Is It Time To Worry About The Men’s Team USA Basketball Roster Before the FIBA World Cup?

No. Jesus Christ, no, you spastic idiot. What the hell is wrong with you?

Hi. I realize that you the reader do not care one bit about the FIBA World Cup. I know this because there are exactly 20 people in the country who care about the FIBA World Cup, and just about none of them are good basketball players. But the mighty Team USA just lost to Australia, so I suppose somebody should talk about this team, however briefly. The Ringer had recently posted an article as a thinly veiled excuse to produce content. I didn’t read it so much as I viewed the headline on the subway while commuting back home. BUT I have opinions.

First off, I’m not going to lie to you, this team blows. As far as Dream Teams go, that is. They are not a dream, unless you’re talking about one of those surreal, super lucid dreams that you get when you fall asleep while wearing a nicotine patch. If your dream involves you going to work, maybe switching up your lunch routine, and firing off a few jokey emails to coworkers, then yes, this is definitely a dream team. Here is the SQUAD, complete with their current NBA 2K ratings (They’re like Madden ratings, only nobody cares, and ESPN won’t run 500 lighthearted “I feel slighted” pieces on them):

Harrison Barnes (79)

Jaylen Brown (79)

Joe Harris (78)

Brook Lopez (79)

Khris Middleton (85)

Donovan Mitchell (88)

Mason Plumlee (77)

Marcus Smart (82)

Jayson Tatum (85)

Myles Turner (82)

Kemba Walker (88)

Derrick White (78)

That’s… not very sexy. They’ve constructed the BOSE speaker of basketball teams. (“No Highs, No Lows; Must be BOSE”). It’s a monument to youth and competency, and probably the only time in history that you could make more exciting by adding an Al Horford. The original Dream Team was a world destroying harvester of sorrows. It was an affront to restraint and the spirit of competition, and they spent a summer beheading teams like Angola. Had the original Dream Team suited up in the NBA, they would have lost maybe 5 games all season, and the biggest drama would have been the $3MM wager between Jordan and Barkley on who could be the first to make Christian Laettner cry during an actual game. Now what would the roster that I’d just laid out do in the NBA? I actually think they might roll off a 50 win season, before getting blasted in the 2nd round of the playoffs. Very strong regular season squad with their depth, and chum as soon as they play meaningful games against a team with a true star. And there are just too many Celtics on that roster. Four is way too many.

So what does this mean? It means that nobody gives a shit about the FIBA World Cup.

Here are reasons why this is all fine:

-Nobody gives a shit about the FIBA World Cup

Did I already mention that? Good. I should mention it more times, until FIBA stops organizing a World Cup. In fact, how about we don’t call it the World Cup. The World Cup is already synonymous with something much bigger. It sounds prestigious. This isn’t. It deserves to be named something goofier like The Basket Bowl. The arenas are going to be quarter filled. The games are going to be an afterthought. And the talent is going to be lacking. There is no reason to ever do this, unless it’s done so ironically. They could play this in flip flops for all anybody cares.

-Team USA losing is actually good and  you should root for that

Do you still root for Team USA in international basketball? Are you older than 11 years old? Congratulations, you’re an awful person. I mean it. You are terrible. This isn’t patriotism, and you don’t actually enjoy basketball. You just like winning. I want to be clear, International Basketball will never be International Soccer (Or Football, futbol, or Association Football. Whatever the fuck you call it where you live. I call it Recess, because for as much as I complain, I’m still tragically American). What I mean is that there will never be a truly open field for as long as FIBA allows for the US to allow their best to participate. Back in 1988 Americans got huffy, because we were only allowed to send our college kids, whereas the USSR (Who doesn’t even get to exist anymore. SLAM, you red bastards) found loopholes and were able to stock their rosters with professionals. As a result, sometimes Team USA lost. This would not stand. We lobbied for the world to let us play on Rookie Mode. And thus, the original Dream Team was born. It featured all of the best players who weren’t Isiah Thomas, who was a penis that nobody liked. It also featured Christian Laettner, another penis nobody liked, but could be bullied easily, and was therefore amusing to the rest of the team. They won all the games save for one against a college team that Coach Daly called early as a means of pissing his team off. Entire nations watched in awe as they were summarily obliterated, and many credit it with the birth of the interest in International Basketball. If you want to argue that the 92 squad did a lot of good for the game, fine. But then they kept doing it. We could have made our point and gone back to interesting tournaments where we sent college players who actually had to, you know…try. But instead we just filled the team with players like Hakeem Olajuwon who was just another American kid from [checks notes] Lagos, Nigeria? WE BROUGHT IN A RINGER? “But but but, he was a naturalized citizen.” Fuck you. And fuck him for not representing Nigeria. We already had Shaq. We didn’t need to add the motherfucking Dream to our arsenal of doom. This is the most American thing I can even imagine, and again, you are a bad person for rooting for this.

