The USA has won the gold medal at the Olympics for the fifth time in a row. The nimbus of invincibility no longer exists. The USA is facing a radical change that could painfully reveal some deficits. A commentary
It’s telling. The best players at this tournament for the USA were LeBron James (39), Stephen Curry (36) and Kevin Durant (soon to be 36) – the players who have shaped American basketball for over a decade. More than half of the squad has already celebrated its 30th birthday.
The “Avengers” are ageing and large parts of the team will no longer be with them in Los Angeles in four years’ time. The USA’s talent pool remains inexhaustible, of course, but there is a clear trend in the NBA towards having more and more foreign players at the top. In the All-NBA First Team, i.e. in the voting for the five best players of the season, only Jayson Tatum (26) held up the flag with the stars and stripes
The Tatum who was left out of most of the tournament by head coach Steve Kerr. As nice as it is from a nostalgic point of view that the USA once again gathered all the legends in one team, it should not be forgotten that there were no better alternatives.
USA: Who is the next face?
The question remains, who will be the next face of USA Basketball? Tatum, Devin Booker (27) and Anthony Edwards (22) are probably the hopefuls in this respect, while other young stars such as Zion Williamson, Ja Morant or, to a lesser extent, Trae Young were not an issue for this team at all or have already experienced their first career setback after much hype.
They are all good players, but not (yet) in the same class as this year’s gold medal winners. A lot can happen in four years, other players can play their way into the limelight, but the obvious successors to the old generation are not yet recognizable.
The talent and depth of the team were the big advantages this year, with teams like Serbia holding their own with their own superstar (Jokic) and a well-functioning team. However, if the USA lack the extra class of KD, LeBron or Curry, the tolerance for mistakes will become smaller and smaller. Even this super team was on the brink of defeat against Serbia and the far from perfect French team was not far away either
USA: The world continues to catch up
Most teams grow together over years, the DBB selection is a good example of this, the USA will probably have to throw their team together again, as few stars want to make a multi-year commitment. Why should they? After all, the USA have now won five gold medals in a row.
Only surprising failure will change this (see the 2004 Olympics), and the World Cup semi-final against Germany was another wake-up call. Could it also happen at the 2028 Olympics? The past two World Championships have shown that the USA cannot stroll to a title with a B team. The last World Championship gold was ten years ago.
A lot has happened in those ten years and the world is catching up bit by bit. This year, the USA only wobbled briefly, but it became clear that we are not far away from the USA’s crème de la crème failing too.
