Back from Vegas, I took in the Lakers-Knicks game at Madison Square Garden on Sunday and listened to a dejected Pau Gasol lament a lack of effort and espouse his frustrations over a lost Lakers season.
You can be damn well sure he is looking forward to the trade deadline, waiting to find out if he’ll play a single meaningful basketball game before summer arrives.
But once summer does arrive, the big Spaniard is going to have a lot left in the tank (pun intended).
And it is never too soon to ask the question: Can Gasol and the Spanish National Team win the World Cup on their home soil? Can they defeat a United states team that will have Kevin Durant as its anchor?
“Well, let’s see who they end up bringing over this summer. That’s what I’m most concerned about right now,” Gasol said. “We are a group that has been together for a long time, so that’s an advantage. We’re hungry and we’re going to play at home, so we’ll be ready to go.
“Prediction? I wish I knew, my friend,” Gasol said in closing. “We’re going to try to do our best and hopefully win the gold for our country.”
Well, my fellow Americans (along with my overseas readers), the first thing to realize is that Durant will be defended this summer by one Serge Ibaka, who plays for the Spanish National Team when he is not lining up alongside Durant in OKC and has the distinction of being the only player on the Spanish squad who speaks with a French accent. If FIBA allowed two “import” players on each roster, the Spanish would also have Nikola Mirotic available to them — which would really make things interesting.
As it is, the next big piece of news to come out of FIBA will happen Saturday when four wild cards spots are allotted. The German federation has withdrawn its application (Mark Cuban is no doubt thrilled that Dirk Nowitzki won’t be putting himself at risk this summer), but there are still a number of strong teams (and one very, very large country) looking to secure the four berths. They include Greece, Russia, Brazil, China and Canada — which is not a strong team, but would become a strong TV draw if their roster includes Andrew Wiggins. My prediction ever since Canada bombed out of the FIBA-Americas tournament last summer was that they’d still get a wild card if Wiggins makes a verbal commitment, because if there is one thing that FIBA craves, it is getting the American viewing public to pay attention to this tournament (previously called the World Championship, it has been rechristened the World Cup).
In other countries, the Worlds are much, much bigger than they Olympics.
In the USA, nobody really gives a hoot.
We can debate all day who will get the 12 roster spots (my picks are here), but having covered Team USA more times than I care to remember, I can assure y’all of one thing: Unless the Americans lose — either in a friendly leading up to the tournament or in pool play (the pools will be drawn on Monday), people will not watch on television, and ESPN will not send a television coverage crew despite holding the rights to broadcast the tournament. They’ll call the games from a studio in Bristol and pretend you don’t notice that they aren’t really there.
That’s what happened in 2010 in Turkey when Kevin Durant was making a name for himself internationally, until Jerry Colangelo placed a call to Bristol and told ESPN they were missing one heck of a story. Within hours, Everyone Speaks Particularly Noisily (my acronym) was scrambling to send personnel over for the final two games.
Durant, along with Kevin Love and LaMarcus Aldridge, have given verbal commitments to the US Federation to play this summer. Will Durant be toting an MVP award along with him? Sure looks that way. But then again, it is only late January. Who knows what the second half of the season will bring?
So on we go to the rankings …