Stop saying that these are NBA bench players. Most of them are starters, or at least rotation players. It's not like they are end of the bench scrubs.
This might be an abstract concept for Americans, but outside of the USA, people have a lot of pride in getting the opportunity to represent their country. Of course, there's not much to be proud about representing the USA at the moment, so I can understand most NBA players' malaise in that regard.
none of them are of the true elite. the rest of the world is a lot closer to these players in talent currently playing than the ones that elected to not play.
Mehhh.... which other nation in the tournament had multuple 20ppg scorers at NBA level? It is a poor result, even given the roster team USA sent. The other nations seem to have more heart and desire to win the tourny. US didn't care, and to be fair, why should they? The heart will be there for the Olympics next year and gold will belong to the US.
those players playing didn't care? definitely false. they just weren't good enough and not surprisingly.
So what is this supposed to mean? We are not stupidly nationalist enough as other countries? I disagree. We are way stupider in that regard. But i applaud American NBA stars for not playing for free to enrich others in defiance of our true market based national deity, the same one that ****ed them over in college the last time they played for free Of course Rudy Gobert feels more responsibility to carry the french national team because let's be real - there aren't a lot of French players in the NBA and the French team hasn't really ever won ****...its a novelty for him, and probably closer to a trophy than he'll ever be in the nba. Simply put it means more due to his lower station in the basketball hierarchy. I don't doubt that a world cup qualifier probably means more for Christian Pulisic than it does for Leo Messi right now. That's just life, has nothing to do with whatever your implication is. It's not the same for American NBA players and never will be. They have gold medals coming out of their ass. And nobody here cares..nor should we, honestly. The tournament is more entertaining for it anyway...not that i would care about watching regardless
How many elite NBA players the other teams have? Guys like Fournier and Gobert are good but not elite NBA players. And they have players who couldn't even make an NBA team. That's my point. When the USA does not send the top tier stars, the talent level are at least as good as the other good international teams. People here sound like we should expect to lose because we have inferior talent.
exactly, which goes back to my point. the rest of these teams that have talent are a lot closer to these nba players usa had to send because they aren't of the true elite. so losing shouldn't really be a surprise and with out the true elite on team usa's side, these euro teams have more continuity as a actual team going for them
If you'd watched any of the World Cup, you'd see that every team aside from the US has been playing with passion and pride. The US seemed to just go through the motions - almost as if the team was forced to be there. I'm not sure why this particular bunch of USA players decided to act like they weren't extremely lucky to represent their country, because if the top players had made themselves available none of them would have gotten close to the roster. But their general disinterest is possibly the #1 reason for the early exit.
so i guess all those passion and emotions in the turkey game don't count huh. this is more on the side of sore loser talk as if it was like usa wasn't trying anyway. when in reality they definitely were. you think these guys haven't heard all the endless talk of them not being that good. come on now
I'm Australian, so it's definitely not sore loser talk. I'll acknowledge the Turkey game was intense, but the US was extremely lucky to get away with that one. If Osman hadn't fouled Tatum like a dumbass at the end of regulation there would be no OT, and even then Turkey had to miss four FTs for USA to pull it out. Maybe I'm wrong and Team USA just weren't that good this year. I just didn't see them hustling as much as the other teams, which makes me think that it just didn't mean as much to them.
thats an odd way to being the deciding factor of whether or not a team cares or not but i guess that's your own way
Generally if you don't care about something, you'll put in a half-assed effort. It's human nature. That's what I saw Team USA doing in this world cup - half-assing it. I might be wrong, but that's just what I saw.
Maybe they had a gnawing realization that their "luck" in terms of playing for free in a tournament that nobody innthe US will ever remember if they win (quick - name the moment from the last WC most imbued in your memory...I'll hang up and listen), while their on court betters passed on this luck, was not so lucky after all. Just a thought. But probably not.
and I didn't see that so yeah to each its own. just because you don't see guys "hustling" whatever your definition of that is doesn't mean they don't care
I'll admit I didn't pay much attention to the last World Cup, largely because Australia had little realistic chance of getting a medal. But no team gets paid for the world cup, so why does it seem like for every other nation, the best players make themselves available? (Except Ben Simmons in Australia's case of course, but we're in the process of disowning him for being a douche lol)
shrug...this ain’t the Olympics...I don’t really care that our C Team took an L in something like this once the Olympics come around, we’ll send out the real squad and handle business like we’ve been doing no one really cared about this thing...we got dudes dropping out because they’d rather prepare for the upcoming season instead I remember watching the Blue-White scrimmage and thinking to myself how sad the squad was looking this time Your best player is Kemba? Lol
