Team USA will soon compete in this month’s FIBA Basketball World Cup, and the group has apparently already gotten a run for its money from the USA select team that’s there to help them practice.
On Friday, the USA select team (featuring guys like Cade Cunningham and Chet Holmgren) reportedly topped the regular team in two different 10-minute scrimmages, per AP
However, that might hint more to the talent of the young basketball players that competed for the select team than it does how the main US team will perform.
Per the AP, Team USA coach Steve Kerr noted that this happened back in 2019 while preparing for that World Cup tournament. AP also noted that these scrimmages are very much practice-oriented and featured a number of player combinations on the court. So it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for one team to top another and vice versa.
“That’s a time-honored tradition in USA Basketball,” Kerr told AP of the practice squad topping the main assembly.
The news organization pointed out that this even happened with the 1992 Dream Team.
That’s absolutely true, famously going back to the first time NBA players represented the country. It was the 1992 Dream Team, the group of basically the best players in the world at that time — Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, John Stockton, David Robinson and more — playing a team of college kids in a closed scrimmage. The Dream Team lost, 62-54.
USA Select team beat USA’s FIBA WC team in two consecutive 10 min scrimmages 👀
(per @BenGolliver, via @usabasketball)pic.twitter.com/Hb9jLssArO
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) August 4, 2023
The future of Team USA on the world basketball stage looks bright, particularly when it’s the young guys who are contending just fine with the established veterans in practice.