The Ringer NBA Show - France Eliminates Team USA From the FIBA World Cup. What Now? | Group Chat

Episode Date: September 11, 2019

We gather for an emergency reaction to Team USA losing in international tournament play for the first time in 58 games. What comes next for USA basketball: Will they have to go young with Zion Williamson and Trae Young, or will veteran stars like LeBron James, James Harden, Anthony Davis, and more reenter the fold? Hosts: Justin Verrier and Dan Devine Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Basketball is very good. The rockets should bring back mellow. Devin Booker is actually a winning player. Bruno Caboclo will win Brazil the World Cup. Basketball is very good. Hello and welcome to a special Team USA just got whooped by France edition of the Ringer NBA show. Joining me from our New York studio to assess the aftermath, of the U.S.'s loss in the quarterfinal of the Feeble World Cup is Dan Devine. What's up, buddy?

It's a rough day for Team USA basketball, but it's a wonderful day for the denizens of Frankie Smokes Island. Yes, what a day it is. And also for the content, because, well, for one, we have something to talk about over the next two days, but in particular, I no longer have to get up early on Sunday morning in order to cover the championship game. You love to see it. You truly do. You love to see it. Bobby Wagner is also with us. He might chime in from time to time. But in the meantime, Dan, we have a bit of a game to discuss here. And probably here we are on a Wednesday afternoon or, in your case, early morning Wednesday is when your day started. I believe it was a 4 a.m. Pacific start for us.

Seven for you. That's how math works. The U.S. team at the Feeble World Cup was starting knockout play. It's technically the quarterfinals. Their first matchup was against a France team that had been together for a little while, but didn't seem on paper to have the same sort of talent caliber as the U.S., but it didn't end up mattering. The France won 89 to 79. That pretty much bounces the U.S. from championship competition. I believe they go on to play Serbia from here for fifth place. Evan Fornier was big in this game.

Rudy Gobert was big in this game. Donovan Mitchell was big in this game, but unfortunately, nobody else. the U.S. side, was able to do much of anything. So, Dan, my first question to you, what the hell? How dare you, France? And then also what the hell? Yeah, this is, it is to some degree what we'd kind of seen coming, right? Like, we knew that this was going to be a vulnerable roster when we saw all the big names that had dropped out or, you know, were not in consideration in the player pool. And we knew there was going to be questions about firepower. You know, your top scoring options are Campbell Walker and Donovan Mitchell. You don't have like the big

you know, superstar wings the team USAAT has been built on in the past guys like Durant and LeBron and Kobe and Jordan and so on. So it was kind of like, well, what's this team going to look like? And what happens when they run into another big athletic team with NBA talent, but that has more experience playing international style ball? And the answer is what we saw today. You know, France just, they pick and roll the U.S. to death. Rudy Gobert was the best player on the floor.

There was no American big man that was capable of kind of hanging with him and stopping him. so led Popovich to go small as he's been doing more and more throughout the tournament. And it worked for a while, then it didn't. And, you know, the talent level overall, I think might have been a little bit, the gap to whatever degree there was one was narrower than I think a lot of people anticipated because Gobert's impact on both ends as a rim protector and as the gravity, the sort of role man gravity guy that opens things up and the screen setter for the pick and roll play really kind of leveled things out.

And France hit more threes. France was better on the boards. France was just, you know, their ball handlers were able to move with more freedom and get north and south to a better degree than the U.S. ball handlers were. This is what happens. You know, if you don't have the overwhelming talent and you don't have the cohesion of having played together for multiple tournaments, you can get got got. And they got got. Yeah, that was my takeaway as this was all unfolding.

