International/Team USA

Today, Team USA is taking part in part of its “grueling” tryout camp in Las Vegas leading up to its participation in the FIBA Americas Championship next month, an event conveniently also taking place in Vegas (only because the president of Venezuela can be a little nuts). This upcoming tournament matters because the USA has […]

Because as a nation we can often be both arrogant and impatient, sometimes it’s hard for us to admit things. Like that, playing the international game and rules, parts of the world have caught up to us in basketball. It’s hard to accept that the USA made strides toward being the best basketball team on […]

There are just four left, the world’s Final Four. The USA deserves to be there. But after looking stats and watching the first half of the USA/Germany game live this morning (thanks to an unhappy baby who apparently wanted to be up for the game at 3:30 on the West Coast), I still have concerns […]

Superior athleticism funneled into a pressure defense has netted Team USA four impressive wins at the World Championships — it’s the Italy game that is the outlier. That’s also the game gave a blueprint to teams like Spain and Argentina, and it’s going to be harder to come from behind against those teams than the […]

After watching both Team USA games in Japan (thank you TiVo), it’s clear that we deserve to be undefeated. And it’s clear we still have reason to be concerned. The reason for my nervousness: outside shooting. The same issue that plagued the team in Athens two years ago and that some of us were concerned […]

We saw Team USA demolish Puerto Rico, and get to see them again tonight against China and tomorrow against Brazil — but what about the other top teams going to the world championships? Just how good are they? Commenter Xavier, who lives in Barcelona (don’t you love the Internet, where would we have gotten this […]

Thank God we got to watch Team USA in action so we didn’t have to rely on Chris Sheridan’s reporting any longer (more on him later). One game is just one game, and you can’t say much bad about a 45-point win, but here are a few thoughts. • I didn’t see him on the […]

It’ll be next summer at the World Championships before we really know (or maybe the 2008 Olympics), but the early indications are that USA Basketball may have learned some valuable lessons from the 2004 debacle in Athens. Case in point: The rape trial kept Kobe out of the last Olympics, but it appears the new […]