should’ve been a loss in overtime against Turkey in group play, and more generally failed to match the highs of their celebrated predecessors. For instance, despite showing the ability to still thump lesser opponents—see: the 53-point romp over Japan—the U.S. didn’t reach 100 points in any game at this tournament. A dozen other teams managed to crack triple digits, but not Team USA.</p>
<p id="7iFAp6">But again, the Americans have been humbled in international play before, and largely for similar reasons: An underqualified roster short on shooting and the U.S.’s typical talent level, and thrown together without much cohesion or practice time, struggles to compete against more experienced opposition. In 2002, the U.S. lost <em>three</em> games—to rising powers Argentina and Spain, plus eventual tournament champion Yugoslavia—on home soil, and in 2006, an underdog Greece squad famously upset the U.S. in the semifinals.</p>
<p id="Dmb4iq">What happened next? The so-called Redeem Team reestablished American basketball hegemony at the 2008 Olympics, with a stacked roster winning every game by double digits en route to the gold medal. That doesn’t mean the U.S. is a sure bet to win gold next summer. The <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/8/5/16044966/team-usa-basketball-2002-world-championship-f63fa0a6e06f">2002 humiliation</a> didn’t help efforts in 2004, when the U.S.’s least talented Olympic roster in modern history won only bronze; it took losses at three consecutive international tournaments to yield meaningful changes to the program. It’s also uncertain whether next summer’s competition will prove more attractive to the NBA’s top American stars, who uniformly sat out this September.</p>
<p id="UotVAC">More important than those factors, however, is the second broad takeaway from the U.S.’s early exit from China: There has never been better competition from the rest of the world, or a more relatively democratized version of international men’s basketball. Travel back, for a moment, to 1992, birth of the Dream Team, as the U.S. brought NBA stars to a tournament for the first time. A 12-man roster with 11 future Hall of Famers on it won its first game by 68 points, and swept through the whole tournament winning every game by at least 32. </p>
<p id="4FK4ff">In 1996, when all 12 Team USA players had been named NBA All-Stars the previous winter, the U.S. again steamrolled the competition. No opponent came closer than 22 points as the Americans won gold again. Thus the expectation was set for how the U.S. should handle the international sport; any close game would equal a miniature disaster.</p>
<p id="uRfRdQ">The sport has evolved, however, both in the NBA and on the international circuit. The 1991-92 NBA season featured just 26 players born outside the U.S.; four years later, that number was a still-small 29. (And some of the best non-U.S.-born players of that era, like Patrick Ewing and Hakeem Olajuwon, ended up playing for Team USA anyway.) This past season, for comparison, <a href="http://bkref.com/tiny/wRUxm">118 players</a> hailed from outside the U.S., which represents <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/growing-number-of-foreign-born-players-in-nba-slows-2018-10">roughly a quarter</a> of the league as a whole.</p>
<p id="GLct3W">That count includes 35 qualified players who averaged at least 10 points per game, plus a handful of All-Stars, three players who received MVP votes (including Gobert), and a number of crucial players on contenders, from Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo to Serbia’s Nikola Jokic to Australia’s Ben Simmons and more. Even if not all of those players (like Simmons) compete at every international tournament, the world’s talent pool is simply deeper than it has been in the past. More opponents can trouble the Americans, like pesky Australia, which even without Simmons relied on Patty Mills and Joe Ingles to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/8/26/20830217/team-usa-2019-fiba-world-cup">upset the U.S. in a pre-tournament exhibition</a> last month.</p>
<p id="FM8tmL">They can also knock each other out before they even have a chance to upset the Americans. Before the 2019 World Cup began, Serbia was essentially a co-favorite with the U.S., and its coach <a href="https://www.eurohoops.net/en/fibawc/917112/serbia-coach-djordjevic-if-we-meet-team-usa-may-god-help-them/">didn’t bother hiding his excitement</a> for a potential showdown. In a sort of American fashion, the Serbs won their first four group games by a combined 163 points—and then lost to Spain, lost to Argentina, and were gone a day before the U.S.’s defeat. Now, the anticipated semifinal between the U.S. and Serbia will instead pit Argentina against France, which should still prove an entertaining matchup of veterans of the international game.</p>