I actually knew the outcome before I started watching the game because, as I mentioned, this was on at 4 o'clock in the morning, my time. And it just seemed like the U.S. wasn't the better team, which seems like a pretty generic comment or analysis of this whole thing. But that's important because as France was kind of bringing in these people that I hadn't heard of off their bench, then you look on the other side. And Team USA is starting Joe Harris, a guy who was clinging to the fringes of the league not that long ago. It just seemed like the U.S. needed that guy that tends to step up in these.

big moments. And while Donovan Mitchell had that game for the U.S. with 29 points, there's literally nobody else to support him. Kemble Walker, the guy who's been that kind of star player or the de facto star, finishes with 10. And so I just don't know where else you were hoping to get any sort of support there. Is it really that simple that the U.S. just wasn't as talented as they have been in years past? I think it's certainly a part of it. And I know this is not the place and you are not the person to come to with any Kemba Walker slander, but this was a rough one for him. This was, you know, he had a hard time with, it's not just Frank Milakina as a long defender on the ball, but also Gobert, obviously, as a, you know, the load in the, in the paint,

the guy that's going to be in the front of the rim, making you think about every angle you take and whether or not you can get all the way to the rim, all that stuff, you know, the combined length at the point of attack and in the paint. And, you know, Francis, also, you know, guys like Nick Batum and Andando de Kolo, those are like big, big, long-armed guys on the perimeter as help defenders, too. So Kemba was seeing, you know, a lot of arms similar to what he would see in Charlotte or now coming up in Boston. But it wasn't, he never really seemed to get his rhythm and get his, get his sort of locate his touch. And that wasn't, it wound up being something that the U.S. could surmount in the third quarter because they found that like small ball lineup that really worked for them.

Harrison Barnes at center, Jalen Brown playing power forward. Jalen Brown guarding Rudy Gobert a lot of the time. Marcus Smart winding up guarding Rudy Gobert on switches. but the small ball lineup they can like get deflections, push up the, up the court in transition, crank up the pace

and get to the rim without having to attack in the half court. That was always Team USA's best game throughout this tournament and they were able to get to it in the third quarter. When they come back in the fourth,

it goes sort of, you know, Gaubert gets back on the floor, France gets his starters back on the floor about the eight minute mark. And Kembo, when he gets back in, it's like, all right, here we go. It's a step back, but then it's kind of like,

we're going to, I'm going to keep going for it. I'm going to, you know, this is the time I need to come on. which everybody had sort of expected. You know, he's going to need to be that Captain America guy, the leader of this team. But it went away from what had been most successful for them when they had their best run of the game in the third quarter. And then by the time Mitchell kind of got back to it and got that, you know, was able to attack some more on his own.

It's, you know, a long time had passed since he was at his hottest in the third. And the U.S. offense just really couldn't get anything put together. So I think part of it is overall less firepower than in years past. Part of it was specific makeup of the roster. the bigs that were available to Greg Popovich or that were available through this process. Miles Turner had his worst game of the tournament at the absolute worst time.

Coincidentally, after he had popped off about Rudy Gobert being, I think the quote was the defensive player of the year according to some and then he got his lunch absolutely eaten by Rudy Gobert today. You know, Brooke Lopez was roundly bad this entire tournament. I think two for 14 from three point range

in this tournament so far and not offering much on the defensive end. Mason Plumley couldn't get off the bench. So there really weren't bigs that you could throw at Rudy Gobert or go back at him on the other end. And so then you have, it's a roster construction problem. It's a overall firepower problem. And then it's a, in the sort of deciding parts of the game, a plan of attack problem where Kemba kind of says, you know, I'm going in and it just wasn't working for him today. So you sort of add all those things together. And you got a recipe for, you know, exactly what happened for a pretty comfortable win where France looked like the better team for at least three quarters of this game. They didn't have the best player on the floor. I think that's like

just the biggest takeaway from this. It was Rudy Gobert. He completely warped everything that was happening around there. I thought Brian Winhorrors had a pretty good kind of summation of this. It really felt like an NCAA tournament, not only just the way it is won and done, but also the fact that the U.S. was the scrappy upstart and France had this giant dominant player, like a Greg Oden from back in the day, that you have to really pull all the stops. You have to kind of go into your bag of trick plays. You have to go small with Joe Harris trying to defend Rudy Gobert, I believe, on a couple of possessions. You cannot get past the Joe Harris on the switches thing. It's true. It was wild to watch,

but like, yeah, you're absolutely right. No, I thought it was an interesting wrinkle to try to throw out there. And at that point, if Turner's not going to be playing as well, as he should or at least as well as he thinks he is normally. Just like you really need to lean into some sort of advantage. The problem is a lot of those kind of lower NCAA seeds are often, they kill the giants with their shooting. And the other problem with this team is they didn't really have much of a firepower on the perimeter.

