Lots of good points from this article:
NBA owners want to kill Olympic format to protect investment in international players
Good bye McGee if shit hits the fan (meaning NBA owners win their battle against IOC)... Plus it would lessen the prestige of the Olympics too. Reading the article, you really can't blame the owners for pushing for a US and/or Olympics U23 format...
NBA owners want to kill Olympic format to protect investment in international players
It is an issue because it transcends Team USA, and that's something that Bryant, Kevin Love, several more teammates, and the public still haven't grasped. This isn't about sending young Americans to the Olympics to play older teams, but the NBA cutting a deal with FIBA to make the Olympics a completely under-23 tournament. For NBA teams, the ability to control their talent in a rebranded World Cup of Basketball goes far past benefiting financially in ways that the IOC will never allow.
This is the fight now, but everyone knows how it will end: The owners are organized, unified, and determined to make the World Cup of Basketball the financial boon that they always believed a European expansion of NBA franchises could be for them. They're determined to control the way that medical staff administer to players in whom they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars, control the circumstances under which those players are cleared to play with injury, and ultimately, control the fate of guaranteed contracts they're obligated to pay.
As one Western Conference GM told Yahoo! Sports, in responding to Team USA players saying they want final say over whether they play in the Olympics: "If players take this control, should they also take the risk on their contract money?"
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