FIBA World Cup Preview: Team USA

Storylines to watch: 

1. Derrick Rose and his knees

Derrick Rose and his knees are the biggest story for Team USA heading into the world cup and will remain the biggest story for the duration of the tournament. Playing in five games in six days and then nine games in 15 days will be challenging for any of prominent USA players. However, the minutes should be distributed in the first few games among all twelve players, and the games shouldn’t be very competitive, so Rose should be able to get plenty of rest.

My concern is that he hasn’t played much competitive basketball for the better part of two years. How will Rose fair in the finals against Spain after eight games in 14 days? We’re going to find out.

2. Finding the right rotation of bigs

At the moment, Coach K likes the versatility of Davis and Faried at the four and five. In international play, many teams have bigs that play on the perimeter. Davis and Faried playing together gives the USA the best chance to stop the opposing attack. After that, Coach K has a big problem on his hands.

Cousins and Drummond should be the options to backup Davis, at least, but each has their own set of issues. Cousins has a reputation of losing his cool and making stupid fouls. With only five fouls per player in international play, Team USA can’t afford anyone getting into foul trouble game after game.

Drummond is a better defender than Cousins, but he’s also very physical and could easily get into foul trouble. Also, with Drummond on the floor, opposing defenses don’t have to guard him because he’s not an offensive threat. If he does touch the ball, opposing teams will foul Drummond because he’s only a 41 percent free throw shooter.

Coach K will also use Gay and Plumlee to eat some minutes in the frontcourt. Regardless of what you think of Gay in the NBA, as a stretch-4 in international basketball, Gay is a threat because he can score from inside and out. In the exhibitions, Gay has shown he can score in the post using a variety of moves, including a 12-foot fade-away that’s nearly impossible to stop.

As for Plumlee, I don’t see why he’s on the team except for emergency situations, like extreme foul trouble or injuries. Millsap would have been a much better fit, but Coach K likes Plumlee and what he brings to the team. There’s no denying Plumlee tries hard and will hustle for loose balls, but he’s definitely the worst player on the team.

3. Inexperience and Chemistry

Although the Americans have won by an average of 20 points in their first three exhibition games, the chemistry has been far from good. I anticipate part of that is from having so many guys in camp and not having the time to get a rhythm playing with everyone. Now, the roster has been trimmed, so I expect the group to become more familiar playing with each other.

The problem is a lot of these international teams have played together for years. Spain has eight players from the 2012 Olympic team on their roster. Team USA only has two, Harden and Davis. On top of that, only Curry, Rose, Harden, Davis, and Gay have experience playing in international competition. Combined, this team only has 43 games of competitive international experience. That’s not exactly the recipe for success, and it’s definitely something to keep in mind with a matchup against Spain looming in the Finals.