I believe in this game, they shot 26% from three point range. And they took more threes than France. And so all of a sudden, like that kind of makes up the most. margin. So I'm wondering, is it, is it just, they didn't have a guy or could someone like Tatum, a guy we expected to be perhaps a number two or three option on this team, could he have made a difference in this game? I think he certainly could have, you know, the idea that your best small ball, I mean, when they had first started going to small ball lineups with the, with the U.S. team in the beginning of the tournament, he was somebody that was playing more of the, you know, the power forward in those mixes.

And he was the guy that was grabbing the ball off the rim, trying to run down the other end of the court, sort of push the tempo and transition and making better decisions. People were talking sort of early in the tournament about, oh, this is a sign of growth from Tatum that it's not just head down going to the basket. He's also making the smart pass. He's making the extra feed. He's seeing the next guy that comes open. So another ball handler who can pull up and get his shot, who can get all the way to the rim, who can get to the foul line, defend multiple positions, continue to bring length on that end of the floor. That certainly could have been helpful. I think, you know, our guy, J. Kyle Mann, who does some videos for us and, you know, has the video series, the dime drop.

He also had a note today about just the difference between the, you know, U.S. rosters of the past when it came to guys who were drive-and-kick players or guys who were facilitators that were not just creating shots for themselves, but also for other people. And Kemba, as, you know, as great as he is with the ball, is still a guy that creates more for himself. Donovan Mitchell, as great as he is with the ball and as good as he is getting to the basket often creates for himself. you don't necessarily have a whole lot of table setters on this roster. There really wasn't a backup point guard. It was kind of like Marcus Smart and Derek White, who are more combo players. There wasn't really a pure facilitator. I think that's part of it, too.

You know, you have guys that you needed a little bit more in the way of being able to create a good shot against a set defense. Fornier was that guy in the pick and roll for France today. DeColo was capable of doing that. Neil Lechina, to a lesser degree, and that Andrew, I believe it's Andrew Albice. was the backup point guard in France. Guys, there were sort of just multiple ball handlers that are able to get to somebody else a good shot.

And the U.S. didn't really have a ton of that. It was a lot of if you're not getting it in transition or you're not getting it for yourself, you're just not getting it. So the shooting was certainly a big part of it because all tournament long, the U.S. Their three-point rate was up at the top of the field, but their accuracy was down near the bottom.

I think they entered knockout play, I believe 18th of the 32 teams in three-point accuracy. So not a particularly strong shooting collection of guys, especially when you're expected shooters, you know, guys like Tatum is not available. Brooke Lopez is not hidden, you know, sort of commensured with what you expect from him. Middleton was up and down with that.

So it becomes a challenge if you just don't have enough guys to beat the zones, to stretch the floor, to take advantage of those driving kick looks. And, you know, France just had more of it. Bobby got very excited when you brought up Evan Fornier. Unbeknownst to you, Dan, before this podcast happened, tomorrow, we were scrounging for ideas. And Bobby was suggesting the Evan Fornier hour.

I thought we could get 65 minutes at least out of it. He's like one of my favorite niche European guys. It doesn't make sense that Pesia never played for the magic. We were going to do a top 50 magic players. You know, we had a lot of content to get out of it. But alas, now we have to talk about real basketball and Evan Forney beating real USA players. It's truly a disappointment.

But I think it's an important point because I was watching Evan Forney, especially in the first half, just operate the pick and roll. And I was like, yeah, that's the guy you need. because everybody was afraid as he was coming off the screen, whether or not he was going to shoot and it just opened up all this room in the lane. Yeah, and it really kind of played Miles Turner out of the game. You know, if he's not going to be able to protect the rim, which has been his best asset throughout this, I almost said postseason,

but throughout this tournament, then, you know, it's sort of what, and he's also not been a major offensive piece, or he certainly wasn't against Gobert today, kind of what's he giving you? So I think the result of that was 10 minutes for Turner, and he's your best option at the five unless you're going to play Harrison Barnes there. So Fornier being able to kind of, Fornier and Gobert together, kind of being able to defang the U.S. defense in the pick and roll and cause the concern that opens up the kickouts to shooters. That really, it sort of, it led to France being able to play the game on their terms and the U.S.

