On the occasion of Team USA trouncing Serbia on its way to FIBA World Cup gold on Sunday, Yahoo!‘s Adrian Wojnarowski wrote a strong, pointed column calling for the end of NBA veterans in international competition, with particularly sharp barbs reserved for Mike Krzyzewski. There are some spectacular lines in there and the take is well worth appreciating in its own right. You know how exciting it is to watch a fire burn? Reading Woj when he’s in this mode is just like that.
The players can’t be ignored when discussing FIBA reform
The problem with the argument that top players are merely pawns to heighten Mike Krzyzewski’s visibility during the FIBA World Cup: The players themselves don’t see it that way.
Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno
But the argument itself has a few problems.
1. Who needs to do what?
Woj’s column focuses on the need for the NBA to yank its vets from international duty, focusing specifically on Team USA crushing everyone in the world with what has been called a ‘C’ team. (I think that undersells this version of Team USA, which had a few NBA MVP candidates, a good number of All-Stars and great depth at point guard. I’d call it a ‘B-minus’ team at worst.)
One problem: who says the NBA should decide whether grown men can represent their countries in international competition? Currently, players have the right to play in FIBA events should they so choose. Many choose not to. Others can think of nothing they want more. Look at the competition for the final Team USA roster spots. Look at DeMarcus Cousins' multi-year campaign to make the team.
There’s constant sentiment that just because NBA teams pay players a bunch of money, they hold the power on all levels of decision-making. Naw. Participating in FIBA is a player right. If NBA governors want to restrict that, it needs to be bargained with the union. Franchisees and league officials aren’t the only adults at the table. The players have agency and rights and power, too.
If the argument is that the NBA ought to negotiate its way out of FIBA when the players’ bargaining agreement is up, that’s fine. But take it away? They can’t and shouldn’t do that.
2. Usefulness to whom?
I certainly wasn’t aware that the purpose of the FIBA World Cup was to be useful to NBA franchisees and executives. But for some of the NBA franchisees and executives talking to Woj, everything is presented in the context of its usefulness of the very rich men who run the NBA board room and the suits they employ. Here’s another example from the column.
First of all, the examples are all wrong here. Pau Gasol? What, we wouldn't want to grind him down while he exuberantly plays for Spain after finishing an oh-so-necessary 27-55 season with the Lakers? We're talking about Manu Ginobili, who just played a big role for a title team at age 36 and was rightfully kept from representing Argentina due to injury? Or Tony Parker, who also just won his fourth NBA title at age 32 but also sat out the World Cup to rest up because he's not a self-destructive dummy? And Yao Ming, whose entire basketball career seemed built for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. "No more Yao Ming dragging a battered leg up and down the floor for China." What's Yao Ming have to say about that?
Something the anti-FIBA crew in NBA leadership ranks dismisses too easily is that there are motivations beyond money. Yao dragged his leg up and down the floor because nothing made him prouder than to wear his red P.R.O.C. jersey. (No offense to his red Rockets jersey.) Parker, Manu and Pau, Dirk, Deng and Diaw, Jordan, Bird and Magic, LeBron, Kobe and Mason F. Plumlee all play in these tournaments not for money, not for fame, but for pride.
Try as you might, you can’t put a cost-benefit analysis on that.
Woj’s column is really two-pronged: it makes a case against vets in international play on behalf of the NBA’s anti-FIBA crew and it dismantles the Coach K aura of morality. I am in full support of knocking fake-virtuous college coaches down a peg and I’m no big fan of Krzyzewski.
But Woj’s case that Coach K is unduly using his influence as the senior men’s national team coach for recruiting purposes seems ... problematic.
Woj argues that an impromptu visit to the under-19 squad’s training camp last summer gave Coach K a legal but unsavory advantage that helped him successfully recruit Jahlil Okafor and Justise Winslow. Woj does this while acknowledging that three current college coaches run the under-19 team. If a one-off visit landed Coach K perhaps the team’s two best players, shouldn’t a month-plus of contact have landed Billy Donovan more than just one prospect (guard Michael Frazier)?
They all play in these tournaments not for money, not for fame, but for pride. Try as you might, you can't put a cost-benefit analysis on that.
Another quizzical piece of the Coach K critique: he handpicked Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim -- another top recruiter -- to join him on the Team USA staff in 2006. If USA Basketball over the past decade was a master plot to hoard top recruits for Duke, you’d think Krzyzewski would not invite another perennial top-25 coach.
This also ignores the less savory college-coaches-in-FIBA stories out there. In the piece, Woj says Coach K deserves some of the heat John Calipari gets as a self-promoter. He neglects to mention the time that Calipari put a 16-year-old Karl Towns on the Dominican Republic senior men’s national team. Towns, a top-10 prospect, committed to Kentucky five months later. Calipari no longer coaches the Dominican Republic, his task completed.
Compared to that, Coach K’s little visit to Okafor and Winslow seems rather benign.
★★★
There is a way the NBA powers-that-are can kill veteran participation in FIBA tournaments: by appealing directly to FIBA to place age restrictions on certain tournaments, as FIFA does with the Olympic men’s soccer tournament. But to the rest of the world, the FIBA World Cup and the regional tournaments like EuroBasket are the main events. FIBA hasn’t really shown any interest in demurring to the NBA in the past and it seems unlikely it will be willing to do so now.
It will be interesting to see how this process plays out. It sure would be nice if those jockeying for reform behind the scenes let the players -- the guys whose bodies, time and energy are actually on the line -- have a say.