<p id="xZj8vS">Even at the Olympics, when the U.S. typically brings a more established roster, the competition has creeped closer over the past decade. In 2012, Team USA tallied its share of blowouts, including a record 83-point rout of Nigeria, but the U.S. also sweated a five-point win against Linas Kleiza’s feisty Lithuania team, then led Spain by just one point after three quarters in the gold medal game before winning by seven. In 2016, the U.S. survived consecutive three-point wins against Serbia and France, and beat Spain by only six in the semifinals. From 2008 to 2012 to 2016, the number of 20-point wins for the U.S. in its eight Olympic games fell from seven to six to four.</p>
<p id="8sbQ6e">Whereas past troubles for the U.S. might have resulted from a generational group of talent, like in Argentina and Spain, or one strange off night, like against Greece in 2006, now Team USA can reliably expect to face NBA-caliber talents in every game, and to have to play hard in the fourth quarter multiple times a tournament. That might be a worry for Americans’ hopes of winning gold every time, but it’s also hard to view this development as anything other than a positive, for several reasons: the growth of the sport, the entertainment factor of games that are competitive until the final buzzer, the notion that occasional U.S. losses might inspire the best Americans to play for their country.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="u49ABK">In that light, then, a clean U.S. sweep through the 2019 World Cup field, lackadaisical roster and all, might have appeared to be more of a calamity for the international game than the U.S. loss appears to be for the Team USA program. That the defeat didn’t even come at the hands of the best opponent, but merely one team in a wide and ever-widening field of possible threats to the world’s greatest basketball-playing nation, only emphasizes this point further. In the past, the sport expanded in part because of Team USA’s dominance. But now, international basketball has never looked stronger; ironically, it’s up to the Americans to keep up with the rest of the world.</p>
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https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cupZach Kram2019-09-11T12:42:38-04:002019-09-11T12:42:38-04:00Team USA’s Nightmare Scenario Happened. Now It’s Time to Figure Out What’s Next.
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<p>France handily beat the U.S. in a FIBA World Cup matchup that exposed an uninspiring roster’s flaws and posed questions about how Team USA will regroup entering the 2020 Summer Olympics</p> <p id="MY1DeN">Everybody knew the Team USA that took the court in China for the 2019 FIBA World Cup would be the most vulnerable version in more than a decade, once virtually every elite option in the prospective player pool (and a bunch of not-so-elite ones too) started choosing to forgo national duty. Everybody knew a roster lacking the incandescent offensive talents of the post–Redeem Team era—no Kobes, LeBrons, Durants, Kyries, Hardens, ADs, or Stephs—would struggle to score against the best international defenses, and that getting enough stops to carry the day would be a tall order when the best player on the floor wasn’t wearing a U.S. jersey. What happened Wednesday in Dongguan, then, wasn’t a shock or a fluke; it was something we all could see coming since July.</p>
<p id="08Ip1p">But seeing something coming doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready for it. The onrushing headlights are only helpful if you can get off the train tracks; this U.S. team couldn’t, as Wednesday brought the impact for which we’d all been bracing: an 89-79 quarterfinal loss to France. With Rudy Gobert and Evan Fournier leading the way, the French squad roundly outplayed the Americans for three of four quarters, closed the game with a 20-5 run over the final 6:59, and handed a U.S. team featuring NBA players its first nonexhibition loss in 58 international tournaments, dating to the 2006 FIBA World Championship. France advances to take on Argentina in the semifinals; the U.S. will play Serbia in the consolation bracket. Streak snapped, medal hopes dashed, disappointment complete, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/7/24/20707390/team-usa-basketball-olympics-world-cup">cycle still in spin</a>.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/rudygobert27?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RudyGobert27</a> was DOMINANT in <a href="https://twitter.com/ffbasketball?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ffbasketball</a>'s historic win over USA: 21 points, 16 rebounds, 3 blocks!<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FranceGotGame?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FranceGotGame</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/FIBAWC?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#FIBAWC</a> <a href="https://t.co/VxrYr156Q1">pic.twitter.com/VxrYr156Q1</a></p>— Basketball World Cup (@FIBAWC) <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1171787898078859264?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2019</a>
