This is pretty much the opposite of what happened to USA Soccer for the World Cup.
Pools for the first round of the FIBA Basketball World Cup, taking place in Spain this summer, were drawn Monday and the USA landed in probably the easiest group.
The USA is in Group C with the Dominican Republic, Finland, New Zealand, Turkey, and the Ukraine. The group is pretty evenly matched after the USA — the Dominican Republic (Al Horford should be healthy, Francisco Garcia), and Turkey (Omer Asik, Ersan Ilyasolva, Hedo Turkoglu) have names you know but Finland and the Ukraine (Alex Len) are all pretty closely matched. However, none of those teams is anywhere near on par with the USA, who should sweep through the group.
All those games for Group C are played in Bilbao, Spain. They should have time to check out the Frank Gehry designed Guggenheim Museum, the USA is not going to be overwhelmed with extra film sessions in this group.
The top four teams advance out of each of the four pools into a single-elimination tournament, where the USA would face teams from Group D until the final game — and Group D isn’t that scary. The best team is likely Lithuania or maybe Slovenia, after that it’s Mexico, Korea, Australian and Angola.
Group A is the deepest group by far — Spain (the only team with a legitimate shot at knocking off Team USA, as they are on their home soil) along with France, Serbia and Brazil are in that group (along with Iran and Egypt). Group B has Argentina, Croatia, Greece, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Senegal.
What this really means is that the USA and Spain are on opposite sides of the draw, so just like the last two Olympics they would not meet until the final, championship game.
USA Basketball has released the pool of players it will choose from this summer, with Kevin Durant and Kevin Love saying they will play if healthy. The USA roster should be stacked, and under coach Mike Krzyzewski, the USA is 62-1.
The USA wants to win the World Championship because if they do they have an automatic berth in the 2016 Olympics in Brazil. If not, if Spain were to win, the USA would have to put together a good enough roster in the summer of 2015 to qualify for the Olympics out of the Americas. Something USA Basketball could do, but they really rather would have the summer off.