Spain’s commitment a lesson for USA Basketball
At the FIBA World Cup, the Spanish triumph and the American embarrassment boiled down to the same factor: commitment.
While USA Basketball said goodbye to superstars, and then stars, and then rising stars in the run-up to China, Spain quietly cultivated a veteran core. Marc Gasol, fresh off a title with the Toronto Raptors, was his country’s clear headliner. Yet Spain assembled a well-oiled cast around its star centre to claim gold by soundly defeating Argentina, 95-75, in Beijing on Sunday.
Spain had five members of its 2016 Rio team at its disposal: Ricky Rubio, Sergio Llull, Rudy Fernandez, Victor Claver and Willy Hernangomez. Many from that group had represented Spain in previous tournaments — including the 2012 London Olympics — while Gasol’s own national team career dates all the way back to 2006.
The Americans, by contrast, carried just one player with prior Olympic experience: Harrison Barnes.
To be clear, any excuses for skipping out on China proffered by American players could also have been applied to Spain’s prominent names. After all, the 34-year-old Gasol played 79 regular season games, endured a midseason trade, and logged 24 post-season starts for the NBA champion Raptors before signing on for Spain’s gruelling summer slate, which included exhibitions in California and Europe before the trip to China.
Meanwhile, Rubio competed despite coping with the prospect of playing for a new team (the Phoenix Suns) and a new coach (Monty Williams) next season.
Hernangomez competed even though he is heading into a contract year with the Charlotte Hornets.
Fernandez, a former NBA player, competed even though he has already long been one of his country’s most famous basketball stars. Llull and Claver, who once played for the Portland Trail Blazers, both competed despite being 31 years old.
Indeed, every Spanish player competed despite knowing that Team USA, its longtime nemesis, would once again field a roster stacked with NBA players and enter the World Cup as heavy favourites. They had plenty of good reasons not to show up, but they showed up anyway.
Spain’s breakthrough, of course, came after years of close calls and bitter disappointments.
This World Cup title, the country’s first international tournament championship since 2006, made up for underwhelming showings at the 2010 and 2014 FIBA tournaments, and built on hardfought silver medals at the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
For years, the Spaniards have played bridesmaids to the Americans. This time, they blitzed through the tournament with an 8-0 record as Team USA stumbled to an abysmal seventh place showing.
USA Basketball coach Gregg Popovich spent much of this summer fretting about his team’s relative lack of shared experience. Spain perfectly embodied the other side of that coin: Its suffocating team defence keyed a 14-2 start against Argentina, while its offence displayed a rhythm the Americans never sustained.
Now that it’s over, one hopes that the American players who sat out the World Cup took the time to watch Rubio, who has matured from a baby-faced teenage prodigy to a bearded vet on the national team, win MVP honours. And that they caught clips from Gasol’s gleeful post-tournament interview.
“Tomorrow, the sun will come up again and the world will keep going, but we get to be world champions,” Gasol said.
The jubilant scene raised the question: Was America’s next generation of basketball talent even paying attention?
The Washington Post