USA Basketball Nearly Ready for Final Cuts

LeBron and Kobe will be on the court together again in London but who will be joining them on Team USA? Al Dannity takes his best guess at the final 12 man roster for the defending Olympic Basketball champions.

Where’s the beef?
Dwight Howard’s hurt, Chris Bosh needs to recover, while Andrew Bynum and LaMarcus Aldridge are also out of action. There’s a distinct lack of size on this Team USA roster heading into the Olympics. That’s good news for Rudy Gay and Blake Griffin. Neither is a conventional big but they both bring the kind of size that is in short supply for Mike Krzyzewski’s roster. DeMarcus Cousins looks a more natural fit, despite his relative inexperience, but the Sacramento big man will have to content himself with a place on the USA Select team that will help the Olympic roster prepare.

Anthony Davis is being kept with the squad, having initially been expected to be cut much sooner. The thinking is that a potential switch in Olympic rules could make Davis a big factor in 2016. There is a proposal on the table, one that looks frankly insane and detrimental to the sport, to make the Olympic competition for players aged 23 and under. If that passes then Davis, who turns 23 in 2016, could be the cornerstone of Team USA’s push for gold in 2016. The Naismith Award winner is still quite unlikely to make the final cut for 2012, effectively making this a battle of 14 players for 12 spots.

The guarantees
Of those still healthy, there are several players who simply can’t be left behind. LeBron James and Dwayne Wade will look to add a second Olympic gold together to the NBA Championship they recently won with the Heat. Thunder duo Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant both won the FIBA World Championship with Krzyzewski in 2010 and they will be on the final roster for London. As the lone legitimate big man on the roster, Tyson Chandler is a lock to travel and he will be joined by his Knicks team-mate Carmelo Anthony. Point guards Chris Paul and Deron Williams are irreplaceable, as is the veteran instinct of Kobe Bryant. Kevin Love elevated his game this season to a point where Coach K can’t leave the FIBA Wold Championship winner behind. That’s 10 of 12 roster spots locked up, leaving four players for the remaining two.

And the shot at gold goes to…
Every player on the 12 man USA roster will know that they travel to London as favorites for gold. Only Spain has a roster than can realistically challenge the defending champions and their gold hopes appeared to suffer a fatal blow once Ricky Rubio was ruled out with injury. Griffin, Gay, Eric Gordon, and James Harden. Prior to the near obliteration of Team USA’s bigs, I would have pointed at Griffin as one of the players to end up on the outside looking in. The Clipper however is one of the two players I see making the final cut.

That leaves Coach K with a tough decision to make. Does he add another shooting guard to his roster, a position where he is quite solid already, or does he opt for the slight size advantage Gay brings. Harden wasn’t in Coach K’s FIBA team two years ago and I see Krzyzewski doing everything he can to do right by that roster. Gordon is, by my take, the better player but Gay is the player he needs right now.

That leaves my final prediction for the Team USA roster as: Carmelo Anthony, Kobe Bryant, Tyson Chandler, Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay, Blake Griffin, LeBron James, Kevin Love, Chris Paul, Dwayne Wade, Russell Westbrook, and Deron Williams.

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