US put emphasis on defence, experience on roster for Paris
USA Basketball’s latest “Dream Team” is loaded with star power, experience and a renewed emphasis on size and defence.
With this summer’s Paris Olympics fast approaching, USA Basketball managing director Grant Hill announced the 12-player roster for the Games: LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Anthony Davis, Jayson Tatum, Bam Adebayo, Devin Booker, Jrue Holiday, Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, Joel Embiid and Kawhi Leonard.
“We have a very exciting, very talented and very experienced roster,” Hill said. “We’re just grateful we had so many who were willing to be a part of this. We had a great pool of candidates. It was not easy by any stretch of the imagination.
“We look forward to the journey and the task at hand, with the goal of bringing gold back from the Olympics.”
The roster includes plenty of past gold medallists and no major surprises. James, Durant and Curry telegraphed their interest in playing together last October, and Hill selected only two newcomers: Embiid, who opted to play for USA Basketball rather than France or Cameroon, and Leonard, a two-time NBA Finals MVP who has managed a series of offseason health concerns during his prime.
USA Basketball drew heavily upon its Tokyo Olympic team, which won gold in 2021, and its most recent FIBA World Cup team, which finished fourth last September.
Durant, Tatum, Adebayo, Booker and Holiday all played in Tokyo, while Edwards and Haliburton emerged as standouts during the FIBA World Cup run in the Philippines.
James will compete for USA Basketball for the first time since winning his second Olympic gold medal in 2012, and Curry, a two-time gold medallist in the FIBA world championships, will pursue his first Olympic gold.
For Hill, who succeeded Jerry Colangelo as managing director following the Tokyo Olympics, the programme’s disappointing World Cup showing was proof he needed a bigger and more physical team to match up more effectively with top international competition.
USA Basketball will face Serbia, which could be led by Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic, in the competition’s opening round.
“The FIBA game is a different game than the NBA game,” Hill said. “You want players whose games translate on that stage. Defence, experience, a collective understanding of how to win. It’s a puzzle.
“You want talented individuals and you want players who can blend, fit and play certain roles you need. Defence was certainly a priority.
“Having guys who are capable of locking down, guarding multiple sets within a possession, an emotional maturity, and then just blending personalities ... Rebounding is something we struggled with [in the Philippines].”
Davis and Embiid, who is coming off knee surgery in February, give USA Basketball a much longer and more imposing front line than it sported at the World Cup.
Meanwhile, Holiday and Leonard, who missed the final eight games of the regular season with knee soreness, should provide stout perimeter defence to complement the team’s deep collection of scorers.
The United States is one of eight teams that have qualified for the Olympic tournament’s 12-team field, and the Americans should enter as heavy favourites.