FIBA World Cup: Is Team USA still the team to beat in China?

(Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)
(Photo by Daniel Pockett/Getty Images)

The much-maligned USA Basketball squad just took the program’s first loss in more than a decade. Is the U.S. still the favorite for the FIBA World Cup?

It’s been three years since USA Basketball dominated the Rio de Janeiro Olympics en route to a gold medal and five years since it won the re-branded FIBA World Cup in Spain.

The U.S. went 8-0 in Rio, beating Serbia to take home the gold. In 2014, USA Basketball rolled to a 9-0 mark, again blowing out the Serbians in the final.

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That team in 2014 featured future MVPs in Stephen Curry and James Harden as well as a past winner in Derrick Rose. Of the 12 players on the roster, nine had been or have since played in the All-Star Game.

The Rio group had former MVP Kevin Durant and the 12-man roster included just one player, Harrison Barnes, who has not made an All-Star appearance.

From the team that won in Rio, only Barnes is on the 13-man roster that will be pared down to 12 before the FIBA World Cup begins on Sept. 1 (in China, Aug. 31 on this side of the International Date Line).

Wind it back to the 2014 FIBA World Cup and Mason Plumlee is the only returnee.

Professionals have been part of USA Basketball — and international competition as a whole — since the restrictions were lifted following the 1988 Olympics and the U.S. has put some of the most memorable international squads in history since.

That group is topped by the original Dream Team in 1992 that won the gold medal in Barcelona. Eleven of the 12 members of that team are now in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

Given the amount of criticism being hurled at this year’s team — which boasts only Kemba Walker and Brook Lopez as former All-Stars — you might want to dub the 2019 USA Basketball squad the Demeaned Team.

That situation won’t be helped after Team USA took a 98-94 loss to Australia in Melbourne on Saturday. It was the first loss for USA Basketball’s senior men’s team since dropping a FIBA World Championships semifinal game to Greece in 2006.

The loss ended a 78-game winning streak for the program.

Most of the star players pulled out early and the team secured a berth in China by going 10-2 in the FIBA Americas qualifying tournament with a team full of players from the NBA G League. FIBA changed the qualifying calendar, which began with games in November 2017 and continued with sessions that continued through February of this year.

That eliminated anyone in the NBA from participating, so Jeff Van Gundy stepped up and coached a group that was led in scoring by Michael Frazier II.

But for all the angst about who’s not going to China to represent the U.S., it will still be the only team in the field of 32 nations that will have an NBA player in all 12 roster spots.

Walker summed it up nicely after Australia’s stunning victory on Saturday, per NBA.com.

"“They wanted it more than us (Saturday night). Lesson learned for us.”"

And lest we forget, USA Basketball is still ranked No. 1 in the world in FIBA’s rankings that were released at the end of the qualifying rounds in February.

With 793.7 points, the gap between the top-ranked U.S. and No. 2 Spain (703.4 points) is larger than the gap between the Spaniards and Slovenia, ranked seventh with 621.9 points.

The most recent odds, per Odds Shark, have USA Basketball as a minus-225 favorite to win the FIBA World Cup.

The next closest is Serbia at plus-350. Greece is given a puncher’s chance at plus-1,000, with Spain at plus-1,600, France at plus-2,800 and Canada — going without Andrew Wiggins, Jamal Murray, Tristan Thompson, Dwight Powell, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, RJ Barrett, Brandon Clarke, Nickeil Alexander-Walker or Mfiondu Kabengele — is at plus-3,300.

NBA players not wanting to go to China isn’t just a U.S. thing. Australia won’t have All-Star Ben Simmons. Slovenia, which won the European championships in 2017, didn’t qualify for the FIBA World Cup in part because Luka Doncic wasn’t available.

The timing of qualifying was an issue, with FIBA opening up calendar windows similar to how FIFA does for its international soccer events. The NBA was not going to shut down for two weeks at a time in November and February to accommodate the new calendar and national federations were forced to make do.

And, unlike soccer, where the World Cup is king and the Olympic competition is a modified under-23 tournament, with each nation getting three exemptions for players older than that, basketball’s premier event is the Olympics, with the FIBA World Cup — long known as the FIBA World Championships — just an afterthought.

The other issue is the timing of the event.

Presuming Kyle Kuzma of the Los Angeles Lakers and Joe Harris of the Brooklyn Nets make the 12-man roster USA Basketball takes to China, it will mean both players will spend three weeks on the wrong side of the International Date Line before returning two weeks before training camp opens.

The Nets and Lakers will then head to China — for Kuzma and Harris, it will be a return — for preseason games on Oct. 10 and 12.

The Houston Rockets and Toronto Raptors are also going to Asia, playing in the NBA Japan Games on Oct. 8 and 10. No one from either of those teams is on the U.S. roster, but Marc Gasol of the Raptors is with Team Spain.

With Team USA having 12 NBA players, that will make a total of 62 players from current rosters heading to China for the FIBA World Cup, per NBA Canada.

That advantage of having an entire roster of NBA talent should be enough to bring USA Basketball its third straight FIBA World Cup/World Championships title and its sixth overall (1954, 1986, 1994, 2010, 2014).