-Absolutely none of this is a referendum on our prowess as a basketball power

There are a lot of great international born players in the NBA today. The Greek Freak. Joel Embiid. Nikola Jokic. Rudy Gobert. Luca Doncic. Kristaps Porzingis. All legitimate players. And if you put them onto one International squad, the best American players would dust them by 20 points. I’m not going to name the best US born players, because it’s most of the players. I just named the few exceptions, and even considering that Giannis is possibly the best player in the game, they still don’t have nearly enough to keep it interesting. We could stick James Harden’s ass on the bench. There is nothing exciting or compelling about watching us compete against the rest of the country with those guys because…

-We’re still the prohibitive favorites

Las Vegas says Team USA is still a -225 favorite to win the damn thing. Yes, even with that roster. Serbia is 2nd at +300. Serbia has 5 NBA players, and only two good ones. France has five NBA players and one of them is Frank Ntilikina, which means they have four NBA players. Spain, Germany and Australia all have 4 NBA players, which gives them a total of 12, which happens to be exactly as many NBA players as Team USA has. And of those 12 players on Team Spermalia I guess the best player is [squinting] Ricky Rubio? Patty Mills? None of these teams have any business beating the United States. And yet, I hope they do so badly.

Do you remember the 2008 Redeem Team? It came on the heels of a lot of losing. We lost the 2002 FIBA World Cup. We didn’t just lose the 2004 Summer Olympics, we lost a game to Puerto Rico, which we sort of own, right? I get that they aren’t a state and their vote doesn’t matter, but they’re still Americans, right? Anyway, we were humiliated and all of the stars decided to form another super team to establish order. We sent LeBron, Kobe, Wade, Melo, CP3, Jason Kidd, Dwight Howard, Chris Bosh, and a bunch of other dudes. We were fully loaded. And then we played the Gold Medal game against Spain. The game took place at something like 2 or 3 in the morning. I stayed up and watched it at a friend’s house while they passed out drunk an hour before tipoff. Spain had the Gasol Brothers, Rudy Fernandez, Jose Calderon and a 17 year old Ricky Rubio with a moptop. And the game was waaaay too close. Don’t be fooled by the score. 118-107 doesn’t sound all that close, but there were times where Spain looked like they were about to do the thing. Didn’t happen. Sucks.

So what’s going to happen this time around? They’re probably still going to win. But at least they’ll have to sweat a little. By the way, I actually don’t think the Dream Team was all that good for the game of basketball. Every time people bitch about superstar teams like the recent Warriors or the damn Heatles, I ask them to remember what these players saw growing up. They’re all children of the 90’s. Well what was the coolest team in the 90’s. People will guess the Bulls, and then flail with random answers like the Sonics or Suns or Hornets, without realizing that it was a trick question. The answer is the ’92 Dream Team. That’s the real team that every kid wanted to join. One where simply being a member was to have been deified as one of the greats. It was a team where greatness was assured to the point that no player would actually have to do anything extraordinary. They were free to be unselfish cogs in the mighty machine. That’s what LeBron or Durant always really wanted. To be on the Dream Team. It’s why LeBron is saying that he wants to be on the 2020 squad in Tokyo. He’s already got 2 Gold Medals, but he wants to be one of the guys on that team. He knows he’s gonna get to stroll around the track during the Opening Ceremonies, half heartedly do a few basketball things, hang out with his friends, pick up a gold medal and do the equivalent of going out for ice cream (It’s getting his pic taken at the VIP of some Japanese club, where he’s holding a bottle of Ace of Spades that is roughly the size of a missile). It’s not a competition or even a valid way of proving himself. It’s a status symbol. And you should treat it as such. Go marvel at his instagram pics, but for the love of God, don’t actually feel invested in the results of their next game against Macedonia.

So no, if anything, now is not a time to panic. Now is a time to root against a Team USA weak enough to be brought down. I would never tell anybody to watch the FIBA World Cup, because it’s bad and I know you won’t either way, but if you were to watch an international basketball tournament, I guess this would be as good a time as any. But please, don’t panic.

This has been all I intend to say about the 2019 FIBA World Cup. Frankly, it is far too many words as is.