International basketball tournaments has been a hot topic of conversation lately since the tragic injury to Paul George while prepping to play for Team USA in the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Championships. Then Kevin Durant of the Thunder resigned from the team for his own reasons and many began to wonder if the USA was to continue its dominance in international basketball competitions.
But the USA is rich in basketball talent and since 1989, when FIBA changed their guidelines and allowed professional players to compete in the international events, the door opened to the vast resources of the NBA.
In the seventeen years of US participation in the FIBA Basketball World Championships, Team USA has won fourteen gold medals and scored medals in the remaining three years as well.
In 1992 the USA fielded what will probably go down as the greatest accumulation of basketball talent on one basketball court at any time in the history of the game. There were no less than 14 Hall of Famers on the squad including 11 players and 3 coaches.
The Bull’s Derrick Rose has had what must be one of the most frustrating professional careers of any player in memory. He gets hurt, he comes back, and he gets hurt again. It takes a really strong person to come through adversity like that and get back out there on the court….but Rose has done it, and he is dazzling!
Then there’s that big, quiet guy who plays for the New Orleans Pelicans named Anthony Davis who has tuffened up considerably since getting push around a bit in his rookie season. Not a lot of guys try to push Anthony around anymore.
Derrick Rose got the great opportunity of playing before his own home crowd in Chicago where he put on a show that reminded fans in the Windy City just what all the fuss was about over Mr. Rose when he was drafted and before he was hurt. This guy is one hell of a basketball player and has proven himself to be a gentleman off the court as well.
But it was young Anthony Davis who turned out to be the leading scorer against Team Brazil that evening. He had a total of 20 points and the NBA representatives from Brazil, Nene, Tiago Splitter and Anderson Varejao, were seen chasing Davis and Rose up and down the floor for most of the game. They could just not keep up and the USA won the match 95-78.
