MIAMI _ You start here: Any basketball that bridges the gap between NBA seasons is good.
NBA Summer League. The $2 million winner-take-all The Basketball Tournament. And, yes, even the halfcourt Big3.
That goes, as well, for the current World Cup in China that runs through the next two weeks.
Of all the offseason basketball, it is the World Cup that is intended to bring together the highest level of competition.
Emphasis on "intended."
Because not only is just about every NBA All-Star missing from Team USA, but several other international NBA stars have also decided to bypass competing for their national teams, citing either injury, rest or the extensive travel for a competition that ends two weeks before the start of training camp. And then there is another factor that cheapens the overall notion of the World Cup as any sort of true international championship.
Unlike previous qualifying procedures that utilized offseason competitions, FIBA, basketball's ruling international body, opted for a soccer-style approach of year-round qualifying windows. The difference is that unlike soccer, and its international ruling body, the world's top leagues, including the NBA, did not pause to allow top players to compete in such qualifying events.
For the NBA, the simple solution was fielding a group of G League players that proved more than capable of qualifying for the United States, a roster led by former coach and current ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy.
For countries lacking such deep talent pools, there were no alternate answers. It is why Slovenia, the reigning European champion, is missing from the World Cup. Basically, no Goran Dragic, no Luka Doncic, no chance.
It is a process that appreciably upset Dragic, whose national pride was ever-present during his run with Slovenia to the 2017 EuroBasket championship. But there also was the reality of an NBA contract to be honored, just as it was for Doncic, during his breakout rookie season with the Dallas Mavericks.
In many respects, though the bungling of FIBA, the World Cup has become something far less than a true world championship.
When the USA national team, with all due respect, includes Mason Plumlee, Joe Harris, Brook Lopez, Marcus Smart and Derrick White, you in no way, shape or form are talking about a representative national team. At this point, you have moved beyond the Top 50 American players and, quite possibly, the Top 100. FIBA can try all it wants to cast the World Cup as an ultimate global championship, but all it stands as is a glorified Olympic qualifier.
The gold medal at the Olympics is what resonates in international basketball with fans in the United States, just as the World Cup, ahead of the Olympics, ranks as the ultimate soccer championship. If basketball's World Cup truly was the global championship, then qualifying windows would have allowed the world's best to compete.
Imagine if the world's best players weren't allowed to compete in qualifying for soccer's world cup. Well, actually don't, since that would never happen.
This is not about last week's USA Basketball exhibition loss in Australia. This is about casting an event as something it is not.
The World Cup is a worldwide basketball get-together that should provide offseason entertainment. But it is not a world championship. For that to be the case, it would involve the very best players from the very best countries.
At least from a USA perspective, that's the Olympics, when Plumlee, Harris, Lopez, Smart and White likely will be asked to step aside, just as were the G League players who pushed USA Basketball through World Cup qualifying.
