World champions of what?

The United States men's team loses twice more to finish fourth in the World Cup. It's the same old story, and only Olympic loss next summer can lead to the necessary jolt.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Praying Hands; Albrecht Durer; 1508

Back in October, Netflix released a documentary called The Redeem Team. It documented USA Basketball’s effort to reinvent its senior men’s team program after the failures of the 2002 FIBA World Championship in Indianapolis and the 2004 Olympics in Athens. I wrote a lengthy review of the documentary that included a broader assessment of Life After Redemption for Team USA men’s basketball. Pardon me a brief quote.

But here’s my biggest takeaway from the documentary: the Redeem Team was merely a moment in time, not some new era of American basketball dominance. Redemption is not a program: it’s a mission, and that mission ended when the job was completed. In 2008. A long time ago. And after that, the Team USA senior men’s basketball program essentially returned to its rudderless norm.

This whole episode concocted by Colangelo and Coach K was a momentary correction of the major flaws of how the USA Basketball program put together its senior men’s rosters. But it did nothing to address the long-term issues facing USA Basketball, precisely that there will never be much player continuity and that the rest of the world is truly catching up to the United States in terms of top basketball talent.

Eleven months later, Team USA just dropped three of its final four games in the 2023 World Cup in Manila to finish out of the medals for the second straight time. It lost to Dennis Schroder and Germany on Friday morning, and to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Canada on Sunday. This is the rudderless norm for Team USA men’s basketball.

Wait, did I say Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Canada? Well, Shai did have another excellent game. But this was Dillon Brooks’ moment.

Thirty-nine points for Dillon the Villain. This is proof of what I was saying about the rest of the world catching up. Brooks is not an All-NBA player. But Canada has an All-NBA player in Shai. And then it has a bunch of legitimate NBA players around him: Brooks, R.J. Barrett, Dwight Powell, Kelly Olynyk, Nickeil Alexander-Walker. Germany brought four NBA players — Schroder, Franz Wagner, Mo Wagner, Daniel Theis — one of whom could be an All-Star soon (Franz). The rest of those rosters are generally filled with high-level talent.

This version of Team USA, meanwhile, didn’t have a single 2022-23 All-NBA player. There were nine American All-NBA players this year. Two of them (Jayson Tatum and Damian Lillard) played two summers ago in the Olympics. Two more played in the 2019 World Cup (a 7th-place finish) but not the Olympics (Donovan Mitchell and Jaylen Brown). Two of them have multiple Olympic golds (LeBron James and Steph Curry). LeBron James has multiple Olympic golds. Stephen Curry has multiple World Cup golds. Another has a single Olympic gold (Jimmy Butler). Two others (Julius Randle and De’Aaron Fox) have not appeared for Team USA in international senior level play.

This is the interesting conundrum the USA Basketball program, led by Grant Hill, finds itself in.