Good morning, Spain is so disappointing in so many ways

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

SOME FAVORITE: Down goes Spain! France beat the hosts in the quarterfinals on Wednesday, knocking the so-called favorite out of the FIBA World Cup way early and well before they would face Team USA. (The Americans won their quarters matchup by 43, by the way.) Serbia pasted Brazil, setting up a Final Four consisting of Team USA, Lithuania, Serbia and France. ... And championship game ratings just plummeted.

Here’s the great John Schuhmann on the upset.

Rudy Gobert, a young Jazzian, was the star of the show for Team France, along with Boris Diaw.

Meanwhile, Team USA is just like PLUM WITH IT.

HMM: Mark Cuban might have violated the NBA’s rules about pressuring players to not participate in FIBA. At least, according to Chandler Parsons’ quotes. No sense in sanctioning Cuban on this, though, since Parsons stayed in and got cut.

AN ORDER OF TOAST FOR DANNY FERRY: Adrian Wojnarowski landed a partial transcript of Danny Ferry’s now-infamous call. It does not look good for ol’ Danny:

Ferry’s clinging to the story that the racially charged words belonged to someone else - that a riff connecting Africans to a con man stereotype weren’t his words at all. In context of the transcripts, it appears that those had been Ferry’s own interjections on the call, somehow supporting the intel culled outside of the Hawks.

Woj does put the episode in the wider context of a power struggle triangle involving Ferry, Michael Gearon, Jr. (who almost assuredly leaked the transcript) and ousted Bruce Levenson. That the league is mad at Gearon might help Ferry, and to be sure Adam Silver reiterated Wednesday that Ferry should keep his job. I just can’t see how a new franchisee keeps Ferry around after this.

Loved loved loved the Shoals/Myles conversation about Ferry.

Interesting stuff from Bomani Jones and Ethan Strauss on the saga.

Jason Walker on the unanswered questions in the ATL.

BAD MOOSE: Greg Monroe peed his pants when being arrested for DUI. He claims he had two glasses of wine. Those must have been big glasses, man.

CHAUNCEY BILLUPS VS. ALL 16 PLAYERS TRADED FOR CHAUNCEY BILLUPS.

THE MORE YOU KNOW: Elite high jumpers could probably dunk with their belly buttons.

INCOMING: The next boss of the players’ union, Michele Roberts, will start at the end of the month, barring contract hiccups.

RIP BAD NEWS: Brilliant obit from Bob Ryan for Marvin Barnes.

BEASLEY TO THE LAKERS? “I don’t know how else to say this: it’s a really stupid idea.“ I think you mean BEST IDEA.

PRANKSANITY: Jeremy Lin, top NBA prank artist, is not a wax statue.

THE LONG ROAD: Tom Haberstroh on the length of the NBA season.

OH GOOD: Scammer agents tricked American basketballers into believing they had contracts with Japan’s BJ League (that’s a basketball league). Booooo.

Happy Thursday. See you next time.