The United States Men’s basketball team has already ensured that they will have their worst finish in a major competition and so the post-mortem of what went wrong has already started even though they still have one more game tomorrow morning against Poland as they play for 7th place. And according to the managing director of the USA Basketball program Jerry Colangelo, they could have used Los Angeles Lakers forward Kyle Kuzma who suffered an ankle injury just before the FIBA World Cup.
Colangelo felt ankle injuries sustained by Jayson Tatum during the World Cup and Kyle Kuzma just before the tournament hurt the U.S. chances in China, noting that the team felt Kuzma was going to be a big help. Colangelo insisted that he didn’t fault the effort of the players who made the commitment this summer.
Kuzma had a couple of strong showings in the exhibition games the team played before going to China but the injury forced him to pull out and prepare for the Lakers season. It also didn’t make it more enticing that the Lakers will be back in China in about a month to play a set of preseason games against the Brooklyn Nets.
Kuzma did give the USA a more natural offensive fit as a power forward as head coach Gregg Popovich elected to almost exclusively play five smaller players with the likes of Boston Celtics swingman Jaylen Brown at center. But while Kuzma may have given USA added depth, to say that it would have saved them in the tournament would be a disservice to all of the excellent national teams that outplayed the U.S. in the tournament.
The FIBA World Cup Final will be played on Sunday in China between Spain and Argentina.