kind of having a play from behind. It's so, it is really wild to see a U.S. team that has to adopt those underdog strategies that has to play in that sort of, you know, from that sort of style. But the reality of this roster and the collection of talent and the construction of the team is such that the U.S. didn't really have a dominant identity to play with. Their best identity was we play small, we force turnovers, and we run. And that's useful until you run up against a big man that you can't really do that against. And we thought it was going to be Nicola Yolkits in Serbia. It wound up being Gobert and France. And the result is the U.S. are playing for, you know, they're not even going to meddle for the first time in a world

Cup since I believe 2006. It's not great. It's not what you want to see. And I just keep thinking about all of the guys that not only just dropped out before they even made it to training camp in Las Vegas, but the guys who were with the team

and then either because of, I don't know, maybe they weren't going to make it and they wanted to save face like Darren Fox in parentheses. Maybe a guy like Kyle Kuzma, who I believe got like a little bit of a ding before they went to Australia and the PJ Tucker. If they had PJ Tucker on this team, I do

wonder if this is any different because they really just needed that one kind of stopper. And if you're going to base your entire team around a small ball lineup, is there any better small ball center than PJ Tucker? It's a good point. And I mean, you know, you, Justin Varyer scoffed at me from my love of Thaddeus Young. But would Thaddeus Young not have been a valuable person when you were trying to figure out ways to deal with Rudy Gobert today, having another big man to be able to batting with him? Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I think there's going to be a. a lengthy conversation about who showed up and who didn't. Greg Popovich, after the game, this from Brian Winhorst at ESPN, said, I think it's a disrespectful notion to even bring something like the Stars Who Withrew Up. That's disrespectful to France

and whoever else was in this tournament. France beat us. It doesn't matter who was on the team. And that's true, but it's also not true because if you have the full compliment of guys, if Anthony Davis shows up, if James Hardin shows up, if, you know, as you said, even if De Aaron Fox shows up

or if some of these other guys are able to make that roster at the final when it's put together before they go to Australia, we have are having a different conversation. You have a different sort of wing score that can create things. You have a different big man who can bang with Gobert. So yes, who was there? No matter what the U.S. had opportunities to win this game, I think they turned it over three times in the final three minutes. They missed five of their last six free throws, some bad shots in the fourth quarter.

both Mitchell and Kemba taking it right at Gobert and just getting swatted and credit to France for making the shots that they needed to make and the plays they needed to make. But also the players who were not there, of course loom large over this because we're used to seeing, even in between years tournaments in these World Cups that are sort of between Olympic seasons, we're used to seeing the U.S. have the best players on the floor. In 2014 World Cup, there was Kyrie Hardin and Anthony Davis on that team. Steph Curry was on that team. And now, Steph Curry wasn't Steph Curry yet, but you still had that level of talent in the in-between years.

And the timing of this, you know, having it been bumped back from 2018 to 2019, right before the Olympics is a factor that you have so many of the best players in the U.S. pool that were coming off of multiple lengthy playoff runs is a factor. But other nations had that too. And other nations still got their guys out because it's more of a point of pride to put on the jersey in a lot of other countries because these competitions being able to measure yourself. that way and mount that hardware, it's a rarer thing than it is for U.S. players because we're just so used to the U.S. winning. Well, now the U.S. hasn't won, and we'll see what that means in terms of who comes out next summer, who's available to come out next summer, who's asked to come out next summer, and then we'll see what it means moving forward beyond that. Yeah, the Team USA Twitter account definitely took pride in the fact that there will still be an appearance at the Olympics,

some really good timing from the social media department after the loss, just confirming to the people that they will indeed make the Olympics. Qualifying is winning. Qualifying is winning. So who had the worst week, Dan? John Bolton or Kemble Walker? I mean, it's certainly a tough beat for Ambassador Bolden. But if nothing else, I mean, Campbell Walker was able to throughout this tournament up until today, he was the best player on the U.S. roster. He was the easily the steady. hand easily, the guy that, you know, that first game, or the second game against Turkey, when it got into overtime, he was the guy that kind of stepped up and, you know, hit the shots

