The USA Olympic team is back in the gold medal game as expected. But could it be a last hurrah for US international basketball dominance? Despite an early fourth-quarter 13-point lead for Serbia, the Americans prevailed behind the sweet shooting of Stephen Curry, a sudden hot streak by Kevin Durant, and the bully-ball leadership of LeBron James. As well as Joel Embiid‘s dominant interior play. Will any of them play in 2028 and what will USA team basketball look like without them?
A Last Hurrah For USA Olympic Basketball Dominance?
When The Stars Are Away…
There is data on what US teams look like without the superstar trio, of course. Recent FIBA World Cup teams have been largely devoid of the top American talent. Even the Olympics in Tokyo lacked the stewardship of the nation’s old guard. They were all busy recovering from the condensed offseasons that were forced on them by the pandemic. It should be said, that with the superstars’ absence, some of the team’s current “role players” are able to better assert their swagger. Jayson Tatum has gotten to DNPs this Olympics. Meanwhile, he was probably the team’s most important player in Tokyo after Durant.
Even Tatum couldn’t make it for the 2023 FIBA World Cup tournament, though. Instead, the US team’s captain was Jalen Brunson, and its highest scorer was Anthony Edwards. Unlike the Tokyo Olympic team that was able to fight its way to gold in spite of its limitations, the US’s 2023 World Cup team lost in the bronze medal match to Canada. The 2019 US team didn’t even make it that far.
Team USA’s Recent Weakness Could Return
The Olympics will always bring out bigger US stars than the World Cup. But even though the Tokyo Olympics team did win the gold, they also lost Team USA’s 25-game winning streak in group play to France. That team’s problem wasn’t really its star power either. It was quite simply its lack of size. Javale McGee was the team’s only traditional option at center, forcing them to rely heavily on small ball line-ups with Durant or Draymond Green in the middle. Even Miami Heat big man Bam Adebayo is undersized at the five for the international game.
To compare, this current Olympic team features top NBA centers Joel Embiid and Anthony Davis. Even if Embiid hasn’t been at his best during the tournament, and Davis did still get hunted by Serbia’s Nikola Jokic in the semi-finals, those two players completely evaporated the US’s size deficiency. Unlike the superstar trio mentioned earlier, they’re only 30 (Embiid) and 31 (Davis). But both players have endured injury-plagued careers. There’s no guarantee they’ll be either available or still at the peak of their powers in 2028.
USA’s Olympic Competition Of The Future
But, speaking of 2028, what will the competition look like? Naturally, it’s impossible to say with any great certainty. The game continues to gain international popularity, and recent All-NBA teams certainly reflect that. But all these impactful foreign players don’t exactly hail from the same place. Parts of the US audience will have trouble picking out Serbia and Slovenia on a map, but that doesn’t mean that Jokic gets to play with Luka Doncic at the Olympics.
On the other hand, France has just provided back-to-back first-overall picks to the NBA, with another Frenchman selected second in 2024. Though the top of this year’s draft was considered to be underwhelming, Victor Wembanyama looks set to be a force for years to come. Another country could emerge within the next four years with multiple star-level players as well.
The biggest problem for other national teams isn’t star power, though. It’s depth. In particular, they tend to lack shooting depth. The shorter three-point line does help mitigate that somewhat. Furthermore, the extra juice that players get from competing for their country, especially those that seem undermanned, has an impact that is hard to overstate. With, four more years is a lot of time when it comes to developing serviceable role players compared with superstars.
The Last Word
The days of the United States national team as the undisputed top dog in international competition look to be numbered. There’s every chance they’ll be favorites again next time around, but every leap year, the rest of the world will look to take a leap to catch up. Eventually, they probably will.
