By Mark Bacon
USA Basketball officially announced its roster for the 2016 Rio Olympics on Monday, and it feels like a B team or, if you’re feeling particularly generous, a B-plus team. Team USA can no longer walk on the court with NBA talent, and be assured of walking away with the Gold. International basketball is catching up with the US, particularly Spain and Lithuania.
True, the Rio roster is led by A-list headliners: Kevin Durant and Paul George, plus a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and perhaps the player best suited for FIBA style basketball, in Carmelo Anthony. But there are just too many big-name no-shows—LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard, and Chris Paul among them—to put this group on the same level as the 2008 Beijing team or the 2012 London squad.
Who, exactly, is on the team, chasing USA Basketball’s third straight Olympic gold medal and fifth straight gold at a major international competition under coach Mike Krzyzewski? Here’s the final 12-man roster by position:
PG: Kyrie Irving, Kyle Lowry
SG: Klay Thompson, Jimmy Butler, DeMar DeRozan
SF: Kevin Durant, Paul George, Harrison Barnes
PF: Carmelo Anthony, Draymond Green
C: DeMarcus Cousins, DeAndre Jordan
The good news: This group has everything Krzyzewski will need to win gold—perimeter shooting, elite ball-handlers, versatile and high-energy perimeter defenders, and interior size. The roster is made up of nine 2016 All-Stars, the same number as the ‘08 and ‘12 Olympic rosters, and it includes two Olympic gold medalists (Anthony and Durant), four members of the 2014 FIBA World Cup team (Irving, Thompson, DeRozan and Cousins) and four players with NBA championships to their names (Irving, Thompson, Barnes and Green).
The bad news: The Rio roster simply isn’t the best that USA Basketball has to offer. The top-four MVP vote-getters and four of the five All-NBA First Team selections will be resting this summer, attending to other business, perhaps wishing to avoid the political chaos gripping Brasil currently and ducking the Zika virus.
The point guard position was hit particularly hard, as Curry, Westbrook, Wall and Paul, the NBA’s est floor generals, will all be missing out. There’s also a letdown here given that James and Curry, who just battled for supremacy in the Finals and the unofficial title of “face of the NBA” over the last two years, are both staying home.
The worst news: The trickle-down effect of so many withdrawals led to some serious scrambling and reaching at the bottom of the roster. Barnes, Golden State’s polarizing small forward, has a bulletproof case as the least deserving player to make an Olympic roster under Krzyzewski. In the just completed 2015-16 season, Barnes posted a 12.3 Player Efficiency Rating (PER), which is significantly lower than all of his 2016 teammates (the 11 other selections all have PERs above 18) and lower than every other Olympic participant in ‘08 and ‘12. (The previous low belonged to Tayshaun Prince, who posted a 15.6 PER in ‘07-08 leading into Beijing.) What’s more, Barnes compiled a PER worse than every player selected for the ‘06, ‘10 and ‘14 world championship/World Cup teams with one exception: ‘14 Derrick Rose, who posted a PER of 9.7 while playing just 10 games in the 2013-14 season due to injury. Even in a watered-down field Barnes is out of his depth.
To be honest, USA Basketball has spoiled its supporters in recent tournaments. The 2008 “Redeem Team” Olympic roster was absolutely loaded with James, Paul, Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard. Same in ‘12, when James, Bryant, Paul and Anthony were joined by Durant, Westbrook and James Harden to form a squad so stacked that Bryant openly asserted it could have beaten the famous 1992 Dream Team. (Pure hyperbole.)
The 2016 roster just doesn’t quite stack up. To be clear, the diminished quality of the 2016 Rio roster is not cause for any panic when it comes to the medal stand. USA Basketball will still enter the Olympics as the overwhelming favorite to win gold. Any other result, frankly, would qualify as a shocking disaster. It will also be curious to see how two members of Team USA, with rather dubious “rap sheets” associated with their style of play—Green and Cousins—will handle FIBA officiating.
Team USA Basketball is leaving more talent at home than it’s bringing to Brazil. Check out this “roster” of players that are skipping the Games:
PG: Stephen Curry, Chris Paul, John Wall SG: James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Damian Lillard SF: LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard PF: Blake Griffin, LaMarcus Aldridge C: Anthony Davis, Andre Drummond
While this group is a loaded with point guards, one can still easily argue that it’s a better roster top to bottom than the actual Rio roster.
Put simply: In an ideal world with 100 percent participation, USA Basketball had a chance to field a roster for the ages, one that would have rightfully drawn comparisons to 1992 and ‘96. Instead, Durant and George will lead a patched-together group that should still win gold in Rio, but one that will leave many wondering about what could have been.
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