in overtime that slowed things down, calm things down. It was just a combination of those factors that really led to a rough, the absolute worst dismount for him. But that's also really where we have to look at. Like, the U.S. was not able to withstand two of its four or five best players having bad games on the same day because those two guys, it was kind of. Kemble Walker and Miles Turner. You know, it's different, like, it's just different when you're dealing with a lower, a smaller collection of lower wattage talent. And that, yeah, that's what came back and bit them today.

Who's excited for the Boston Celtics season is what I ask, because it is funny. I don't mean to turn this into just like a ringer stereotype right now, but we kind of all expected this to be like the launching point for a new era of Boston Celtics basketball. And all of a sudden, Jason Tatum is on the sideline. Jalen Brown played. particularly well on defense, but I thought it was interesting that he was such a key component of this team and like their defensive identity. But then on the other end, he would just like kind of go into the paint and just get stuffed by some guy I've never heard before. And as we were recording, Marcus Smart has just been shut down for the rest

of Team Yose's abbreviated run still in China. Apparently he underwent x-rays on a left-knuckle injury this week that came back negative, but soreness in a hand along with a quad-calf soreness led to the day. He's pretty much sore everywhere. And so that's why Marcus Smart will not be playing. But yeah, I don't know if I'm really excited about the Celtics coming up this season. I don't know about you. I would say that, I mean, this will be wonderful for everybody that thinks that Bill writes all of our takes. I think that I honestly was pretty impressed with what I saw from both Smart and Brown, the last few games of the tournament here. The reason they got back into that game in the third quarter was largely because Smart, outside of Donovan Mitchell's sort of scoring,

just putting up a ton of points in a short period of time, smart was everywhere, man. Smart was guarding the ball. He was guarding Gobert. He was boxing out. He was getting deflections, offensive rebounds, attacking the ball, like as soon as he got it, getting to the rim. He's the, still, I mean, you know, people will carp about, sometimes he flops and

sometimes, and he's not a great shooter and his limited offensive player. And maybe the contract is not commensurate with the skill set. but I think he's the kind of player you want in games that matter. And this was like, that third quarter run that they had was a representation of why you want a guy like that in games that matter. And I think Jalen Brown, too, you know, he basically wound up being a power forward on this team after, you know, having played, you know, like the two guard for a lot of his time, the first few seasons in Boston, he's capable of doing a few different things and being

a valuable piece on the defensive end. I feel like you come out of it feeling good about what you saw on tape from those guys. unfortunately, Tatum not being able to stay healthy throughout the process really hurts. It's not the ending that you wanted to see from Tadem, but from Campbell Walker. But I think that you wind up feeling like that quartetta guys with, you know, the sort of the component pieces around them still gives you a pretty good shot in these. It doesn't necessarily make me think that the Celtics are going to be more than a four-thish seed team.

But it makes, you know, I think you still feel pretty okay about those guys, provided whatever Tatum has and whatever the myriad sorenesses of Marcus Smart do not linger. Yeah, I mean, they better hope that they don't get matched up with Bobby Wagner's Orlando Magic in the playoffs because Evan Forney might run wild on them again. Well, let's transition here to the kind of the broader context. So as a result of this loss, obviously us at the Ringer had to go sifting through photos from the 2002 team in order to make these beautiful little arts, these beautiful little illustrations that David Schumacher and our team makes and puts on our website.

site. There's one in particular, if you look right now, on a story by Zach Cram with Mitchell next to Reggie Miller from the 2002 team. And so it begs the question, Dan. Is this the biggest disaster in recent USA basketball history? So let's just take the time period since NBA players started to play for Team USA, which was the 1992 Dream Team. So since then, six place in 2002, which I believe was in Indiana, which I don't know. Yeah, it was in Indianapolis. Why? What happened there?

