After Stunning Upset, Team USA Can Only Be a Third-Rate Team at the FIBA World Cup

Germany has four NBA players. Team USA has 12. But you wouldn’t have guessed it based on the scoreboard. As the final seconds ticked off the clock in Friday’s FIBA World Cup men’s semifinal, the stunned faces of American players and the exuberant smiles of German players told the same story of a monumental, 113-111 upset in the Philippines. 

Now comes the challenge to save face for a U.S. squad that was the odds-on favorite to win gold but risks not winning a medal for the second consecutive World Cup after a seventh-place finish in 2019. 

Team USA plays Canada in the consolation game on Sunday (4:40 a.m. ET), and it may be without 6-foot-8 forward Brandon Ingram, who missed the semifinal with an upper respiratory infection. While Ingram has struggled offensively in a supporting role, his length was missed against a tall German squad that dominated the interior and out-rebounded the U.S., 12-7, on the offensive glass.

Even though a third-place finish would feel like a letdown for Team USA, it’s far from a sure thing — especially if Ingram is still sidelined.

Canada has seven NBA players on its roster, including 6-foot-6 guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who had been arguably the best player in the tournament headed into the team’s semifinal, 95-86 loss to Serbia. 

SGA was held to 15 points, 10 fewer than his tournament average entering the game. RJ Barrett led the way with 23 for Canada, which can turn the scoring on when shooting well from beyond the arc. It only shot 37% on 3s against Serbia, but had been hitting at a 47.3% clip in its previous two games.

Team USA, at the same time, has yet to show the ability to defend at a high level for prolonged stretches.

There were early warning signs for Team USA against Germany — its lack of size and perimeter defense were exposed — and those signs looked eerily similar to what doomed the U.S. in its 110-104 loss to Lithuania (only two active NBA players) in group-stage play. 

The blueprint has called for opponents to routinely attack the U.S.’s weakest defenders, particularly guards Jalen Brunson, Tyrese Haliburton and Austin Reaves. That approach creates a collapsing domino effect, with crisp offensive passing outpacing scrambling help defenders. 

On Friday, Team USA’s defense unraveled in the third quarter as Germany relentlessly exploited mismatches with the pick-and-roll. Andreas Obst finished with a game-high 24 points, including four 3-pointers, as Germany poured in a tournament-high 113 points. In a 40-minute FIBA game, that converts to a whooping 2.8 points per minute. Beyond the box score, Team USA showed little discipline. Obst baited the U.S. into three fouls behind the arc, a byproduct of poor defense, that translated into eight points at the free-throw line.

Team USA has also struggled to rebound well against the taller teams; it’s played one true center, Jaren Jackson Jr., who isn’t a strong rebounder to begin with. Coach Steve Kerr has caught the brunt of the criticism, but the issues have more to do with flaws in roster construction. 

This, of course, is hardly the best squad that Team USA could have sent to the Philippines. Grant Hill, the managing director of the team, built this non-Olympic-caliber roster in hopes of getting younger players experience on the international stage. The results have only underscored how far international basketball has come since the original Dream Team helped popularize the game in the early 1990s — something Kerr highlighted after the loss to Germany.

“The game has been globalized over the last 30 years. These games are difficult. This is not 1992 anymore,” Kerr said. “Players are better all over the world. Teams are better. It's not easy to win the World Cup or the Olympics.”

Entering Sunday’s consolation game, the idea of 1992 should be the furthest thing from the minds of U.S. players. Instead, they should be focused on avoiding a repeat of 2019, when the team failed to medal at the World Cup in China.

Actually, the idea of 1992 might help in one way: This young, inexperienced squad needs someone to transform from “star in the making” into an actual international star — the kind of player who would be a no-brainer, play-him-all-the-time addition to the Team USA’s next Olympic roster.

Brunson struggled against Germany, shooting 2-of-6 in the first half and not even attempting a shot in the third quarter. He finished with just 15 points in 20 minutes.

After an explosive first half, Anthony Edwards took just two shots and scored two points in the third quarter, essentially disappearing as Germany took a 10-point lead into the fourth. After Germany extended its lead to 12 midway through the final quarter, Edwards re-emerged and took control of the game. He drove hard, threw down dunks, drew contact and created scoring opportunities with kick-out passes. 

Edwards and Reaves were the only U.S. players consistently creating their own shots. Edwards finished with a team-high 23 points, and Reaves added 21, including a free throw in the final 90 seconds that cut Germany’s lead to one. 

In the end, offense wasn’t the problem. Team USA scored 111 points on 58.5% shooting. And it wasn’t exactly the defense either, despite those 113 points being scored. 

It was the fact that on a roster with 12 NBA players — the most of any team at the World Cup — none has stepped up in any meaningful way and given Team USA an identity it can rely on to be a gold-medal team. For now, bronze is the best it can do.