30 August 2023
If the Americans aren’t “world basketball champions,” then why is their B-to-C squad running through the 2023 FIBA World Cup in Manila?
Why do we rate every international opponent’s odds at beating Team USA by the quality of the players on their roster who have played meaningful NBA careers?
It’s the elephant in the room as an undefeated Team USA roster advanced to Round 2 with a landslide 110-62 victory over a Jordanian national basketball team led by former Nets forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.
The NBA’s defending champion doesn’t compete in the World Cup — and neither does the league’s premier talent — but the World Cup’s best basketball players flock to the NBA, both to compete against the best and secure the world’s highest-paying basketball contracts.
While NBA champions may not be literal “world champs,” it’s hard to make an argument for better basketball being played anywhere else on the planet.
And it’s why claims from U.S. track and field star Noah Lyles were met with widespread ridicule across social media over the past two days.
Lyles, a six-time world champion who claimed three gold medals in the 2023 Budapest games, attacked the validity of the “world champ” title generally bestowed upon the winner of the NBA Finals.
“The thing that hurts me the most is that I have to watch the NBA Finals and they have ‘world champion’ on their head,” Lyles said, the letters U.S.A. across the chest of his blue shirt. “World champion of what? The United States? Don’t get me wrong: I love the U.S. — at times — but that ain’t the world. That is not the world.
“We are the world. We have almost every country out here fighting, thriving, putting on their flag to show that they are represented. There ain’t no flags from the NBA.”
Former Nets star Kevin Durant summed the basketball world’s confusion with Lyles’ quote with a few words in a comment on Instagram:
“Someone get this brother some help,” Durant wrote.
Unsurprisingly, Knicks forward Evan Fournier from France — who spends more time collecting James Dolan’s checks than playing meaningful NBA minutes — agreed with Lyles’ assessment.
“If you participate in the World Cup or even the Olympics and you win, you have the right to call yourself world champions,” Fournier said. “The way I look at is: NBA champions… It’s just a title.”
Fournier’s French team was eliminated in the first round of the FIBA World Cup this summer.
Meanwhile, Team USA has yet to be challenged — albeit against low-level international competition.
After Wednesday morning’s 48-point victory over the Kingdom of Jordan, the Americans have an average margin of victory of 34 points in Group C play and will advance to the second round to face the winners of Group D — Lithuania or Montenegro — as well as Group C’s second-best team (as of Wednesday morning, a toss-up between Greece and New Zealand).
No player on this Team USA roster earned a First-Team All-NBA nod last season.
Or Second-Team.
Or Third-Team.
Jaren Jackson Jr. is the NBA’s Reigning Defensive Player of the Year. Anthony Edwards is an emerging superstar who hasn’t won anything at the NBA level. Mikal Bridges was a longtime role player before he was thrust into the star role after the Durant trade from Brooklyn. Brandon Ingram is a fringe NBA All-Star who was moved to the bench against Jordan in favor of Knicks forward Josh Hart.
And Jalen Brunson is a fine player, the heartbeat for this Team USA squad and the best thing that’s happened to the Knicks in a long time.
Brunson is not in the Top-10 in the NBA at his position.
In fact, Austin Reaves — the third- or fourth-best player on his Los Angeles Lakers team — may be Team USA’s third- or fourth-most impactful player of the World Cup.
This is not an all-world Team USA roster on paper — at least not by NBA standards — but the NBA’s standards are so high, the equivalent of the Olympic G-League team is running through its World Cup slate.
The Americans took a 20-4 lead over Jordan in the first quarter and never looked back, building a lead that ballooned to 50 by the fourth quarter. Team USA’s landslide victory more closely resembled a Harlem Globetrotters scrimmage.
The only argument left against the Americans is a lack of quality opponents through their early FIBA stretch. Team USA destroyed Slovenia in their Showcase exhibition, but Luka Doncic sat the game out of caution. Spain has not been the same without Ricky Rubio or the Gasol brothers, Pau or Marc.
As expected: the Gasol brothers are decorated NBA All-Stars, and Rubio is one of the most creative international point guards in NBA history.
Fournier’s team is on a flight back to France because Team Canada’s roster — you guessed it, littered with NBA talent — took Group H’s No. 1 spot.
Team Canada has the second-best individual NBA talent behind Doncic — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — in the World Cup.
It’s Team Canada’s NBA talent that legitimizes the country as World Champion contenders.
Just like it’s the NBA’s global talent that legitimizes the league’s best team as world champions — even if it’s a loose application of the term.
NEW YORK MINUTE
Knicks forward Josh Hart earned his first World Cup start over Brandon Ingram, who was moved to the bench and thrived in a playmaking role with the second unit. Hart only tallied two points (at the foul line) but grabbed 12 rebounds to go with three assists and a steal.
Jalen Brunson finished with 10 points on 5-of-8 shooting from the field, and Nets star Mikal Bridges logged three steals in 18 minutes to go with nine points in the game.
Nets sharpshooter Cam Johnson finished with five points and three assists.
()