Bronze at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and then bronze in the 2006 World Cup. And then all of a sudden we just trounced everybody up until the exhibition loss against Australia this year. So is this worse than 2002 or because we were kind of prepared for this? Is this just not as much of a sting? Yeah, I mean, to me, it's not as bad as those 2002 and 2004 losses. The 2004 and 2006 teams are kind of interesting. So 2006 is when we get Coach K, right? And that's the World Championships after the loss in Athens.

And that roster is wild. You know, you look back at it and it's like, it's LeBron and it's Wade and it's Carmelo. And it is like the many of the young stars of that era. There's a lot of real, like, now, not yet at their peaks, but there's a lot of elite all-time talent on that team. But Coach Kay kind of didn't really know who he was playing yet. And, you know, there were discussions about how good the scouting was at that point. Like, all right, you're guarding like number five and number seven and not knowing like what the names of the dudes on the other teams were and stuff like that.

So that was more, 2006 was like a failure of, all right, we're still figuring things out and we're not maybe taking the rest of the world as seriously as we need to. 2002 was the, I think to me, the, like, the pinnacle of that. That was nobody really cares anymore because you're not going to be considered as important or as impressive as Dream Teams one or two, and it was diminishing returns from there. And then that's, yeah, sixth place, not even a metal situation. So in 2004 in Athens, the Larry Brown sort of disaster, which, you know, we've written about another, there have been many sort of big what the heck happened kind of takeouts on that. Those, that was like the coaching and players and a general. generation of that had sort of come up and trying to figure out how to slap it all together with duct tape at the last second kind of fell apart finally. I think those two ones, 2002-2004, would be considered like bigger disasters because this, like we knew. Zach wrote about this about how it wasn't necessarily surprising that this is the outcome. Because it's an in-between Olympic tournament, our World Cup performance has been uneven over the last few decades. And also because we just, you know, we knew what the roster makeup was going to be.

Yes, the U.S. team, as I wrote before the tournament, still had more NBA talent than any other roster. Yes, the U.S. was the only nation that was going to be able to top to bottom, say, here are legitimate NBA players. But we knew that the top end of the roster was questionable. And we knew that teams that had elite caliber talent would be able to ask important questions that the U.S. might not be able to answer. So, now, the way I sort of framed it in our – and the story that I wrote for today was just because, you see something coming doesn't mean you're prepared for it, doesn't mean you're like ready for what that's going to feel like. This does still feel jarring, but I don't think it's like a national disgrace on the same order as 2002-2004. Yeah, and like how much do we even care at this point about

international competition? I just think that we've kind of fell into this lull based on all of the success in recent history to the point where I don't even remember watching a single 2014 Olympic game. I just assumed that they were going to trounce every opponent. And you wrote earlier in this kind of Team USA run that the fact that they lost against Australia and things were kind of more hanging in the balance than perhaps ever before

would add a jolt to the games and would provide more interest. And I think that was true. But even then, I think there just doesn't seem to be as much momentum for this. Perhaps it was the time they were on so nobody could watch. Perhaps it's just like lagging patriotism.

I don't know how deep you want to really get into this, but I kind of say, stand here now and I'm like, does this really matter? If anything, should I not just be encouraged that international basketball is just probably better than it's ever been before? Yeah, I think that's a really good point. It's something Popovich said after today, you know, like, I think it was in Mark Stein's piece in the New York Times. The idea that this is, it's, it's, irrespective of what the U.S. did, this is like the best France team that he's ever seen because France has always had good defensive teams or like a good defensive team in one

sort of session a great offensive team and another one. This is maybe the best of both worlds. So even with Tony Parker and Boris Dio having retired out of the team, like the combination of sort of present day talent on both ends of the floor might be the best that they have. And that's true for a lot of teams. Spain is still as on the, you know,

maybe the downslope of its great generation with Powell having retired out. But Marcosal is still there. Ricky Rubio is still a huge part of it. A lot of the guys that are Eurolelele players like Sergio and Rudy Fernandez, they're still sort of major factors. And you have like the, like, William Wancho Hernan Gomez coming up.

