Is the gap between US and the rest widening?

[Alyosha122]

That might become one hell of a team, but they'll need either incredible coaching or some of those players will really have to surpass the expectations to rival a simmilar edition of the US we've seen. I do believe they might be contending for medals in the top competitions soon.

And If they all play.

 

[Beez2]

The gap may soon close:

Corey Joseph/Tyler Ennis/Xavier Rathan Mayes
Nik Stauskas/Jamaal Murray/Justin Jackson
Andrew Wiggins/Anthony Bennett/Melvin Ejiim
Tristan Thompson/Andrew Nicholson/Dwight Powell
Kelly Olynyk/Trey Lyles/Joel Anthony

Canadian basketball is mostly potential right now. Several of those players were on the Under 19 team that lost to team USA by 42 points last year. As USA Basketball learned the hard way in the early and mid 2000's, it's not as simple as assembling a group of all-stars and expecting the best possible results (and, honestly, none of the Canadian players listed are NBA all-stars yet).

First things first: Canada would have to surpass every other national team besides the US before they could "close the gap." That's a tall task.

 

[Raze Lupin2]

No the gap isn't widening.

 

[usagre2]

this tournament clearly illustrated how wide the gap is between the usa and the world. if beating slovenia and serbia by an average margin of 40 points doesn't bring home that point you must be blind. those two countries are descendants of the so-called basketball power the former yugoslavia. they got dismantled, humiliated and did not stand a chance. i think a 23 and under roster for the usa must be implemented. does anyone doubt that this roster would have been the favorite and won this tournament more times than not?

2014 23 + under usa
----------------------

kyrie irving
bradley beal
kawhi leonard
anthony davis
andre drummond

and reserves: dion waiters, harrison barnes, terrence jones, derrick favors, tobias harris, victor oladipo and michael carter-williams.
it is time for a change.

 

[TB-Fan2]

European teams need to bring real stars like Navarro, Nowitzki or Pau and also deep rosters with a lot of EL level players. Right now the talent level is really poor.

 

[CHBB2]

I don't agree with what you are saying. 2002 wasn't 50 years ago. All those players who played then, played the same brand of bball which is played today. They started the movement that pushed Europe to playing modern, from old slow basketball of the 90s. They were just better players period. Their stats were better and they pass the eyeball test.

And that Nowitzki's Germany is severely underrated as it seems. Especially by you. It isn't just Nowitzki and a bunch of scrubs. Don't forget that that same team, of a lesser version of it even, beat Spain led by a prime JCN, Garbajosa, Calderon, Cabezas, Jimenez and Reyes. Granted there was no Pau, but still, proves my point. And anyway, as i said in 2002 Germany and NZ had a lot of luck with the draw, just like Lithuania had this year. Was Lithuania the 4th best team of the competition this year? Were they better then Spain, Greece, Brasil just because they placed 4th?

If you think about it, it might not have been 50 years but it might as well have been. Basketball has changed a ton since then, all over the globe. It is much easier now to produce a Pau Gasol, Nowitzki, JCN, Manu, etc type of player now than it was back then. The key is to finding a balance between producing individualistic players and producing team players.

Canadian basketball is mostly potential right now. Several of those players were on the Under 19 team that lost to team USA by 42 points last year. As USA Basketball learned the hard way in the early and mid 2000's, it's not as simple as assembling a group of all-stars and expecting the best possible results (and, honestly, none of the Canadian players listed are NBA all-stars yet).

The same could be said of US Basketball. The "next generation" of great players in the NBA, with the exception of our big men, are all around 25 at this point. The only players on this year's Team USA who weren't drafted in 2010 at the latest were the big men and Klay Thompson. We do not have a single superstar leader that is not a big man who has been drafted since then. Even the current crop of superstars is questionable and doesn't include a single winner or a single true leader.

Let's just take 2010 to start off.. John Wall was hyped up as this amazing point guard and once in a lifetime talent. Physically and talent-wise, yes, he is a guy who has everything it takes to be the best point guard in the NBA. His team did not even so much as sniff the playoffs until this past season though, and it took adding a whole bunch of true leaders and vets and a rising young superstar guard around him to do that. Derrick Rose, Chris Paul, etc on the other hand from their first day in the league turned their teams into contenders and made every single player around them better. Exactly as I predicted in 2010, Eric Bledsoe has been the better point guard and player of the two, Gordon Hayward has become one of the best players from that draft as has Jordan Crawford despite not getting much of a chance to play, and Stephenson has become probably the most complete player out of the entire draft and has established himself in the NBA as the player we all knew he was coming out of high school. Other than the big men and a handful of exceptions, that draft is almost entirely made up of guys who were hyped up in college due to their high school rankings, international prospects who either didn't come over or were relegated to the bench or D-League, guys from small colleges or overlooked ones who barely got a chance to play and if they've stuck around it's been because of their work ethic, and overlooked guys on larger colleges like Patrick Patterson who despite the naysayers have stuck around by doing what they have always done. Other than Bledsoe, Avery Bradley, and possibly Lance Stephenson, you can't find another top flight non-big man who could be a true leader.

The 2011 draft class has been mostly solid but other than Kemba Walker and maybe someday Brandon Knight or Chandler Parsons, you can't find a single top flight non-big man who can be a leader. Kyrie Irving could be a leader someday, maybe, if LeBron forces him to rather than believing his own hype.

2012 Draft was another solid draft that's produced some standout guards and wings who could be the leaders Team USA needs someday, but tell me why exactly did Klay Thompson get picked over Harrison Barnes despite Barnes being a much more complete player who does everything for his team to win?

2013 Draft was another draft that produced some solid players who could be leaders like Oladipo, MCW, and some solid guards and wings in general but I will bet you that USA Basketball picks Trey Burke over Oladipo or MCW when the time comes for these kids.

2014 Draft is full of a lot of big names but out of the non-big men who actually know how to play the game the right way and maybe be a leader, I think only Jabari Parker is going to get picked for Team USA. Instead, I'm sure bigger names like Marcus Smart, Gary Harris, etc will eventually get the nod over more deserving players who weren't as hyped.


Now you tell me what about that isn't "potential". USA has the guys to replace Chris Paul, LeBron, etc but instead it chooses whatever the bigger names are. Kyle Lowry, a true point guard his whole career, has the season of his career and doesn't get picked to be the point guard? Harrison Barnes doesn't get the nod over Klay Thompson? It doesn't matter if you have the players if you don't actually pick them for your team. We hype up players from the time they're just starting high school, anoint them as these future superstars, praise everything about them, don't test them in college, and then when it comes draft time we hand them the keys to the kingdom and make them out to be saviors of whatever franchise they go to. Once a player is in their senior year of HS, they're treated as a known commodity and their high school ranking is what defines them for the rest of their career, unless they either get overshadowed in college or break out in college to the point where you can't ignore them anymore. This system of developing and selecting talent is bailed out by a few consecutive solid drafts filled with players who are the exception to that rule (2011,2012,2013,2014) but the second you get a weak draft that isn't filled with those exceptions (2010, 2015), the system's flaws really show. Canada on the other hand, only its absolute best players get hyped up enough to make it to the NBA, and its basketball development is majorly in urban areas the way ours used to be. We've become the exception to the rule we created, while the rest of the world still follows that way of doing things and produces more complete players and national teams than we do because of it.