Who is to be blamed for USA failure in FIBA world cup?

[Throwback24]

The Celtics overrated prospects

Tatum didn't even play and Brown had a good game. Smart (good game aside from missed FTs) and Kemba (1st bad game of the tourney) aren't prospects.

Their showing proved the team was missing Kyle Lowry.

[Showdown]

It isn't. The US cares about the Olympics more, so therefore it is the more important event. That's just the reality behind the situation.

If all the European teams stopped sending their best players to the World Cup and focused more on the Euro Cup, the World Cup would lose a ton of prestige. The US in basketball is equivalent to basically all of Europe in soccer.

it is. the world would still play basketball if usa stopped, so usa not caring is irrelevant. the reality you try to portay is just in your head.
european teams still focus on euro cup and world cup equaly.
what im trying to say is... you send "a team" players to olympics which are a lot easier to win and then claim "this is the premium tournament." it isnt.

It is relevant though. The US is far and away the best basketball country in the world, both currently and historically. The tournament they value does matter for the prestige of it. If Germany, Brazil, Argentina, and France stopped sending their best players to the World Cup, the prestige of that tournament would go down as well.

Brazil almost never send best team for Copa America but it's stil prestigiuos competition

[Tracymcgoaty]

Ze ruskis

[itrsteve]

Tatum didn't even play and Brown had a good game. Smart (good game aside from missed FTs) and Kemba (1st bad game of the tourney) aren't prospects.

There is somebody crapping on the Celtics each page of this thread. Let RGM do its thing.

[Darth Celtic]

Why did USA play Harrison Barnes as their center against Gobert for so long?

Everyone got put in the dumpster. Turner was even worse. Gobert was simply the best player on the floor.

Let this set in. Jaylen Brown was best center for USA on the court......

Turner would be all FIBA one game, and not show up the next. Lopez is terrible at basketball. Kemba carried the FIBA team throughout, but every great player has a bad game, and in a 1 and done tourney, that 1 bad game is all it takes.

Love the hater blaming Kemba. yeah, ignore the other 4 wins where he carried the team.

It was the lack of good big men that was the downfall. It's why we lost to the Aussies, and why we lost to France. Both have too many good big men. We had 1 off and on big man and then a bunch of terrible.

[sean1913]

um..they failed because France beat their asses. they are nba players, top 400 players in the world apparently and when met with an equal force they got beat. France has men who can PLAY . some are NBA max level players! some are previous nba rotation players. US got beat.

[Catchall]

um..they failed because France beat their asses. they are nba players, top 400 players in the world apparently and when met with an equal force they got beat. France has men who can PLAY . some are NBA max level players! some are previous nba rotation players. US got beat.

Plus, their roster had an All Star center on it, and USA's didn't.

[asdfgh]

Pop got away with playing smallball against the more unathletic teams, but when he faced an athletic, but more orthodox team like France, he got exposed. Rebounds were 44-28 for France.

[wolfram]

For a country that has so many star basketball players to say they needed a superstar(-s) to win against other countries with 1 star, tops, is really pathetic.

Coaching let the team down. Plain and simple.

to be fair the coaches of other international teams have the benefit of having consistent roster and playing together for years.

This is not correct. Most teams are different for every tournament. Look at Eurobasket 2017 France and this one. A lot of different players. Players don't see each other, many play in different leagues, they get together like team usa. Same story for most teams. Serbia also has many new players compared to Eurobasket. Same with Spain. Coaches are the same though.

[SF_Warriors]

It seems that unlike players like Giannis, Jokic and Gobert that are are willing to play for their country, guys like LeBron, Kawhi, Curry, AD and Harden are not proud enough to play for their country.
What a fake leaders/role models.

Lebrn, AD, curry, harden have played for team usa more than once whether it was fiba/olympics or both...Pretty sure we are going to see at least a couple of those guys in the olympics.

[SF_Warriors]

It seems that unlike players like Giannis, Jokic and Gobert that are are willing to play for their country, guys like LeBron, Kawhi, Curry, AD and Harden are not proud enough to play for their country.
What a fake leaders/role models.

Lebrn, AD, curry, harden have played for team usa more than once whether it was fiba/olympics or both...Pretty sure we are going to see at least a couple of those guys in the olympics.

[Mirotic12]

1994 it was a bloodbath like the Olympics
1998 it was NCAA players
2002 it was all stars but the team didn't gel like this one so they lost playing against really good Yugoslavian team
2006 was an amazing team with Lebron, Wade, Bosch, Chris Paul, Melo... etc but lost to an all time great Greece team that played the game of their lifes
2010 and 2014 were A- or B+ teams. It was a mix of superstars, all stars and starters and both won easily.

Actually, in 1998 it was the best American professional players that were playing in Europe at the time. An NCAA team couldn't compete at that level by 1998.

Today, 21 years later, a team of the best American pros playing in Europe would be a complete disaster. But at the level international basketball was at 20 years ago, they couldn't win, but they could be very competitive. But an NCAA team, even 21 years ago, couldn't have done jack.

PG: Shane Larkin, Mike James
SG: Cory Higgins, Malcolm Delaney
SF: Will Clybrun, Dorell Wright
PF: Anthony Randolph, Brandon Davies, Derrick Williams
C: Tarik Black, Jordan Mickey, Bryant Dunston

Probably not the exact team... I couldn't find enough guys for the back court
I think this team could compete pretty well in this kind of tournament. These players are used to FIBA style games.
Anyway, they won't be more disaster than the current US team. They could win against Turkey, Czech Republic and Brazil. Against Greece it'll be a good match, but even if they lost they could still reach the quarter finals and lose - the same as the current team did.