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<p id="GHE5tk">The weakest spot on this U.S. roster was its frontcourt rotation, and Gobert spotlighted that shortcoming. The Utah Jazz star set crunching screens and dove hard to the rim to create space for France’s ball handlers to attack in the pick-and-roll, helping Fournier, Nando De Colo, and Frank Ntilikina combine for 51 points on 18-of-36 shooting. He beat smaller U.S. defenders on switches and bullied them under the basket, grabbing seven offensive rebounds, getting to the foul line 10 times, and pouring in 21 points, his highest-scoring performance in the tournament.</p>
<p id="EPJ3oT">Late in the game, with the U.S. scrambling to staunch the bleeding, Gobert showed why he’s the NBA’s reigning back-to-back Defensive Player of the Year. Playing with <a href="https://twitter.com/johnschuhmann/status/1171772661141164032">a little extra oomph</a> after U.S. center Myles Turner, who finished fifth in DPOY voting last season, fired a <a href="https://twitter.com/C2_Cooper/status/1171536085861617665">broadside at his bona fides</a>, the 7-foot-1 “Stifle Tower” took control of the paint, altering one driving layup by Kemba Walker, blocking another, and coming up with a massive swat on Jazz teammate Donovan Mitchell to keep France up by four with 53 seconds to go.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">RUDY GOBERT BLOCKS UTAH JAZZ TEAMMATE DONOVAN MITCHELL FOR HIS 3RD BLOCK OF THE GAME AND THIS MIGHT BE IT <a href="https://t.co/G6kYaObMIA">pic.twitter.com/G6kYaObMIA</a></p>— Play Gary Clark (NBA (@Itamar1710) <a href="https://twitter.com/Itamar1710/status/1171767613564825600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2019</a>
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<p id="UVgJ0o">Gobert dominated Turner, who’d been the best U.S. center in this tournament, but who seemed alternatively too tentative and too frenetic in this marquee matchup Wednesday. The Indiana Pacers big man struggled in pick-and-roll defense early, failed to make a mark with the ball in his hands, and barely played after halftime, finishing with more combined turnovers and fouls (five) than points, rebounds, and blocks (three) in 10 feckless minutes. With Brook Lopez looking uncomfortable on defense and missing both of his 3-point tries—continuing a brutal run that’s seen him go 2-of-14 from distance in China—and Mason Plumlee again an afterthought in the rotation, head coach Gregg Popovich went small after France opened up Team USA’s <a href="https://twitter.com/Sportando/status/1171757244184059904">first 10-point deficit of the World Cup</a> in the third quarter.</p>
<p id="jr2sM6">It worked. Lineups featuring Harrison Barnes and Jaylen Brown up front, with heavy doses of Mitchell, Marcus Smart, and Derrick White in the backcourt, cranked up both the defensive pressure and the offensive tempo, spreading the floor and attacking the rim. With Smart tilting the game with his trademark activity and defensive skill—he bodied Fournier up top and Gobert down low on switches, notching deflections and snaring offensive rebounds—and Mitchell carrying the offense, the U.S. ripped off a 20-9 run to regain the lead, heading into the final frame with a 66-63 edge.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/spidadmitchell?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@spidadmitchell</a> punches the tomahawk as <a href="https://twitter.com/usabasketball?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@usabasketball</a> tie it up! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/USAFRA?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#USAFRA</a><br><br> <a href="https://t.co/U6RPjx3FuZ">https://t.co/U6RPjx3FuZ</a> <a href="https://t.co/SXOoBJhWDU">pic.twitter.com/SXOoBJhWDU</a></p>— Basketball World Cup (@FIBAWC) <a href="https://twitter.com/FIBAWC/status/1171761601935859712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 11, 2019</a>
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<p id="hUmuxd">The U.S. pushed the lead to seven against a reserve-heavy lineup early in the fourth, but French head coach Vincent Collet put his best lineup back on the floor around the eight-minute mark, and everything flipped. Gobert started controlling the game on both ends. Fournier got loose, and de Colo got to the foul line. Ntilikina, the New York Knicks’ <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2018/12/7/18131030/frank-ntilikina-knicks-disappears">much-maligned 2017 lottery pick</a>, continued his strong World Cup performance by drilling a pair of <a href="https://twitter.com/mattspendley/status/1171765007228555266">clutch</a> late <a href="https://twitter.com/mattspendley/status/1171766655367749634">jumpers</a>. Team USA did itself no favors by missing seven of 11 fourth-quarter free throws and turning the ball over three times in the final 3:07, but France earned the win … and the U.S. got the result it deserved.</p>
