Spending a summer vacation at the World Cup could benefit NBA players, coaches

Austin Reaves intends to spend this season competing for a championship. And that’s why he thought it made perfect sense to spend his offseason competing for one as well.

For about 50 NBA players — including 12 from the U.S. — this was not an ordinary summer filled with workouts and vacations. The Basketball World Cup was held in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia in August and September, and for those who were there playing for their country it could serve as a serious springboard into this NBA season.

Between training camps, exhibition games and the tournament itself, the World Cup players got to play highly competitive basketball for six weeks or more. And that sort of preparation has obvious benefits, Reaves said.

“I’ve been able to learn a lot from a lot of really good players, a lot of really good coaches that basically just see that I belong,” said Reaves, the sharpshooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers. “Obviously, there’s things to work on, but I think I can hit the ground running from the start of the year … and attack the NBA season.”

From a results standpoint, the summer didn’t go as planned for the Americans. The U.S. finished fourth in the World Cup, good enough of a finish to qualify for next summer’s Paris Olympics but obviously not good enough to come home with a medal. Germany won gold, Serbia (with Bogdan Bogdanovic leading the way) silver and Canada (paced by Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Dillon Brooks, Kelly Olynyk and RJ Barrett) beat the Americans for bronze.

That means a whole lot of players returned to their NBA teams with a major sense of accomplishment from the summer — certainly different than what would have been the case had the summer been about just playing 1-on-0 or in 5-on-5 workouts with guys from a local gym.

“I definitely learned a lot and what I learned, I want to bring to this,” said Orlando forward Franz Wagner — who helped lead Germany to the gold medal, by far the country’s biggest team basketball accomplishment yet. “At the end of the day, this is basketball. We’re trying to build a winning culture. Being part of that team, there are certain things that I learned from them that we can apply to our group.”

Wagner and brother ( and Magic teammate) Moritz Wagner played for Germany, which beat the U.S. in the semifinals — a team that just happened to have Magic forward Paolo Banchero on its roster.

Banchero probably could do without the ribbing that the Wagners can throw his way because they won gold this summer. But the reigning NBA rookie of the year was thrilled by one part of what he saw from Germany at the World Cup — a penchant by Franz Wagner for taking over games at the biggest times.