In the 2024 Olympics, Australia, Canada and France — the rosters outside the U.S. that boast the most NBA talent — are respectively starting Patty Mills, Dwight Powell and Evan Fournier, none of whom could crack a playoff rotation. Fournier came off the bench for the Detroit Pistons. He and Mills are unsigned.
Meanwhile the media is manufacturing controversies about whether the Americans even need either of the two best players on the NBA’s reigning champions. Team USA executive Grant Hill did not select Jaylen Brown, and head coach Steve Kerr did not play Jayson Tatum in their win over Serbia in pool play.
Team USA features perennial All-Stars Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo at center and felt the need to recruit 2023 NBA MVP Joel Embiid, a Cameroon native who holds citizenship in both the U.S. and France. And Team USA does not even need Embiid opposite the only center alive better than him, Serbia’s Nikola Jokić, who played the U.S. to a standstill in his 31 minutes and still lost his Olympic opener by 26 points.
Embiid did not play in another pool-play blowout (of South Sudan) on Wednesday, when Tatum started in place of Boston Celtics teammate Jrue Holiday, cycling a few more controversies through the media mill.
“The NBA is so popular worldwide,” Kerr told reporters in Paris. “The regular season is kind of a soap opera, and we understand that. Social media takes over, and everything becomes so dramatic. … I don’t read social media. I would hope that our guys aren’t paying too much attention to that. That’s a regular-season thing, where the soap opera can carry the ratings, but here it’s just: win a damn gold medal.”
These are our problems, which means we have none, and that diminishes Olympic basketball intrigue.
Be honest: When France and 7-foot-3 Victor Wembanyama took to the floor against Japan and 5-6 Yuki Togashi, for whom were you rooting? The U.S. might as well be two feet taller than the rest of the world.
This is not a fair fight. Rooting for USA Basketball is taking Goliath’s side.
Tatum, one of the five best players in the world, did not see the court against Serbia because he was in line behind two of the 15 greatest players in the history of the sport, LeBron James and Kevin Durant. So we argued who was better in this moment — a 26-year-old rising superstar on his second Olympic stage or the 30-something legends on their fourth — rather than discuss the actual basketball played in Paris.
Otherwise we would have to fawn excitement over a rematch against South Sudan, the plucky underdogs who gave the Americans an exhibition scare, only to enter their pool-play matchup a 29.5-point long shot. The U.S. can field an entire second unit of players selected to this year’s All-NBA roster. Its opponent on Saturday, Puerto Rico, starts George Conditt IV, who scored 4.9 points a game as an Iowa State senior.
Take America’s side, and you might as well be rooting for the bully at your neighborhood playground.
An injury to 39-year-old Rudy Fernandez, who last played in the NBA 12 years ago, could impact Spain’s chances of escaping Group A. The U.S. lost two-time NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard to injury and had its choice of stars to replace him on the 12-man roster. Hill selected Derrick White. He could have picked the ghost of Betty White, and Team USA would still emerge from Group C having played mostly garbage time.
This is not 2004, when, for example, Carlos Boozer filled Kevin Garnett’s post, and we took the field for granted. This is 2024, when the U.S. enlists Embiid to counter Australia’s Jock Landale. James, Durant and Steph Curry are the stewards of a squad filled with headliners from the next generation of NBA greats.
The international pool of talent has never been deeper. The NBA’s top four MVP candidates this past season were from Serbia, Canada, Slovenia and Greece. And still the U.S. is an overwhelming favorite. The top American finisher in this year’s NBA MVP race, Jalen Brunson, did not even make Team USA’s roster.
It is almost enough to make you root for any team but the U.S. At least until you remember that might mean rooting for Rudy Gobert to win Olympic gold. So what can be done to salvage Olympic basketball?
Team USA could lean into James, Durant, Curry and the old guard. Could we win gold with guys over 35? Chris Paul, Kyle Lowry and Kevin Love come on down. Grab Joe Johnson from the BIG3. Fill out the roster with some dads from a random rec league. Or go the other way. Could Cooper Flagg and USA Basketball’s junior national select team wallop the world? Maybe run The Basketball Tournament champs out there.
Seriously what is the lowest level of competition from which the U.S. could draw an Olympic champion? That is what we should do. Because anything would be better than arguing about whether Team USA should dust off a three-time All-NBA First Team selection or the one-time MVP in another blowout win.
Sure, an American roster full of NBA players placed third at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, when we slapped together a C team to face rosters of more continuity. It was embarrassing. We treated it as an exhibition, and they exposed our weaknesses on an international stage, where spacing is harder to come by and rim protection is paramount. So Team USA replaced Walker Kessler, Bobby Portis, Cameron Johnson and Josh Hart with Embiid, James, Durant and Curry, overwhelming Team USA’s opponents with unrivaled size and skill.
“We have an embarrassment of riches on this roster,” Kerr told reporters after Wednesday’s 103-86 win over South Sudan. “That’s the best way to put it. These guys are all champions, All-Stars, Hall of Famers, however you want to put it, so the whole thing is: Are we committed to the goal? That’s it. That’s it.”
That is it. The U.S. will either steamroll to a fifth straight Olympic gold medal or suffer the biggest basketball upset in the Games’ history. There is no in between. I guess that is why they play the Games.
