The 2019 FIBA World Cup wrapped up on Sunday. Spain beat Argentina to claim gold, France beat Australia to take bronze, loaded Serbia ended up in fifth place, and the United States finished seventh, their worst result in the 69-year history of the tournament. It was a pretty topsy-turvy tournament, you could say. That will tend to happen with two-week sprints with single-elimination elements, unfamiliar rosters, and foreign gyms.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons we can’t take from the event, though. Here’s an NBA-centric list of five things we learned in the World Cup that apply to the upcoming league season.
We’re also going to keep the Team USA takeaways to a minimum, because frankly, one assumes everyone involved hopes there is no NBA carryover from the Americans’ FIBA performance.
1. Marc Gasol still has it, and so might the Raptors
Gasol was never the most dominant player in this tournament despite leading Spain to gold and being named to the tournament’s All-Star Five (FIBA’s version of the All-Tournament team). Spain truly won with a team effort: the Hernangomez brothers put in excellent effort, Sergio Llull let the magic flow through him, Ricky Rubio was excellent (we’ll talk more about him in a moment), and the Spaniards had that potent familiarity with each other and the stakes.
But Gasol was (literally) at the center of it all. He has been playing remarkably confident and aspirational basketball for the past sixth months. His passing in the last four games of the tournament was astounding (20 assists in four games). He didn’t shoot too well in the tournament, but he anchored the defense and offense, and gave Spain its gold medal verve.
The lesson? Don’t count out the Raptors. Kawhi Leonard was Toronto’s MVP last season, without question. But the team flipped a switch when Marc arrived at the trade deadline, and everyone but Leonard is still around. Unless the Raptors tear it down early or suffer an injury or major regression, Gasol and the crew can get back into a high seed and do some damages to the crown princes of the East.
2. There is hope for Frank Ntilikina
France beat Team USA and earned a medal (bronze). Pretty good tournament. Evan Fournier (a pretty good NBA player) and Rudy Gobert (an excellent NBA player) led the way, but the biggest NBA-centric story on the team was Frank Ntilikina, the beguiled and beguiling New York Knicks point guard who has struggled (to put it lightly) under the bright lights.
Ntilikina had quite the nice FIBA World Cup as a floor leader and supplemental scorer, but mostly as a top-tier defender. He made life miserable for Kemba Walker in the quarterfinals while posting 11 points on 5-9 shooting. He followed that up with a good offensive performance (16 points on 7-12 shooting in a semifinal loss to Argentina.
He just turned 21 years old. He has two more years on his rookie deal. There is time yet for him to prove he belongs in the NBA.
3. Donovan Mitchell might not be ready for an all-star leap
The Utah Jazz might have the best two players in the NBA without all-star nods in Mike Conley and Donovan Mitchell. The typical Team USA arc would have had Mitchell leading the Americans to glory as a young scorer coming into his own over the summer, then boosting his NBA performance and stardom. It happened for Derrick Rose, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and Stephen Curry.
It did not happen for Mitchell.
Mitchell had some good games and nice moments — he certainly wasn’t the problem in the fateful, fatal loss to France — but the leadership and clear ownership of the team’s fate never materialized. There have been murmurs from reporters in attendance that the team resisted Gregg Popovich’s ball movement style — a style not dissimilar from what the Jazz run, actually. Mitchell racked up a good number of assists and shot well. Other than a dog of a game against Serbia in the consolation round and an allergy to drawing fouls, there’s not a lot to specifically fault Mitchell.
But there’s nothing to celebrate either, and that’s a bummer going into an NBA season where Utah is being billed as a top contender with Mitchell as its star scorer.
4. Bogdan Bogdanovic has got it
Bogdan Bogdanovic exists on a different NBA tier than Mitchell. Bogdanovic probably won’t be an opening night starter for the Kings, let alone the team’s star.
Maybe he should be. Bogdanovic was the best player in the tournament, without question. The only thing that kept him from being named the tournament MVP was Serbia’s disappointing fifth-place finish, which came through no fault of Bogi. (Nikola Jokic didn’t cover himself in glory, for what it’s worth.)
Bogdanovic finished as the No. 2 scorer in the tournament (behind Korean gunner Guna Ra.) He shot 60 percent on twos and 53 percent on threes while taking more than half of his shots from long distance. He scored 1.48 points per shooting possession at high volume! He has racked up 4.4 assists per game at a 3:1 assist-to-turnover ratio and shredded Team USA in the consolation bracket.
Bogdanovic is behind Buddy Hield in the Kings’ pecking order. Hield is very good and has terrific chemistry with De’Aaron Fox. But Bogdanovic is undeniable, and Sacramento needs to find a way to play all three guards together as much as possible, trade Hield or Bogdanovic for a very valuable asset, or turn Bogdanovic into the new Manu Ginobili by playing him 32 minutes a game off the bench. He’s too good to let sit.
5. Ricky Rubio is going to help the Suns
Finally, let’s turn to the tournament MVP, who played superb defense throughout (not surprising) and ran an excellent floor game, even when he wasn’t shooting well. (Overall, he shot fine.) He signed with the Phoenix Suns this summer, a team that has needed a smart, capable, NBA-caliber point guard for years.
My takeaway from Rubio’s World Cup run is that Rubio is actually going to make a massive difference for the Suns.
Rubio just knows what to do on the court, and giving him the ball with shooters and targets is always a good idea. In Utah, Rubio shared lead ball-handling duties with Mitchell and even Joe Ingles, and never had a plethora of shooting options to space the floor. In Phoenix, he’ll share the ball with Devin Booker and need to feed Deandre Ayton. But if coach Monty Williams can sort it out, Rubio can really be an ultra-competent floor leader for Phoenix like he was for Spain. You don’t need him to score 30: just run the offense, find open teammates, play tough defense, shoot when you need to shoot.
Rubio has represented a lot of different things in the NBA. Maybe after winning gold at the World Cup and finding a team that needs a player just like him, he can finally settle in.
