Well, well, well........this is a developing situation. USA Basketball has bottomed out of the tournament against Germany. That's right. This isn't the World Cup where it is commonplace that Germany would beat USA, this is basketball.
Now, before anyone reads this and says that I'm unpatriotic and if I don't think that the United States should be #1 in everything that we compete in, go and check the Internet to see what happened at the World Cup, or the Women's World Cup, or the World Baseball Classic, or the World Hockey Championships. It's a trend, the United States been leapfrogged by everyone else in the world. Basketball has become the Nation's latest victim to this.
32 years ago, the Dream Team was the greatest assembly of talent ever on a basketball court. They plowed through the competition and took home the gold. I believe it was at this point where the rest of the world decided to up their game and compete with the gold ol' USA. It took a while as the USA did continue to win gold metals along the way. The fruition of this was materializing in the last decade. This wasn't just a surprise, call it adaptation. The rest of the world just caught up with them. The evidence is the rise of great prospects coming from Canada. Remember when Steve Nash was the greatest prospect from the Great White North? Now you have SGA, Jamal Murray, Trey Lyles, Dillon Brooks, Nickell Alexander-Walker and RJ Barrett dominating the NBA from O' Canada.
Speaking of the NBA, take a guess who is responsible for the international boost in basketball? The association is a global business that will provide content of the league to many continents. International prospects could study how do play with NBA players and their coaches could study how to develop their professional players overseas on how do defend against NBA players. The growth of the NBA throughout the years has made it to the point where the top players from overseas can join the league and have these prospects shine on a brighter stage.
Look at the last five seasons and see who won the league MVP award in the NBA: Giannis, Jokic and Embiid. All three are from overseas and Luka Doncic has been in the running for that award. Jokic won the Finals MVP while bringing a championship to the Nuggets. The second leading scorer on that championship team is Jamal Murray from Canada. Dirk Nowitzki from Germany, Tony Parker from Belgium and Pau Gasol from Spain were inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. Parker won four NBA titles alongside another HOF'er, Manu Ginoboli from Argentina. Every team has someone from outside of the United States on their roster. English born Masai Ujiri constructed a roster that won a championship as GM with the Raptors in 2019.
The United States are in a world of hurt come Olympic time in Paris next year. For many people watching the program, this was coming for a long time.
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