One day the FIBA World Cup of basketball might become a spectacle that bears at least a passing resemblance to the one its soccer cousin puts on every four years – ideally without the systemic corruption.
But that day is not here yet. It’s hard to even see it on the horizon; even if you squint. Its arrival at this point is purely in the realm of the hypothetical – like pigs flying, and hell freezing over.
Sunday afternoon Team USA took home its second consecutive gold medal by picking apart Serbia the way a heartless 10-year-old boy might pluck the legs off a spider.
Their championship roster is more remarkable for who wasn’t there than who was.
LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony all took the summer off; Paul George splintered his leg in training and Derrick Rose spent most of the tournament getting to know his knees again after a pair of surgeries. Team USA still went undefeated with an average margin of victory of 32.5 points heading into the final.
Future superstar Anthony Davis and 2010 NBA MVP Rose combined for just seven points (all by Davis) in the gold-medal game against an over-matched Serbian team, and yet Mike Krzyzewski’s club squeaked out a 37-point win — 129-92 — in Barcelona.
Meanwhile, Toronto Raptors star DeMar DeRozan — a go-to scorer on a playoff team in the NBA — was only needed for mop-up duty throughout the tournament. Such was the USA’s depth.
It was the most lopsided gold-medal game at the Olympics or World Cup since Team USA trounced Russia by 46 in Toronto in 1994. The Americans are 45-3 in the Dream Team era, with all three losses coming during their disastrous run at the 2004 Olympics in Athens when they depended on Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury to carry the flag, a big mistake. They are 18-0 at the worlds since they began taking those events seriously, too.
It’s a sobering thought for countries like Canada, where Andrew Wiggins-inspired dreams of a golden generation growing up to somehow challenge Team USA for top spot on the podium dance like sugar plums in hoops lovers heads. Countries like Spain, France and Brazil can field rosters laden with NBA talent, but America can send their ‘B’ team and romp.
"Against this team it was very difficult to play any tactics," Serbian head coach Sasha Djordevic said. "They had quicker players, players who scored … they went after us hard."
Not even Canada’s depth in hockey comes anything close, in relative terms.
This wasn’t exactly how the script was written. When USA began sending its top professionals to Olympics and world championships — The Dream Team concept — it was because seasoned European pros were too much for pick-up teams of college kids. The thinking was the game would grow and the rest of the world would catch up. A decade of U.S. indifference — they won just one gold medal at the Olympics or the worlds between 1998 and 2006 — suggested the gap had indeed closed.
But in the past decade, under the guidance of Jerry Colangelo in his role as executive director of USA basketball, the Americans seem to have reached heights its not clear if any other country can match. They may have perfected basketball.
The question is whether USA’s dominance is hurting the game?
"In basketball the U.S.’s leadership is recognized," says Maurizio Gherardini, the former Raptors executive who is beginning his first season running European power Fenerbahce Ulker in Istanbul. "So the story is always: who is going to challenge them? Who is going to be beat them?"
The way the pop culture currents flow means that the best American players — the best in the world — are global superstars on par with even the most popular soccer players. Kobe Bryant and LeBron James are huge in China. In Europe, they know all about Rose.
On the ground in Spain, Gherardini — who remains an advisor to Canada Basketball — said the World Cup felt like a huge event. When Spain — the country most thought had the best chance to push the U.S. — lost to France in the quarterfinals, it felt like a national tragedy there and the result was breaking news across Europe, Gherardini said.
Big crowds of fans from non-traditional basketball countries like Korea, New Zealand and Finland gave the event an international taste as well.
But it’s hard to imagine the FIBA World Cup capturing the attention of sports audiences with a fervor approaching soccer — well, ever to be frank — but particularly until some other basketball countries emerge as realistic challengers to the current world order.
Even in the U.S. there wasn’t all that excitement about Team USA – the gold-medal final was swamped by NFL coverage.
In contrast, the World Cup of soccer had the U.S. in rapt attention even after Team USA lost. I would argue the nature of soccer — low scores, the opportunity for weaker teams to clog up the game and the puncher’s chance provided by set pieces or penalty kicks — means that an upset is always possibly, even if unlikely. As well, the lack of a single dominant country means a much higher level of engagement globally.
Every World Cup has four to six teams that could realistically win and twice as many that can fantasize about it. Basketball only has countries dreaming of second place.
Could it ever change?
The 40-minute international game and the closer international three-point line suggests that even Team USA should be vulnerable to an upset at some point. But for basketball to become a true global game it needs nations like China, Brazil or Germany — populous, wealthy countries with rich sports traditions — to crack the code.
That or a country like Canada needs to follow in the footsteps of Spain or Argentina — or in years past the old Yugoslavia — and ride a special generation of talent and hope they can do the unthinkable.
In the meantime, the World Cup of basketball and the Olympic tournament will continue to be a battle for silver and basketball forever locked in as soccer’s second fiddle.