Why We Shouldn't Be Worried About USA Men's Basketball

 

    The USA lost to France in basketball! They looked like absolute garbage on the court! The sky is falling!

    Alright, calm down everyone. Yes, the USA lost in spectacular fashion to the French national team yesterday. But, and this is important, we as a society should not be freaking out or saying everything is full of doom and gloom. In fact, we should be celebrating this.

    So wait, why would we celebrate a loss? A few reasons actually:

    The most important reason is that we should be happy that international basketball is catching up to us. Why should we be happy about this? Iron sharpens iron baby. Minus a few blips on the radar in decades past, the US men's national team has curb stomped opponents up and down the court. We would toy with other teams, most famously demonstrated by Vince Carter introducing Frederic Weis, appropriately playing for France, to bofa as he jumped over him with a monster dunk during the Olympics in Sydney.

    The world catching up to us on a more consistent scale is a great thing for everyone. This loss is opening up eyes to how we play basketball, how we deal with international rules and the adversity they bring, and also that we can't just win on talent alone anymore. This means one of two things, either we take the Olympics much more seriously in the future, or we fall flat on our face until we realize what we did to ourselves... or didn't do for ourselves. I get the feeling with how USA Basketball has overreacted to losses in the past (see: the Redeem team), I get the feeling that they're not going to stand for this, even if the loss is just in pool play. This means that anyone who has been getting lackadaisical in their efforts, from the front office down to the players, will have to wake up and double down on their efforts to make it clear we're still the top dog. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and the world finally has some bullets strong enough to knock it off our collective domes. We have to learn to keep them at bay.

    I mentioned that the loss was in pool play, that was also a good thing. Why? Because that means this current edition of our team still has time to get their act together. We had our toughest group game first, and have the Czech Republic and Iran remaining. I don't think we'll have much of an issue getting by those two teams. If we do, that will serve as even more of a wake up call, which can still be a good thing. But, the team can use these games as a chance to get right and figure things out before elimination play begins. I get the feeling with the players on the roster, and the coaching staff (even if Gregg Popovich is the definition of the stubborn old man yelling at clouds), we'll be able to get the job done.

    The final reason we shouldn't be worried is that three of our players got into town literally hours before their first game. Devin Booker, Jrue Holiday and Khris Middleton just finished up the NBA finals, and in the case of Holiday and Middleton, their brief but wild celebration tour around Milwaukee, and flew straight to Tokyo. Despite his probable exhaustion, Holiday put up 12 points in the 4th quarter in an attempt to save the teams bacon. Give him, Booker, and Middleton adequate time to rest and catch up to the time difference and that's three quality players who can pick up a lot of weight from everyone else.

    So seriously, everyone calling for the heads of USA Basketball and the players, calm the hell down. We're in a good spot for the present and future. Be happy, the world isn't going to end.