Kevin Pelton crunches the numbers on this Team USA roster to project how this crew would do if it competed against other NBA teams.
Part of the reason the U.S. struggled in 2019 was losing Tatum -- already a key starter -- to an ankle sprain during a narrow win over Turkey early in the group stages. Then-Boston teammatealso missed the USA's last two losses due to hand soreness, compromising the roster's perimeter depth.
More than anything, the 2019 U.S. team never managed to find the chemistry necessary to beat more cohesive opponents. One of the points I made four years ago was that the USA's projection plunged to 47.2 wins on average if players were all treated as having changed teams, a variable in my NBA projections.
The same is true this year -- making the same adjustment drops the U.S. to 45.6 wins, which would rank eighth among 2023-24 team projections -- but Kerr and the coaching staff seem to have done a strong job of finding a consistent rotation and roles early, which should pay off during the World Cup.When it comes to winning NBA championships, star talent is historically far more important than the kind of depth the USA's World Cup roster features.
Something similar is true of the 1977-78 Washington Bullets, led by Elvin Hayes, who made All-NBA every season from 1974-75 through 1978-79 except the year the Bullets happened to win the title. That leaves the 1978-79 Seattle SuperSonics as the only champion truly comparable to the USA roster in terms of depth over stars. The Sonics, who beat the Bullets in a second consecutive Finals matchup, had no players on the roster who had ever been All-NBA picks. Budding guards Dennis Johnson and Gus Williams would both make it the next season, while second-year center Jack Sikma was early in his Hall of Fame career.
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