We knew Team USA Basketball was not invincible coming into the 2019 FIBA World Cup, not with this roster. After a parade of players dropped out due to the timing of the tournament or other reasons, USA Basketball was left with a shell of its promised team. The roster is probably less impressive than the one that competed in the forsaken 2002 World Championship, where the Americans finished an embarrassing sixth, as SB Nation Studios’ Rewinder episode on the loss to Yugoslavia reminds us.
Team USA’s close call vs. Turkey is doom, salvation, or both
Most likely, it’s both.
But there’s a difference between being less than invincible and being at risk of getting knocked out before the knockout round even begins. That seems a legitimate fear now after the United States beat Turkey only by the skin of their teeth in overtime on Tuesday.
Turkey has a few NBA players, led by wily veteran Ersan Ilyasova and exciting youngsters Furkan Korkmaz and Cedi Osman. But altogether, Turkey was not that impressive a foe coming into the tournament. The Turks aren’t even in the top 10 in the oddsmakers’ viewpoint of potential World Cup champions!
This wasn’t a close call against a team expected to compete for a medal. This was a close call against a team not expected to make the knockout round. (In fairness to Turkey, being in the United States’ first-stage group likely deflated its odds further.) This wasn’t Serbia, or Spain, or France, or Lithuania, or even Greece. And Turkey came within a single clutch free throw — something the Turks couldn’t find anywhere despite four tries in the final 13 seconds — of pulling the win off.
It gets harder from here for Team USA. Well, not immediately: the Americans will finish the first group stage against Rui Hachimura and winless Japan on Thursday, and then enter a second group stage with the winner of Thursday’s Greece-New Zealand game and Brazil. Those games will be Saturday and Monday, respectively. Brazil beat Greece on Tuesday by clamping down on Giannis Antetokounmpo to the tune of 13 points on seven shots. Something tells me they have a gameplan for, uh, Khris Middleton, too.
Only the top two teams in each group make the next round, so losing either game in Round 2 could mean elimination, depending on how the tiebreakers sort out. If Turkey can almost beat Team USA, these teams can definitely beat Team USA.
(The tiebreakers in FIBA are a real mess, by the way, given the tiny groups. If the United States were to simply beat Brazil and lose to Greece or New Zealand, you’d have a three-way tie for two spots and point differential would come into play. That’s a totally feasible situation ... in basically every second stage group! Run up the score, kids.)
Should the United States advance to the quarterfinals, they’d face one of Lithuania, France, or Australia. All three teams have won their first two games. France is a top-tier gold medal contender. Lithuania isn’t far off and has won its two games by a combined 77 points. Australia already beat the United States once this month, albeit in warm-ups. If Turkey can almost beat Team USA, these teams can definitely beat Team USA.
After that, it’s Serbia, or Spain, or Italy, or Argentina, or Poland (the real surprise of the tournament so far), or another team in the France-Lithuania-Australia bracket. There could be a rematch with Turkey somewhere in there at the end of the tournament, too. No one will fear the United States at tip, not after this.
But there’s a universe in which this close call galvanizes Team USA and turns them into something greater than the sum of their parts. There’s a universe in which Gregg Popovich, ever the psychoanalyst, learned something of his players in the depths of despair of the Turkey game. There’s a universe in which the rotation changes. (Well, the rotation will definitely change: Jayson Tatum rolled his ankle at the end of the Turkey game and is out until at least Monday. My prediction would be that given the elevated concern about NBA players getting injured in international play, Tatum’s tournament is done.)
The players on the Team USA roster seem to like each other. That’s a key ingredient to victory — not the key ingredient, but a key ingredient, especially in ramshackle efforts like winning a two-week tournament sight unseen with players and a coaching staff who have never played together before. This near-nightmare could bring the team closer and make them tougher to beat in the future.
It could do that — heck, it probably will do that — and Team USA could still very well lose this tournament. The talent differential just isn’t there to make up for a lack of cohesion, knowledge of FIBA rules, and comfort. Figuring out how to break legitimate zone defenses and defend players who play entirely different from NBA opponents is not something anyone can really learn on the fly.
This close call will galvanize Team USA in a way a comfortable win couldn’t, yet Team USA could still absolutely lose early in this tournament for the reasons exposed in the close call. The only guarantee is that with this incarnation of Team USA, there are no guarantees.
