Like many things in life, basketball is cyclical, with everything from the pace of the game to the uniforms to the style of play oscillating in recognizable patterns, and Team USA is no exception.
It’s been noted how the level of interest of participating in the events in which the US national teams compete waxes and wanes, with the current iteration in the 2019 FIBA World Cup looking like we’re currently at a low point.
But with each group of novates to the international game come new stars, much perhaps explained by the fact Team USA is comprised of some of the best players in the world (who happen to come from the U.S.), and — at least in recent decades — are also often players just entering their primes.
With so many young or unappreciated Boston Celtics on Team USA, many have wondered if this event will deliver more than bodies in playing shape at the start of training camp and rumors of improved chemistry in place of the “15 pounds of muscle” everyone gains each offseason.
More to the point, is there a boost from what players learn by participating?
To be certain, the experience, a few weeks in late summer and early fall, shouldn’t be enough to have a profound effect on how players play overall. But in an era where a weekend spent training with Kobe Bryant can be blamed for a season of bad decisions, let’s entertain the possibility.
There’s some baked-in difficulty to assess this theory, starting with the impossibility of proving counterfactual propositions. There’s also the issue of selection bias in our sample — or, using less jargon-laden terminology: when measuring development of elite athletes, it’s a challenge to create a reasonable curve for growth.
Rather than looking for an absolute criteria to impose on very different contexts, we went through each of the last three Team USA FIBA World Cups or Championships (as the event was known before 2014) rosters, and looked for significant growth in subsequent seasons while considering each player’s age, role, and contexts.
We’ve also intentionally avoided the interesting but separate issue of player movement post-participation, a subject worthy of its own standalone piece.
So, with those not-small caveats in mind, let’s look at the three prior versions of Team USA competing in FIBA World Cup/Championship events and see how they fared.
Starting with 2006 as an arbitrary point of departure, two of the team’s twelve players were disqualified because of previous experience playing in the Olympics, forward LeBron James and guard Dwyane Wade (as well as the fact both had breakout seasons well before World Cup play).
The team’s veterans, bigs Brad Miller, Antawn Jamison and Elton Brand, guard Kirk Hinrich and forward Shane Battier all held steady or got worse, likely due to age, while nearly all the team’s younger players got better.
Those players who saw “normal” growth after playing for Team USA’s in 2006 were guard Chris Paul and centers Chris Bosh and Dwight Howard, the former two developing three-point games; the latter his first All-Star bid.
Wings Carmelo Anthony and Joe Johnson took notable steps forward in scoring (26.5 to 28.9 and 20.2 to 25 points per game, respectively) and assists (2.7 to 3.8 and 3.5 to 6.5 per game, respectively). Add that former Celtic Johnson made it to the line 1.5 more times per game than last season, and you’ve got the beginning of an argument these players began to play smarter as well as better.
Exposure probably didn’t hurt Melo’s first All-Star invitation any more than it did Howard’s, but then as now, those honors were based at least partially in factors like visibility and opportunity over skill and ability.
Moving closer to the present, 2010’s Team USA makes the strongest case that a “breakout” effect from participation in international play exists. Due to a similar spate of defections to this year’s team, a whole new group of participants joined the team, with none having experience playing abroad.
What’s even more interesting is that while the age distribution was not that different — a few players past their primes, a handful in it, and mostly young players — a staggering seven players saw significant growth in their games in the following season.
In fact, of that year’s twelve players, only small forward Danny Granger (then, a 27-year-old Indiana Pacer a season removed from a steep drop-off in production) saw a lack of some development, with established forward Kevin Durant having already broken out a few seasons earlier and veteran guard Chauncey Billups extending his elite play into his year 34 season afterwards.
Point guard Steph Curry and forward Rudy Gay became more efficient shooters (the latter frighteningly so).
So many other teammates took steps forward, it’s easier — and perhaps more significant — to note the areas they tended to improve in.
Among those players — including big men Tyson Chandler, Lamar Odom, and Kevin Love, wing Andre Iguodala and guards Russell Westbrook, Derrick Rose and Eric Gordon —- three were beyond years you’d expect much development (Iguodala, Odom and Chandler), and shooting efficiency, assists and free-throw attempts grew as much as counting stat growth.
This matters, because we’re seeing development that reflects an injection of wisdom along with growth coming from increased strength and familiarity with the game at the NBA level — and nearly half of which came from players who shouldn’t be improving much by virtue of biology.
While some changes can be attributed to normal development of young players and others to novel contexts, players like Love and Odom’s three-point shooting jumping roughly 7.0 percent, Gordon boosting his scoring from the stripe, or Iguodala almost doubling his per game assist averages suggests something more than growing up, into a bigger role or getting onto a new team is happening.
Moving on to 2014, we see less dramatic results, but still signs of a post-FIBA World Cup boost.
Excluding Team USA veterans Steph Curry, Rudy Gay and Derrick Rose, a third of the remaining nine players show strong signs of growth in subsequent seasons, four holding steady, and two more showing growth within a subjective assessment of a normal range of player development.
The latter two — guard James Harden and center Mason Plumlee — show a solid if unimpressive bump in counting stats relative to position, while shooting guard Klay Thompson and big men DeMarcus Cousins and Anthony Davis have a similar jump in counting stats while adding new elements to their game.
Klay jumped from an already-dangerous 41.7 percent from deep to a sizzling 43.9 percent, and Cousins began to hit a trey of his own that would make him one of the more feared bigs in the game just a season after. Davis didn’t just increase his scoring by nearly 4.0 points per game, he also began to pass the ball more comfortably, expanding his per game assist average from 1.6 to 2.2.
Taking just the evidence from 2006 or 2014 by itself, one sees hints there might indeed be a tangible benefit from Team USA participation for younger players that could just as easily have happened on its own. However, throw in the exceptional results from 2010 and you have a very different picture.
It cannot be emphasized enough that while the data suggests a correlation between playing for Team USA and improved play in the subsequent season, it does not prove such a claim.
Aclaim which may fundamentally be unprovable.
Nonetheless, given that roughly half the areas where players improved relate to aspects of the game that can change in a short amount of time (shooting efficiency, free-throw attempt increases, and shot-selection) among players at different stages of their career makes a case that players can learn valuable skills in international competition to take back to their NBA contexts to use in future seasons.
So while players who have had such post-Team USA bumps to their age average a little older than 24 due to the outliers in the 2010 team, the mode is closer to 22, meaning that most players seeing growth happen to be younger players still adding to their game.
On Team USA in 2019, there are several candidates for such a bump, including three of the four players making up Team Shamrock, the Celtics players on Team USA’s roster — swingman Jayson Tatum, wing Jaylen Brown, and combo guard Marcus Smart — alongside Utah Jazz shooting guard Donovan Mitchell, Indiana Pacers center Myles Turner and San Antonio Spurs guard Derrick White.
Ultimately, there may never be a way to quantify the impact playing for deservedly revered coaches like Gregg Popovich, Mike Krzyzewski, Steve Kerr and other such luminaries has on the careers of participants.
Still, even considering the difficulties of measuring the effect Team USA can have on careers, it doesn’t seem outlandish to suggest that no matter how small the boost, for young players hungry to make small changes with big payoffs, playing for the US national team is by any measure a low-risk, high-reward proposition.
