2 is a streak

 From the start they couldn’t keep players in the player pool. Everyone was dropping out. Every other day someone stubbed their toe on the way out of their house and now was backing out faking hurt. Instead, if you don’t want to go just be a man about it and say you don’t want to go and you want the time off for rest or family whatever.

This team was basically a C or D level USA team talent wise. But that was all the more reason why I wanted to watch them play. There were players I might never get to see in international competition again. I was excited to watch them.

But I can’t. I tried cable, ESPN, ESPN app. They want me to sign up and pay for their streaming to watch team USA basketball. Screw you ESPN. If Lebron did a cooking show, you would air it primetime at 7 and THEN have Steven A on at 8 to do commentary on LBJ’s cooking! But to watch a collection of young up and coming NBA players, most in their first international men’s competition, no you won’t show that. I can’t wait until ESPN loses enough money that they have to go back to actually showing sports 24/7.

I HATE that writers for the same ESPN that wouldn;t even show the damn games are now writing about how this is the most historically bad USA team ever. How dissapointing they were.  They showed up. They competed and played as well as a young, put together 3 weeks in advance way that they could. Why don’t you write about all the stars who ditched the tournament, or better yet, just write the facts. They played well and played hard, but were outmatched by other countries who sent vetern teams that have years of cooperation between their players.

In short: TLDR version: Screw ESPN and all of their employees and in the future I hope we continue to send basically a U-25 team to this "World Cup". Who cares if we don’t get gold with them.

It is not surprising, but is disappointing. The talent gap was as small as it has ever been, the desire gap was huge, and when things didn’t come easy there was not "that guy" to right the ship. It was not a role suitable for Kemba and Donovan Mitchell in their first international tournament. Over the past decade, only the 2014 team routed everyone and things never really got too close in 2008. In 2016, the US had three games in real question in the 4th quarter. Against Australia, they had Melo and Kyrie get it over the line. They scored 28 in the 4th, Melo had 14 (Dinosaur Melo starring in 2016… ya know before the modern game) and Kyrie 12. Serbia made a 4th quarter run to get the US lead down to 5, and Melo got 4 straight to get it back up to 7 and the US held on to win by 3. Similarly, France made an early 4th quarter run to cut a US lead to 4, Melo, Durant, and Kyrie righted the ship. Again, the 2014 team rolled everyone. In 2012, Spain and Lithuania traded blows. Lithuanaia went on an early 4th quarter run to take the lead, but they had Durant, LeBron, a mix of CP3 and Deron Williams, and even Kobe was out there (not exactly Myles Turner, Joe Harris, Harrison Barnes, and Jalen Brown) and went on a 12-2 run. In the Spain game the US had no answer for the Gasols, but it ultimately didn’t matter. Spain couldn’t answer Durant and LeBron It was a fantastic game, but also remember that young stars like Westbrook, Harden, and Davis barely played. They were not thrown into the deep end right away. In 2010, the team really only saw Brazil come close, and it was a game where shots didn’t fall, but they had Chauncey, Iguodala, Durant, and peak Rose keep things from completely going south.

 That’s sad

 American basketball players don’t care about no FIBA..this might be the first team we’ve sent over without ONE future Hall of Famer on it…Next summer we bring home the gold..

 They should start sending "Theme Teams" to the World Cup. Like "The Greybeards" (nobody under 35) or "The Bare Feet" (nobody with a shoe contract) or "The Clipboards" (just NBA Assistant Coaches).

We did learn one thing though: Don’t play Nellie Ball against the Europeans. 

 do zero news or serious analysis…… They assign this absolute clown Windhorst who knows what Lebron ate for lunch every day since high school but knows Nothing about Basketball 

And Windhorst things he’s writing a romance novel gassing up fans about great these youngs Americans are & he’s claiming Donovan Mitchell is the next D Wade & Jason Tatum is the next Carmelo 

Yo I like those players D Wade & Carmelo are to of the greatest players in NBA history – Legit Super Stars when in their prime 

Team USA has some good young talent & a few All Star level players but No Super Stars – plus they were young playing against teams full of grown men who have played for their country for Years 

The game has gone Global – I just wrote on a diff post that ALL the young up & coming Super Stars are almost all International – I don’t even think a lot of NBA fans realize how many of these guys are Not American b/c living & playing in American for years they all become Americanized – 

The days of America just throwing out 2nd & 3rd tier players & winning International tournaments are long gone & that’s fine – we deserved some intelligent analysis from ESPN & other American Sports media – all of which has become a joke

Marc Gasol has the chance to win the World Cup after winning the NBA title this year and his 2nd title after 2006 where he was a 21 year old role player and he had something to say about going to China after what you could consider a fairly long summer:

Gasol only took about a week off after the Raptors’ title before starting preparations with Team Spain. While many of his NBA peers elected to skip the World Cup, Gasol said he felt a commitment to set an example to younger Spanish players. "It’s so worth it and not just because we’re playing in the title game," Gasol said. "It’s the responsibility of passing along the commitment and the loyalty to the team. Those values that we were taught so many years, now it is our turn to pass on the legacy to the next generation. That’s not talent, that’s just commitment."

 What the US team came up with is no surprise at all considering the route they played coming this tournament. They have been surprisingly bad offensively and were overmatched physically on the Frontline having no true PF. Defensively they looked like amateurs sometimes and to all the guys who say they are young this just isn’t really true. They were unexperienced yes but not a overly young team and had the best coaches you could ask for. It’s kind of shocking that so many top level players just don’t want to play international and seems to only look at their individual path and have no respect for the international competition.  

Everybody can do what he wants but no one should wine about this or should try to say that this isn’t the best squad they could find cause it just is. The US media is also ignorant as hell since they said they will be fine cause they had pop and were praising this team for their defense she they won games by 10 when they shot below 40 percent multiple times from the floor. I just hope everybody learns his lesson from this and last years individual NBA awards should wake up everybody in the league about the fact that the US is not automatic about having the best players anymore. Giannis, Gobert, Jokic, Luka, Embiid are all tearing through the league and there is no reason to believe that this is going to end here, it just started if you ask me. The Aussies came as close as you can get for the title game and played beautiful team basketball. Watching a guy like Joe Ingles go to work is a thing of beauty and he is incredibly underrated. Everybody is making jokes about the competition being overmatched physically by the glorified US boys but in reality they played a lot of headless basketball like my OKC team did for several years minus the fact that they just lacked the individual talent to withstand balanced opponents. Pop must have been really pissed about what he had to deal with. They were just not ready and looked unprepared for this chip.