Vol. 1 No. 4 — September 18th, 2019

Welcome to the fourth edition of the Rathbun Roundball Report, Subscriber First Name! This newsletter is dedicated to the basketball community, and that I hope it sheds a light on what’s going on in the world of basketball this week!

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The Poison of Not Competing

In the aftermath of Team USA’s seventh-place finish in the FIBA World Cup, much has been written and said about who showed up and who didn’t for the Americans (and the Canadians).

Just to set the record straight, I came across this article on eurohoops.net by FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis about NBA player participation:

According to Zagklis and despite the recent criticism by former NBA commissioner David Stern on the matter, this is an issue that individual federation must solve, especially those of the USA and Canada, while in total 54 NBA players competed in the World Cup: “Our role is quite delicate because our job is not to put together the roster of any of the competing teams. We need to set the stage, put equal conditions for all the teams and then each national federation has its own way to approach the players. There has been of course a lot of discussion in the media about the roster of the US national team. I think that USA basketball should analyze this situation and also we will have a debriefing with them, whether there are some conditions that we set for this tournament. But I have to say this. When those players initially committed to play, everything was already known. We believe that’s something which doesn’t have to do with the tournament itself. Of course, every player has its own reasons, but as I said before for us, it’s very important, and we have put a lot of emphases in this tournament, more than any other time, to improve the players’ experience. And yes, traveling between the cities was a bit of a challenge, but I visited myself the team hotels and the players’ lounges. So why one federation or another had some players or not in their roster, it’s an individual question. And let’s not forget that other national teams besides USA and Canada virtually had every NBA player they have summoned for the World Cup”.

Source: https://www.eurohoops.net/en/fibawc/935880/andreas-zagklis-besides-usa-and-canada-all-other-teams-had-virtually-every-nba-player-they-have-summoned/

Interesting.

The reason for my headline was borne out of the reaction by Team USA’s (and Brooklyn Net) Joe Harris. His reasons for playing were for his development as a professional, and a productive way to use his off-season to prepare for the 2019-20 NBA campaign.

John Schuhmann of NBA.com quoted Harris on how the World Cup experience proved a great preparation for the NBA season.

“Individually, across the board, everybody gets a lot better by playing and going through this entire process,” Harris said this week. “You spent 39-plus days with one of the best coaches in the world, one of the best coaches in the game in Pop (Greg Popovich).

”Just being around them, learning their approach to the game, being around all these great players, competing with them night in and night out, whether it’s practices or games, and competing at a high level every night against some of the best players in the world, this is the best off-season preparation you can have going into the season.”

Source: https://www.netsdaily.com/2019/9/14/20865665/team-usa-joe-harris-scores-14-in-final-world-cup-game-a-win

That’s seems to me to be the best way to approach this. Yes, players were asked to give a two-year commitment, and many had legitimate reasons to not participate. But when you give your word to a man like Jerry Colangelo, the Managing Director of USA Basketball, and then renege, you can be sure there will be consequences after the USA posted its worst finish ever in international competition.

"I can only say, you can't help but notice and remember who you thought you were going to war with and who didn't show up," Colangelo said. "I'm a firm believer that you deal with the cards you're dealt. All we could have done, and we did it, is get the commitments from a lot of players. So with that kind of a hand, you feel reasonably confident that you're going to be able to put a very good representative team on the court.

"No one would have anticipated the pullouts that we had."

Source: https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27600706/colangelo-forget-us-world-cup-pullouts

The tide may be turning, however. This news this morning courtesy of ESPN.com:

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry is committed to playing for Team USA in next summer's Olympic Games in Tokyo.

"That is the plan, for sure," Curry said in an interview with ESPN's Rachel Nichols. "You know, obviously knock on wood, you don't want any injuries or things like that to interfere."

This would mark Curry's first appearance in the Olympics, an experience he is looking forward to, when asked specially by Nichols if he was committing to the team.
 

"Definitely wanna go," Curry said. "I've never been on the Olympic team. I've been on two World Cup Championship gold medal teams. But the Olympics is the experience that I want. And next year will hopefully be it."

The Tokyo Olympics start in just over 10 months.

Atlanta Hawks Schedule

We all play 82. 41 home and 41 road. But the way they get lined up can have a major impact on a teams’ success.

With the Hawks training camp starting in less than two weeks, I’m starting to really bear down on the new season’s preparation.

And looking at the early schedule is a part of it.

The Hawks start will be a bear. Of the season’s first 20 games, the Hawks will be on the road for 11 of them. And the competition will be stiff.

Of the 11 road games, nine will be played against playoff teams from a year ago. Six will come on the road against the Western Conference.

In mid-November, the Hawks have been assigned a five-game, eight-day trip out west that ends with a weekend back-to-back in Los Angeles against the Clippers and Lakers.

That would be a tough stretch for a veteran team, much less a young-core Hawks team that features six players age 22 or younger. And keep in mind, the Hawks have only six returnees from last year’s squad.

That makes these days leading up to the opener in Detroit October 24th crucial indeed. The coaching staff has a lot to implement in a short amount of time.

It starts with five important pre-season games, three that will air on FOX Sports Southeast (starting October 7th against New Orleans.)

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