LeBron James will not be there, nor will Stephen Curry.
Russell Westbrook and Kawhi Leonard are on the fence.
DeMarcus Cousins, Kyrie Irving, Isaiah Thomas, Mike Conley and Gordon Hayward will be in attendance but sidelined by injuries.
Gregg Popovich will be the ringleader, and the circus will be in town next week in Las Vegas as Team USA emerges from a three-year relevancy hiatus for a two-day minicamp that will be more about clearing the air and cleaning up messes than it will be about actual competitive basketball preparations on the court.
The Tokyo Olympics are two years away, the World Cup of Basketball will be contested next summer in China, and Team USA is going to send a beast of a team no matter who shows up in Vegas next week and who does not.
The Americans are the heavy favorites, as they should be, with odds of -2000 to win the gold medal in the same arena where they had their second-biggest failure of the Jerry Colangelo era, losing to Greece at the 2004 World Championship (that single-game debacle finishes a distant second to Larry Brown’s Athens Olympics team, which lost by 19 in their opener against Puerto Rico and never really recovered).
If you think that “Beast of a Team” statement is an overstatement, I will wager an $80 Triple Fatburger in a former Portuegese colony that you are incorrect.
The winning streak for the Senior National Men’s Team in competitions not involving rosters of G-League players is at 14 years and counting, with the two common denominators being Colangelo and James.
Qualification for the World Cup is currently taking place, and Thon Maker is doing his best to upset the Australians, who are the second choice in the field at +500 and could see their odds drop even lower if Ben Simmons comes aboard. The line is even money on that.
World Cup (soccer) finalists France and Croatia are both 30-1, and Popovich (who is half Serbian/half Croatian) will be pleased to learn that Vlade Divac’s homeland is the third choice at 10-1. Canada (the Canadian Federation is now run by Steve Nash and Jay Triano, and we have a random Anthony Bennett sighting on the board) is 20-1, Spain and Lithuania are 50-1, and the field (this gets you Angola/Nigeria, about a dozen various really good teams from Europe, along with the Philippines, China and the rest of the planet, is 30-1.
There will eventually be betting lines on who will be representing the United States, and that roster will not be finalized until FIBA holds its pre-Olympic meeting in Japan a day or two before the competition begins.
There could be a guy on the roster that afternoon who sprains his ankle while trying to figure out why Tokyo has two separate, distinct subway systems that do not accept riders from the other.
Or while trying to find a public trash bin in Ginza, which is an exercise in futility (the Japanese view producing trash as shameful, and thus there are no recepticles except outside randon convenience stores.)
If one of those guys goes down, Team USA will have a replacement waiting back home.
They will be able to get that guy there in under 24 hours, which will tie Alonzo Mourning’s record for fastest flight to leave/rejoin Team USA during an active competition.
He rented a Gulfstream V in Sydney, flew home for the birth of his daughter, then returned in time to foul out of this historical basketball sh*tshow (the good part starts at 2:30 on the video):
Take it from someone who was there in Sydney covering the game: The video does not do justice to the injustice. The jump ball violation was one of the most egregious FIBA refereeing atrocities in a list of them that is as long as it is epic (see Soviet Union vs. United States, 1972 in Munich, and then Google “Whatever Happened to the Silver Medals that Team USA won at the 1972 Olympics). The answer will contain the word “Geneva.”
For kicks, Google “Woj” and “Blatt” and “Yahoo.” You will find this.
Also, notice how the Lithuanians did not call timeout for their final possession of that game. That is because FIBA does not play by the same rules that the NBA does, and players do not call timeouts because they are not allowed to. The coaches have to do it, and they have to inform a courtside official ahead of time that they want one at the next dead ball. If that rule is not complied with, tough luck.
Of course, there are rules in the NBA that are supposed to be enforced, such as playing in actual basketball games when physically capable of doing so and while being paid extraordinary sums of money to compete. See Leonard v. Popovich.
That rule did not apply to Kawhi last season, as we have been over and over and over, and news of the obvious came out Tuesday that he may or may not be present in Vegas — which tantamount to reporting that Donald Trump may or may not change his mind at any given moment. Odds on that happening today/tomorrow are not listed.
The best source for Kawhi information has reported that Leonard and Popovich are somewhat eager to redirect the public discourse storyline over the state of their relationship, and the odds of that actually happening should probably be set at 50-50. Kawhi’s camp knows that Popovich will have a public platform, and at a certain point Uncle Dennis has to step up his media relations game. Vegas in nine days is not a bad place to get that process started. We will learn more as the Raptors-Spurs trade news becomes official.
The mini-camp will mostly about holding team meetings … and determining who wants to play in Japan, who wants to play in China, and who wants to earn their way into a Colangelo’s good graces by committing to landing in some random Chinese city of several million people in ’19 and to endure BasketballAgainstInferiorCompetition/HotPot Roulette.
Colangelo always uses the term “building equity” by playing in a lesser competition in order to get to a more prestigious roster in ensuing competitions, so we shall see who travels that trail.
Once upon a time, Karl Malone bailed out at the last minute on a trip overseas amid the early days of post-9/11 paranoia (we all should have bought stock in companies that make wanding devices), and the powers that were at USA Basketball (Stu Jackson) chose Emeka Okafor over Michael Redd to fill the final spot.
Okafor went on to achieve the dubious distinction of failing to convert or attempt a field goal during an entire Olympics, despite being force-fed the ball throughout the fourth quarter of the Nightmare Team’s Athenian Bronze Medal Adventure. LeBron and the other kids on that team (Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade, Amare Stoudemire nicknamed him “I Robot” during that competition, and some of us who were there have never forgotten.)
One guy who was there was the late, great Jim O’Connell, and source close to USA Basketball told me over a plate of the best ribs in America that a Jim O’Connell Memorial Tournament is being discussed with officials from Madison Square Garden, with Fordham and St. John’s the most likely participants.
Jim passed away earlier this month, but left behind was at least one person who witnessed him having his credential checked no less than a dozen times on his walk of 100 yards from the press room to his seat at the Georgia Dome during the Greatest Debacle Ever, a.k.a the Atlanta Olympics of 1996.
The following night, I tried to set an over/under on security guards trying to justify their existence, and O’c refused to gamble with me. He was set in his ways, he would not even bet a single dollar on a game he covered … and the basketball world is not the same place it once was now that he is kicking it upstairs with Wilt.
Over/under on how many stories he is telling to his brethren in heaven each day:
Infinity.
Just ask Mike Breen.
