FfldCntyFan
Texas: Property of UConn Men's Basketball program
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2011
- Messages
- 12,874
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Yes, the rest of the world has made up quite a bit of ground and yes, some of the top players in the world are from other countries but fielding an actual team requires quite a few pieces.You don't understand the tournament then.
In no order who have great players.
1. USA
2. Germany (F Wagner, M. Wagner, Schroder)
3. Spain (littered with terrific euro players who are proven but older like R Fernandez. Have Juanacho and Wily Hernangomez)
4. France (Goebert, Wembanyama, a ton of talent)
5. Serbia (Jokic)
6. Greece (Giannis )
7. Australia (Ingles, Jock Landale, Giddey, Patty Mills) -- cut an NBA player (Thybulle) from the team.
8. Canada (SGA, Jamal Murray, RJ Barett, Dort,)
If I had to pick?
USA - Gold
Canada - Silver
Australia - Bronze
France - Shutout
But we'll see.
The bottom 4 who should struggle, but who knows
Puerto Rico (Jose Alvarado, Tremont Waters!)
Brazil
Japan
South Sudan
Those top eight teams all have multiple nba guys.
The USA should win, but its going to take a great game from them to beat some of these teams. Jokic can dominate a basketball game any time he steps on the floor, as can Giannis.
If you were to take the fifth, sixth and seventh best players from any other country, how deep in US players would you need to go to reach similar talent? 35? 45? 50?
Where we should have a massive advantage is in the quality of players three or four through the end of the bench. What we've been lacking in tournaments where we haven't done well is play as a team and bring the overall commitment necessary to win a competitive tournament.
I personally believe that if we put the teams together correctly (and the players were willing to comply with what would be necessary) we could field five or six full squads that would be at worst equally talented to any other country's team.