USA Basketball has been forced to think outside the box for the preliminary rounds prior to the NBA World Cup in China.
Because the schedule for zone qualifying will be held in the midst of the NBA regular season, Nov. 20-28, 2017; Feb. 19-27, 2018; June 25-July 3 2018 for the first round; and Aug. 30-30 2018; Nov. 26-30, 2018; and Feb. 18-26, 2018 in the second round, and the NBA won’t release its players, this US Senior Men’s team will be made up primarily of NBA Development League players.
New USA head coach Gregg Popovich will be engaged with the San Antonio Spurs so USA Basketball is considering using multiple head coaches during the various windows with fresh rosters that will be selected for each of the six two-game qualifying sets or using one coach not currently employed as a head coach of an NBA team for all 12 teams.
Popovich will coach the national team in China and NBA players will be used in the 32 team Olympic qualifying tournament.
USA Basketball has dominated international basketball since 2008, winning three Olympics and a pair of World Championships in 2010 and 2014.
But we are entering a brave new world largely because FIBA would eventually like to make the World Cup bigger than the Olympics and would even want the Olympics to turn into a 23-and-under tournament. We’ll see.
Sean Ford, the USA Basketball men’s national team director, will serve as the non-voting chairman of the player selection committee. Other representatives include NBA D League executive Tony Bollier, Brooklyn Nets’ assistant general manager Trajan Langdon, Miami Heat assistant general manager Adam Simon and Houston vice president for basketball operations Gersson Rosa, with one athlete representative to be announced.
Langdon and Simon work with their team’s D-League affiliates. Rosas has been a USAB scout.
The 80 teams involved will follow the same model as FIFA uses in international soccer for its World Cup qualifying. The 12 games will determine which 31 countries qualify for the Worlds, along with host team China. The top seven teams in the Americas will advance, joining 12 teams from Europe, 7 teams from Asia, 7 teams from Africa as well as China. The top seven teams in the Worlds automatically qualify for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Japan will earn an automatic bid and the other four berths will be determined through four FiBA last chance qualifying tournaments to be held in the summer of 2020.
