The USA Basketball training camp is coming to a close and the four day camp offered much insight into just who will be leading the team into Spain for the World Cup. While there was no doubt that the likes of Kevin Durant and James Harden were going to be representing USA Basketball; there still figured to be six or seven roster spots up grabs.
The culmination of the Vegas training camp is the split squad games that happen on the last day of camp. These split squad games are hotly contested as players look to capitalize on an opportunity to shine in front of the coached one last time. The basketball showcase will pair off team USA hopefuls in a game that will not only highlight some of the games greatest players but also allow for some of the fringe roster players to show their worth in game action.
Here are the rosters for the showcase event.The USA White Team was coached by USA assistant coach and Chicago Bulls head coach Tom Thibodeau and his team was comprised of Bradley Beal, DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Drummond, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Damian Lillard, Paul Millsap, Chandler Parsons and Klay Thompson.
Thibodeau’s squad faced off against the USA Blue Team that was coached by USA assistant coach and New Orleans Pelicans head coach Monty Williams and he had Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis, DeMar DeRozan, Kenneth Faried, Paul George, Gordon Hayward, Kyle Korver, Miles Plumlee, Derrick Rose and John Wall.
Based on the training camp performances as well as those from the Showcase game the USA Basketball roster must be paired down from the current 20 to a mere 15 players. From the 15 players the roster will be paired down again to 12 after the domestic USA Basketball tour wraps up around August 22. Before we speculate on who the final cuts will be, let’s start with the first five guys out the door here.
The first round of cuts were announced already which brings the roster down to 15 players. The players who were among the first casualties are as follows;
Paul George
This is obviously a roster move that no one at USA Basketball foresaw. George figured to be a major contributor in the FIBA Tournament and USA Basketball was counting on him to be a prominent player in the offence. Unfortunately due to the injury that George sustained in the fourth-quarter of the Basketball Showcase game; George’s dream of representing the USA as well as that of leading the Indiana Pacers back atop the Eastern Conference came to an end. George is likely to be out an entire year of basketball related activities and he will now have to focus on making a successful return to the NBA and to the 2016 USA Olympic squad.
Bradley Beal
Beal has played well with the USA Basketball program; however, his exclusion from the FIBA team is more a byproduct of the USA having such a deep backcourt than it is about on-court play. This is certainly a player that the USA Basketball program will want to keep in the fold as Beal has shown solid development in his game and as he continues to grow into a more complete player he will only benefit the program that much more. This training camp was a good learning experience for Beal and it should serve as a motivator when it comes to opening the NBA season.
Paul Millsap
Millsap was a last minute replacement for the opt-out Kevin Love. The fact that he didn’t really have much time to prepare for the camp certainly didn’t help Millsap’s cause as he looked a step slow and even more rusty than everyone else on the court. What further hurt his chances was the fact that he was an undersized power forward trying to play on a squad where the small forwards were bigger than him. Millsap is a solid threat in the NBA as he creates such matchup difficulties; however, in a FIBA competition those matchups are able to be exploited less and less which ultimately led to Millsap’s dismissal here.
John Wall
A bit of a more surprising move here saw the electric Wall get axed in the first round of cuts. Personally I thought he might survive through the initial pair down only to be told he didn’t make the team of 12, but Wall’s time, like that of his running mate in Beal came to an end pretty early on. This decision is really backed more so by politics than by anything else as Wall’s main competition in the camp was Kyrie Irving who obviously has close ties to Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski and will have established a rapport with LeBron James by the time the 2016 Olympic Games roll around. Wall certainly is an established player and he certainly deserved more consideration for the squad. Given the nature of the sport, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Wall play a prominent role on a future USA Basketball team.
The next round of cuts will be coming around August 22 and those final pair downs are likely going to be a lot harder to make than these initial ones. It will be interesting to see if bubble players like Kyle Korver, Klay Thompson, DeMarcus Cousins, Andre Drummond and Chandler Parsons can impress enough over the next two weeks to warrant a roster spot.