There's still a deep reservoir of talent there. Argentina, you know, similarly, like, their golden generations on the way out, except for our boy Luis Scola, who is 700 years old and is still drop step and fools. But, you know, Fekundo Campazo, their point guard. I'm probably going to butcher this, but I think it's Nicolas La Pruevittola. I'm not sure I'm saying his name. You did it. And I'm sure I'm saying his name right.

But, you know, he was the MVP of the Spanish League last year. You know, there's sort of talent across the board in a lot of these countries. Serbia, you know, we've already spoken a lot about them in podcasts and discussions past. So there's the rising tide overall of talent. It's the outgrowth of the dream team. It's the outgrowth of Argentina's win in 2002 and 2004. Like the rest of the world sees what's possible and plays at a higher level and the level keeps rising.

The level keeps rising. I think that's a really positive thing to take away from it. I think the question though, and you pose it, it's a really interesting one, what is the response from the elite American player now? I think there was a tendency for a lot of people right after the final buzzer to go, like, well, what matters is like this tournament doesn't really matter to a lot of U.S. people. American players care more about the Olympics. So next summer is the Olympics. And so the best American players will show up and then we'll trounce everybody again. Then we'll win gold again and, you know, so on and so on.

But is that true? Like maybe if you're LeBron James and you're coming off of a hundred game season again and you're 36 years old or 35 years old, whatever it is and you're coming at the very end of it and you've already got two gold medals, maybe you don't care as much. You know, if you're

Steph Curry and you've never, you know, the health has kind of always been a question and a concern. Maybe there's, you know, it's not as big an issue for you. Kauai Leonard is in the player pool and has been for years but has never actually made it all the way to the final roster for one reason or another. How much does he care about it?

there's for a lot of guys that's a question of I've already accomplished this do I need to do it again most of the or a lot of the best U.S. players are already over 30 and a lot of the best under 30 players in the league are from around the world. So at some point that levels out

and it becomes a question of how much are guys going to show up for it? I don't know. I'm not sure. Maybe 2020 is sort of the last big group where like the LeBron era and the Durantz and players of that of that sort of generation of USA basketball come out for one more run. But I don't know. And then beyond that, we have not yet really groomed the next generation of this talent.

So I think what the response is from the guys who have been invested in USA basketball for the last 8, 10 years, and what the next crop of talent winds up looking like. I think those are really interesting questions that we'll find some answers out to over the course of the year. Yeah, that's my worry right there. I would assume that that generation, the redeemed team generation, kind of the guy, that came a little bit after that, the Durans, the Clay Thompson's, the Steph Currys, I'd assume all those guys are done at this point, especially because some of them are just dealing with pretty significant injuries. And if they're not, they're probably being load managed in order

to avoid those injuries later in their career. It just seems like the load management thing is just, it's going to be there for a while. And it makes sense. It just, it's a long season. It's an even longer playoffs. And just the way things are kind of built in the NBA now with these big twos, I do there's probably more stress on each individual superstar and thus perhaps they don't want to go to do that. But I look at this roster that they assembled this year and I do wonder how many of them, if any of them, you'd want to carry over into the Olympics in 2020. I look at it maybe Tatum, probably Donovan Mitchell. I don't think there's a single other one. Am I missing anybody? Well, I mean, today was not exactly his crowning achievement, but Turner might,

Miles Turner might wind up being somebody on that list, if only because when you go through the list of available Biggs for Team USA, you know, from the player pool for this cycle, you know, DeMarcus cousins is obviously not going to be there. Anthony Davis, if he wants to play, we'll have a spot, but that's been up and down, right? Andre Drummond has suited up for the U.S. in the past, but, you know, that's not maybe blowing anybody's hair back necessarily.

Draymond Green might be sort of more, one in 2016 might be more of that sort of load map. kind of player who decides he doesn't want to make the run next summer. Blake Griffin, injuries have always been a concern for him. He's never been able to make it all the way to the senior team because he's had to drop out. But he's also on the other side of 30, and he'll be coming off a season that will require him to play a ton of minutes for Detroit. DeAndre Jordan, Kevin Love, you know, there's not, there aren't a lot of guys that

are sort of young prime caliber players. And there may be an infusion of younger players into that. You know, Zion would be certainly the addition that you'd figure Team USA would want to have involved. And maybe, you know, some other young bigs, maybe Jaron Jackson Jr. from the select team or, you know, Kuzma, who was part of the team up until the very last minutes of this year. There are possible guys that you would add there.

