I get really annoyed with all the 'experts' who every year claim bias and or incompetence from the selection committee. USA basketball at all levels is set up to create a committee that has representatives from a range of stake holders - specific to the junior selection committee I believe they always have one AAU stakeholder who this cycle is from the Philly Belles. They also have a HS coach (from TX), two former pro/USA players, former USA junior HC, two college coaches (not D1) and Carol Callan. At age 16 and under ranking services are pretty meaningless though no one seemed to have a problem with the invitees selection by USA and the pay your way adjustment to the selection has opened the door for some lower exposure kids to get seen and occasionally selected.
As others stated the trial process at U16 is the first chance for any of these kids to be evaluated in a meaningful way against comparable players in a mix and match setting where AAU/HS team quality and competition is taken out of the equation. I am sure a certain amount of previous exposure creeps into the evaluation by individuals who have seen some of these players in different competitions, but the primary evaluation is based on the 4 days in CO and how individuals perform there and how they integrate with the other players and the coaches.
Becoming a participant in USA committees is a high honor that people take seriously - and while they may arrive with their own biases and quirks they work very hard to conform to the USA ethos and to set aside those biases for the good of the committee they serve on. That is in stark contrast to all those outside 'experts' whose primary self interests are never far from the surface. The idea that one AAU representative out of 8 members of the committee can railroad the selection process is pretty silly, or that a group of 8 disparate members brought together for a selection cycle is rife with 'politics' that exhibits a bias against one AAU organization, one state, or one region and for another.
One pretty consistent comment from all the outside evaluation was that this cycle of junior talent is far superior to the previous one - going so far as to say that few if any of the previous U16/U17 team members would have made it through to the last two selection pools in this year's cycle. While I am not sure of that (I continue to fault the coaching at least as much as the selection/talent), it does point to another issue that we all see in both incoming college classes and WNBA drafts - they are cyclical and especially at the very top end. An U16 team that has a Stewart, Parker, Moore, etc. is better able to thrive than one that does not and a lot of years those types of players are not available. As international competition improves, age specific teams that are only drawing one a few years of talent as opposed to the NT that is selecting from 15 years of talent will remain very cyclical. And USA dominance for the NT team is going to be strained in this coming cycle in a similar way to the 2006 bronze WC team that was very young and missing the leadership from an older generation some of whom returned to lead the 2008 Olympic gold effort before finally retiring.
This was my favorite comment so far from 'outside experts'
OGBR @OGBR_Basketball