Team USA Basketball 2024

[Amonkey]

International basketball has been overrated. Sure, there are a handful of players that can stand out, but even the great Jokic or Giannis can't beat an NBA All Star team by themselves. We learned that this regular season. These international teams either need to improve dramatically, or the US should bring their JV squad. Without some type of change, we will continue to see boring, anti-climatic Olympic basketball.

Sure, the allure of a gold medal is exciting, but it becomes less so when the field is so uneven.

These games have been closer though. Canada, a team very similar to USA as being full of NBA players, lost to France. South Sudan came within 8 seconds of beating USA (although a friendly). Team USA does tend to play better as the season goes on but I can see a close game in the 3rd quarter when against France or Germany.

[Neurotic Guy]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

[tazzmaniac]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

I wish the Olympics still required all the athletes to be amateurs.  However given that professionals are allowed, it would be ridiculous for Team USA not to bring its best possible team. 

[gift]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

honestly i don't hate this idea

[Kernewek]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

honestly i don't hate this idea

The issue is that you're effectively punishing the guys on good teams who want to participate in the Olympics - especially the younger guys and/or guys like Carmelo Anthony (say what you will about his NBA career, but he was a phenomenal Olympic asset).

[SHAQATTACK]

White is a great success story . He has earned the place in Olympic history.

[Donoghus]

White is a great success story . He has earned the place in Olympic history.

[Redz]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

honestly i don't hate this idea

The issue is that you're effectively punishing the guys on good teams who want to participate in the Olympics - especially the younger guys and/or guys like Carmelo Anthony (say what you will about his NBA career, but he was a phenomenal Olympic asset).

And wouldn?t you have to implement this for all Olympic teams, not just USA?

[Redz]

Yesterday was the first full game I?ve been able to watch.  Basically looks like when Lebron is on the floor they are unstoppable.  It?s crazy how dominant he still is.  Never a huge fan, but he was totally in control of that game.

[Kernewek]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

honestly i don't hate this idea

The issue is that you're effectively punishing the guys on good teams who want to participate in the Olympics - especially the younger guys and/or guys like Carmelo Anthony (say what you will about his NBA career, but he was a phenomenal Olympic asset).

And wouldn?t you have to implement this for all Olympic teams, not just USA?

Yeah exactly - I'm sure Serbia isn't frothing at the bit to lose their only world-class player.

The problems with amateurism are various and sundry, but while I do think there could be something to balance the fact that we have such a concentration of top-level talent in one region (this doesn't just hit basketball, of course), I'm just not sure gatekeeping participation in the Olympics from the world's top athletes is the best way to do about it.

[gift]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

honestly i don't hate this idea

The issue is that you're effectively punishing the guys on good teams who want to participate in the Olympics - especially the younger guys and/or guys like Carmelo Anthony (say what you will about his NBA career, but he was a phenomenal Olympic asset).

And wouldn?t you have to implement this for all Olympic teams, not just USA?

not really. the USA program could just say they will start practicing in late April/early May. this would just make it possible for USA players to be in the program if they missed the playoffs or had an early playoff exit.

this idea correctly assumes that USA values NBA success more than Olympic success. the days of team USA significantly boosting elite NBA players' profiles are at least temporarily over. but the world tournaments can and do still sometimes boost the profile of up and coming players.

anyway, i don't love the idea but i don't hate it either. the two main problems are that 1)the USA program doesn't have much incentive to do this and 2)the incentive they do have (to have more time as a group) is undermined by the fact that there will be different rosters every year because different teams will make the playoffs every year.

[Goldstar88]

Without real competition, I find the games to be boring, pretty much unwatchable for me.

I tend to agree, but it's either that or we see a repeat of 2004 where everyone is up in arms because we're losing.

I think Germany is real competition. Wouldn?t sleep on them.

[ozgod]

International basketball has been overrated. Sure, there are a handful of players that can stand out, but even the great Jokic or Giannis can't beat an NBA All Star team by themselves. We learned that this regular season. These international teams either need to improve dramatically, or the US should bring their JV squad. Without some type of change, we will continue to see boring, anti-climatic Olympic basketball.

Sure, the allure of a gold medal is exciting, but it becomes less so when the field is so uneven.

We're a tough crowd...whenever we bring our JV squad we lose. The last 2 FIBA world championships with our JV squad didn't go too well - the first squad including Jaylen, Jayson, Derrick, Smartacus, Mitchell and Middleton we finished 7th after losing to France and Serbia, and the 2nd squad with Ant, Hali, Banchero, Brunson, Bridges, JJJ we finished 4th losing to Lithuania, Germany and Canada. Then everyone says "yeah nah it was our JV squad, doesn't count, wait till we wheel out the ATGs"

Even last Olympics in Tokyo we lost to France in the prelims and only beat them by 5 in the gold medal game with a special from KD (I wonder if their American citizenship would have been rescinded if they had lost that game with the quality of the team we sent). Then we bring in our big guns this year, with some ATGs, and everyone says its boring because there's no competition 

That said, I do agree - the edge that the US has over other countries is depth. We just have a bigger pool of quality players to pick from. Where other countries might be able to come up with two or three (if they are really good) world class players, we can come up with 8 or 9 at least. Bit like Brazil, France and Spain in soccer vs us. They have a bigger pool of players, so every single player in their soccer XI is world class while we can muster maybe 2 or 3.

[Kernewek]

And here's Sue Bird & Carmelo Anthony talking about Tatum's drop in the depth chart vs. Tokyo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZbbTVTs10w

(little light profanity if you're really worried about that sort of thing)

full conversation is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44fel1v8kX0

[Amonkey]

How about if future USA Olympic teams are selected from lottery teams only - at least when the games fall in Northern hemisphere summer.  Lottery team players can get started in April and be a real team by the time the games begin. Additionally, players from Finals teams can avoid the exhaustion and lack of body rejuvenation resulting from going right from the intensity of playoffs to the Olympic Games (and then a month later training camp).  OK it?s a ridiculous idea and leaves out a lot of players who want to participate, but truthfully, I don?t love Tatum, Holiday, White being on the team. Plenty of great American players on lottery teams. I am far more a Celtics fan than a USA Olympic team fan. In fact, sometimes can?t help myself rooting for the underdogs.

honestly i don't hate this idea

The issue is that you're effectively punishing the guys on good teams who want to participate in the Olympics - especially the younger guys and/or guys like Carmelo Anthony (say what you will about his NBA career, but he was a phenomenal Olympic asset).

And wouldn?t you have to implement this for all Olympic teams, not just USA?

Yeah exactly - I'm sure Serbia isn't frothing at the bit to lose their only world-class player.

The problems with amateurism are various and sundry, but while I do think there could be something to balance the fact that we have such a concentration of top-level talent in one region (this doesn't just hit basketball, of course), I'm just not sure gatekeeping participation in the Olympics from the world's top athletes is the best way to do about it.

I think keeping it the way it is is more fun but an alternative is the soccer model, where it?s 23 under team with the exception of 3 players. You can have teams full of young potential and still bring a few of your best international players.