It is hard to believe, but we are a year away from the 2012 Olympics. The glory of the Redeem Team from 2008 has faded and, after a romp through the 2010 World Championship, the U.S. has to prove it will not return to complacency. At the 20th anniversary of the original Dream Team, the U.S. Basketball Team might be at another interesting crossroads.
It is hard to speculate about what is going to happen in the NBA right now. Anything too far beyond the next collective bargaining meeting (that is Monday, by the way) seems pointless because we do not know the rules to the game.
How far into the future could this lockout affect the basketball? That is the real question basketball fans are asking with no end to the lockout in sight.
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports began looking into that future Tuesday and sees a potentially lengthy lockout impacting Team USA’s trip to London.
In the doomsday scenario, where labor strife causes the cancellation of the 2011-12 NBA season, and the work stoppage drags into June and then July, there’s little, if no chance, the great American players could play in the Olympics,” Wojnarowski writes. “Team USA is too tied to the NBA – too much of a David Stern production – for the players to break ranks and play. In the post 9-11 world, that’s a tricky subject PR-wise for the players, but several union, USA Basketball and agent sources believe this worst-case labor scenario would cost Team USA its NBA stars.
Not just the NBA stars, but any NBA player.
USA Basketball is pretty much run by David Stern, the NBA and Nike. There is very little separation in how those organizations are run and international play has played a big role in the expansion of the game. Of course, Stern has his hands in it.
That is not necessarily a bad thing. It likely helps with insurance knowing that there are NBA coaches and training staffs traveling with the team. These insurance matters have kept some foreign players from playing for their national teams.
But would American superstars play for the national team if they have less financial assurance when they come back to the States? What if a catastrophic injury occurs at the Olympics and the returning player does not have the guarantee of his contract to fall back on?
That might be the conundrum players have when deciding to go overseas if the lockout goes drastically the owners’ way and some form of non-guaranteed contracts gets pushed through.
Think what might have happened in Alonzo Mourning’s case. He contracts a kidney illness whenhe went to the 2000 Olympics and was never quite the same. His guaranteed contract — something the players fought for — made it easier for him. But if he had a non-guaranteed contract, he could have been waived with no consequence for his team.
U.S. Basketball might already be making its move. The U.S. is sending D-League players to the Pan-American games rather than using top college players as they have in the past. But the Pan-American games are a somewhat low priority on the list of top competitions. Several top college players have spent time with the U20 team.
It will be interesting to see how the D-League players fare overseas. Believe it or not, they might be America’s best option should the lockout go catastrophically long.
The 2012 Olympics might feel like another time and place, but as we learned in 2004, the U.S. cannot just show up and win — even the 2008 team could not do that. A new collective bargaining agreement could have an effect on the U.S. Olympic Basketball team.
Let’s just say for now that it is a good thing the U.S. qualified for the Olympics by winning the World Championships last summer in Turkey. If they had not, no NBA players would be making sure Team USA qualified at the Tournament of the Americas this summer.