But there aren't really a whole lot of game-breaking, like, defense and shooting guys unless maybe Jaron Jackson Jr. winds up playing out. So Turner could be one of those guys. But, yeah, I wouldn't necessarily feel great about it watching him get destroyed by Gobert today. And, I mean, with the rest of the roster, as you pointed, like, the guards in the wings. Jalen Brown, I think, acquitted himself well, so maybe. But beyond that, I don't really know, yeah, there's not a lot of players from this year's roster that you'd feel like would be

sort of shoe-ins if any of those, that older cohort decides to come back. But as you said, maybe a lot of those guys decided or will wind up deciding, I've done that and my primary responsibility has to be to the team that I'm signed up with now and to what I'm doing for myself in my MBA career. So let somebody else have the opportunity. And then who winds up taking that? Yeah, and that's why I think the next generation has to come. And I think it's going to be probably similar to the redeem team error. I think Roger Sherman wrote this very thing for us before this all started about how cyclical this thing is probably going to have to be where we dominate and then all of a sudden

people lose interests and guys don't sign up as often. And then all of a sudden we fall off. And then again, it spurs people to get invested in the game more. I do wonder if this is the time where Team USA consciously or just as a result of their situation they find themselves in, we'll have to pivot to the next wave. We're talking about Trey Young. We're talking about Zion Williams,

and Deere and Fox, Sharon Jackson, Jr. And you go young, you just invest in these guys and you say, you know, this is our team for the next couple of years, maybe take your lumps the first one or two tournaments and all of a sudden we're back on top again.

The added wrinkle, as we've just been discussing, is how involved are these guys going to want to be? We know so much more about the human body, and we know so much more about like just marketing opportunities and all his other stuff. But the fact that a lot of guys did not show up in China this year proves to me that perhaps there's not that much of an advantage anymore on the international stage, especially when the games are on ESPN Plus

in the middle of the night or in the early, early morning, that the marketing opportunities aren't there. And then again, in the Olympics in Japan, they're going to be there again. So I do feel like next year will be a huge inflection point. And I think it's really interesting because we're kind of at that point in the NBA as well, no, because we're kind of in this era where LeBron is fading in front of us. He's still one of our biggest superstars in the game, but obviously he's just not playing as often and also all this stuff.

And so we're looking at Janice. We're looking at Luca Donchish. We're talking about who is the next face of the NBA. And I think it's mirrored in how Team USA is kind of coming to form and just like we just don't know who that is. And so it does feel like we're in a very, we're in limbo, I guess, in basketball. And I think it's probably got to be pretty scary for Jerry Colangelo and the rest of the people with USA basketball that when you start talking about who's the next face of the league or who's the next best player in the league, a lot of those names belong to players who were not born in the United States. Yeah.

And so, so, I mean, the question of where does that next wave come from and how quickly do you sort of start integrating those guys into the national program? that's got to be like job one that they start figuring out tomorrow as they get set for what, you know, what's going to come next summer and then what follows after that. Zach Kram had this stat in his piece, and we can end it here, is that when the Dream Team came to form in 1992, that season before, 91, 92, there are 26 players in the NBA born outside the U.S. This season, by comparison, there were 118, which represents roughly a quarter of the league right now. So, yes, there are better players out there than ever before. And that was probably one of the main reasons we got this result today.

But there's definitely a tide turning. There's just a lot of things going out there. And I think it's an interesting time. I think for the same reasons we're discussing Team USA might be in a state of, if not crisis, than a state of deep reflection. It does make the NBA season coming up perhaps more interesting than anyone I can remember in recent history. So we'll have to see how it plays out. We'll have to see just how much Evan Fornier gets into the MVP discussion this year coming off of this win.

But that will be it for us. We'll be back, I believe, early next week. And we won't have Team USA to talk about. So perhaps we'll pivot to some NBA because that's coming up soon. But for now, for Dan, for Bobby, for me, we will catch you next time. Basketball is very good. Basketball is very good.