National Team

Over the last couple of weeks there has been a lot of buzz in regards to playing for the National Team in basketball.  Paul George's compound fracture and then Kevin Durant dropping his name out of the competition has made the upcoming World Cup of Basketball a huge question mark for the US team.

It's an honor to be able to wear anything with a USA across your chest.  That should say it all but it certainly doesn't.  Up until recently stars were unlikely to ever wear USA on the chest.  They need a break, they have too much going on during the summer, they can't commit to that specific time frame, and/or they don't like the other guys that could potentially be their teammates.

In our country, the guys that play for the national team get paid big time money to compete for their respective NBA teams.  It's can be tough to justify risking a ton of money to play for the good ol' USA.  Even though their contracts are guaranteed, some players don't want to risk money in their next contract. It makes sense to an extent but the glory to wear the red, white, and blue should trump anything else.

When watching other countries play you will notice that ALL their top players play in all big competitions.  Why? Their passion for their country trumps dollar signs.  Even Manu Ginobili wanted to play for Argentina this summer even though he has a stress fracture in his leg.  It could've been his last international competition and he wanted to make sure he gave it all for country, stress fracture or not.  The Spurs quickly said no, because they were risking losing one of their best players for the upcoming season.

The US has done a very good job lately of structuring the National Team system at all levels.  They are getting the best players in the country to wear the USA jersey from the time they are 15 years old.   It'll be interesting to see how the best players react to the Paul George injury (or any injury for that matter) in the future.

I don't think it bodes well for the US now that Kevin Durant dropped out on top of Lebron, Carmelo, and Kevin Love not wearing the jersey this summer.  The World Cup of Basketball (formerly the World Championships) are a HUGE deal for the rest of the world.  It's the only competition that has all the teams in the world playing in it instead of the Olympics, which limits teams based of geography.  Passion and intensity will be at an all time high.  Will the US be able to match other teams? It'll be interesting to find out.

Last thing I'll talk about is the amount of games that NBA players could play during their season compared to other countries.  If you are on a good team in the NBA, you will play roughly 100 games during the season.  The good teams in Europe will play at the roughly 85 games (from the info I gathered, couldn't find any teams exact record).  The toll that amount of games takes on players' bodies is HUGE.  Their bodies need a break and the summer time is the ideal time to take that break, so it isn't always feasible to play in another 12-15 games.

In closing, I don't think I could pass up an opportunity to play for the US but I don't make $12 million a year.  Hopefully the US can continually pull in the best players in the NBA for the national team, if not, then we can talk about the Dream Team for the rest of our lives.