<p id="ZgoxKH">After a balanced scoring attack carried the U.S. through group play, you got the sense that Pop’s club would need a star performance when facing the top competition. Through three quarters, Mitchell fit the bill; his 29 points tied Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning for the 10th-highest-scoring individual performance in U.S. World Cup history. In the fourth, though, it was Walker—who had scored just three points through the game’s first 30 minutes—who tried to take the reins. Walker was Team USA’s steadiest contributor and most dangerous creator for most of the tournament, but just couldn’t find the range against the length of Ntilikina and Gobert, and never located his rhythm. He missed two of three free throw attempts after pump-faking his way to the foul line with the U.S. down six in the final minute, icing the game and ensuring that there will be a new World Cup champion crowned Sunday.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="FUV8lu"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Team USA’s Loss Was Predictable, Not Shocking","url":"https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860933/team-usa-loss-world-cup"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="TjIWGd">Before Wednesday, it was possible to imagine a version of the World Cup where the U.S., even without its most decorated and talented players, still won gold. Maybe Walker and Turner wouldn’t have their worst games at the worst time; maybe Jayson Tatum wouldn’t miss the last four games with a sprained ankle, and maybe the Americans wouldn’t go 7-of-20 from deep and 14-of-21 from the line in a knockout game. It didn’t shake out that way, though, so now USA Basketball has to figure out what’s next.</p>
<p id="FKemjT">The U.S. has already secured a spot in the 2020 Summer Olympics, the tournament that always draws a brighter brand of U.S. star than the off-year World Cup. There’s a good chance that by this time next year we’ll be discussing the performance of a roster featuring multiple MVPs rather than one featuring a single All-NBA performer. And perhaps that’s what matters most—getting USA’s A-team, or at least something close to it, rather than fretting too much about how the pieces all fit together.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="yrzvqt">It’s worth remembering, though, that the last three Olympic teams featuring those All-Star names <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/25/sports/olympics/25bball.html">still</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2012/aug/04/london-2012-usa-basketball-lithuania">had</a> to <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/8/22/16045368/2016-olympics-team-usa-mens-basketball-goliath-ca3086bb1239">sweat</a> against international opponents with lesser NBA-caliber talent, but much more cohesive rosters. This result isn’t just about the best and brightest feeling stirred enough to commit to turning out next summer; it’s about those who do then devoting themselves to the pursuit enough to develop the familiarity to produce a more consistent offense and better defense against the pick-and-roll and off-ball cuts. If that doesn’t happen, a loss like this can happen again, on the grandest stage in the international game. The <a href="https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/3/20847805/team-usa-turkey-fiba-world-cup-2019">fear is gone</a>, there’s blood in the water, and now it’s time to react. For 16 years, it’s been considered a given that Team USA is exceptional. This loss shows that it isn’t, and won’t be, if those involved don’t treat it as such.</p>
<aside id="KmKABI"><div data-anthem-component="newsletter" data-anthem-component-data='{"slug":"ringer_newsletter"}'></div></aside>
https://www.theringer.com/nba/2019/9/11/20860968/team-usa-france-fiba-world-cup-quarterfinal-lossDan Devine2019-09-10T13:41:23-04:002019-09-10T13:41:23-04:00‘The Mismatch’: Nikola Jokic and Serbia Get Bounced From the World Cup
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<img alt="Argentina v Serbia: Quarter Final - FIBA World Cup 2019" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PNwQbAqtE-Wci94iT-NjLRJm478=/444x0:4000x2667/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65217583/1173594682.jpg.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Photo by Zhizhao Wu/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Plus: Western Conference Big 3 Picks</p> <div id="LkhlgB"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/18fJ4buyvPm1lVQXAklCxZ" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div>
<p id="ylD5FJ"><a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-ringer-nba-show/episodes/1ef6227f-2fb7-4691-95ef-c4271f3fbd05">NBA All-Star Nikola Jokic and Serbia were upset by a scrappy Argentina team</a> at the FIBA World Cup (3:00). Plus: We go through the Kevin Durant <em>Wall Street Journal</em> article (8:57) and share the ideal Big 3 players for every Western Conference team (34:52).</p>
<p id="d2NMaI"><strong>Subscribe: </strong><a href="https://go.redirectingat.com/?id=&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fitunes.apple.com%2Fus%2Fpodcast%2Fthe-ringer-nba-show%2Fid1109271715%3Fmt%3D2">Apple Podcasts</a> / <a href="https://art19.com/shows/the-ringer-nba-show">Art19</a> / <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/the-ringer/ringer-nba-show">Stitcher</a> / <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/ringernbashow">RSS</a></p>
https://www.theringer.com/2019/9/10/20859268/the-mismatch-nikola-jokic-serbia-get-bounced-from-fiba-world-cupChris VernonKevin O'Connor