I don't know...that's some serious ball hogging and chucking from guards (Larkin, James, Delaney), and some very soft players also (Wright, Randolph, and Williams).

Also, I don't think Anthony Randolph can play for USA again, as he switched to Slovenia. I don't think you can switch back. Dunston plays with Armenia I believe. And Brandon Davies I believe is registered with Uganda's program, but I'm not sure about that one.

Just look at how this US team did at the 2015 Pan American Games.......

Ron Baker
Malcolm Brogdon
Bobby Brown
Ryan Hollins
Keith Langford
Shawn Long
Taurean Prince
Anthony Randolph
Kaleb Tarczewski
Melo Trimble
Denzel Valentine
Damien Wilkins

That US team got the bronze at the 2015 Pan American Games. Keep in mind that is competing just against teams from the Americas, and that most of the Americas send their B or C level teams to that tournament...........it's even far below the level of the FIBA AmeriCup, which is also certainly below the FIBA World Cup's level.

That USA team finished 3rd, playing in one of the lowest level FIBA tournaments............

[Patsfan1081]

New Rule: no more than one Celtic allowed on the team at a time. Anymore than that and this outcome is inevitable.

The Boston hate is always hilarious on this board, I guess that's what happens though when Kyle Kuzma can't even beat out Joe Harris or Derrick White for a spot on the team......Tatum didn't even play, Smart was one of two players with a positive plus minus, and Brown might have been one of three players to play remotely decent decent in this tourney for the U.S. But I guess it's their faults the team doesn't have any bigmen or that Harrison's Barnes played thirty two minutes....

[mademan]

They missed Lowry and/or Fox. Need someone to set up the offense. Whatever they were doing out there was ugly af to watch

[UcanUwill]

FIBA is going to make the Olympics an under-23 tournament. This has been known for several years now. So the USA players will have to get with the rest of the world, whether they like it or not.

If/When that happens fine. Until then most US players consider the Olympics the pinnacle tournament.

Mostly everyone does, dont debate that guy. In the past a lot of Euro stars skipped World cup or Eurobasket prior to world cup (which worked as WC qualifier), because they dont value WC that much. Everyone shows up for Olympics tho, this is common for other countries not only USA.

[mademan]

Im not sure why people think this was crazy. Look at the roster of France and the US. Yes, the US has more talent, but not by that large of an amount, especially when you restrict it to a top 7 or 8. France has multiple NBA level players, US only has 1 all-star and a bunch of players not significantly better than their french counterparts (guys like Jaylen brown and Barnes arent much better if at all than Fournier/ de colo) and France had the best player, by far, imo.

In a sudden death tournament setting, a single poor shooting night can kill you. And the US wasnt coming with a squad that outclassed the rest of the tourny.

[erudite23]

The Americans still had the most talent of any team, but we just lack continuity and cohesion as a team. In order to overcome that gap and be able to reliably win the tournament (>99.9% win probability is what's expected) you have to have a massive talent gap and this time it wasn't that big. If this team stayed together for a full off season, trained together and were all within one organization, they would blow out the competition next year. It wouldn't be close.

So who's fault is it?

IT'S USA BASKETBALL'S FAULT.

The organizing body is the one who should be taking top level responsibility. If the players aren't coming, it's their job to figure out a solution, and I don't see any sign that that is happening.

The good thing is that perhaps enough people will be pissed that we'll have a better turnout for 2020 and we can throw the hammer down on the world again. It's better for everyone, though, for the competition to continue to improve and that's what is happening.

[Kalela]

Kemba was really bad and Pop decided it was good idea to play in the 4th quarter when he hasn't shown anything in the first 3 quarters. I blame Pop and his coaching staff for that decision. Reminds of Budenholzer and how he decided to keep playing Bledsoe against the Raptors when it was clear he should have been benched.

[G R E Y]

The Americans still had the most talent of any team, but we just lack continuity and cohesion as a team. In order to overcome that gap and be able to reliably win the tournament (>99.9% win probability is what's expected) you have to have a massive talent gap and this time it wasn't that big. If this team stayed together for a full off season, trained together and were all within one organization, they would blow out the competition next year. It wouldn't be close.

So who's fault is it?

IT'S USA BASKETBALL'S FAULT.

The organizing body is the one who should be taking top level responsibility. If the players aren't coming, it's their job to figure out a solution, and I don't see any sign that that is happening.

The good thing is that perhaps enough people will be pissed that we'll have a better turnout for 2020 and we can throw the hammer down on the world again. It's better for everyone, though, for the competition to continue to improve and that's what is happening.

But that's just it - for the longest time, USA has been outside of the culture that breeds desire for playing internationally beyond Olympics. You can make a case for USA Basketball, but it is an issue that it is competing against a far stronger impetus of the NBA itself. It is curious that FIBA changed the schedule to make coming to the WC even harder right when it's in China, too, just weird. But back to USA Basketball, you can't make someone come and play for a team, you just can't force them. What I think needs to be done is on a grassroots level to develop appreciation for international play, more akin to what international players experience, though there are further issues with that.

[Coach Carter]

Evidently on this occasion, the talent alone wasn't good enough. The other nations have their usual squads. There's chemistry. This is something USA can never have. Pop was alluding to this on media day or whatever. He already sounded defeated. He was basically saying he'll do his best under the circumstances. That's the impression I got anyway. And there's no easy fix because this group will most likely never play together again. Whilst the Harrison Barnes are always willing to put their hand up, young stars like Fox will improve and have other priorities.