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Tim Bontemps, ESPN
LAS VEGAS — As Team USA opened training camp ahead of the FIBA World Cup with a practice Thursday afternoon, coach Steve Kerr wasn’t interested in divulging who might be starting for him when the Americans begin the tournament against New Zealand on Aug. 26 in the Philippines.
“It tends to shake out over the first week or two,” Kerr said following the team’s first practice at the Mendenhall Center at UNLV. “As a coaching staff, we’re watching the tape every day, we’re seeing different combinations and then we’re thinking about substitution patterns from there. So it tends to play out.
“But it’s not easy, because usually you’re talking about 12 starters in the NBA. … These guys are all starters and great players. Part of the FIBA commitment is none of that stuff matters. There’s no contracts on the line. Nobody’s getting traded. This is just us for six weeks, and I expect the same thing to happen here is what happened in [2021, for the Olympics] and in [2019, for the World Cup], in terms of the buy-in and the effort and the energy and the intensity, and, we’ll see what happens.”
Adding an additional layer of complexity to Kerr’s decisions moving forward is the lack of experience across this group. While virtually every player has played for Team USA at various levels, none of the 12 selected for the World Cup have participated at the senior national level before.
That means plenty of experimenting will be done over the next few weeks, beginning with the four days of practice in Las Vegas, plus a scrimmage against Puerto Rico on Monday night. From there, Team USA will travel to Malaga, Spain, before going on to Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and then Manila, Philippines, for the tournament itself.
On Thursday, Kerr didn’t tip his hand, intentionally splitting his roster up evenly by having the two pure point guards — Jalen Brunson and Tyrese Haliburton — on opposite teams, along with the two centers, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Walker Kessler, while, as Kerr put it, splitting the remaining wing players “right down the middle.”
The way that played out in practice was that the blue team consisted of Haliburton, Anthony Edwards, Brandon Ingram, Paolo Banchero, Josh Hart and Jackson, while the white team featured Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Austin Reaves, Cameron Johnson, Bobby Portis and Kessler.
But in addition to learning his personnel and figuring out how they will work together, Kerr is working with his group to understand the FIBA version of the sport — which is significantly different than the NBA version. That manifests in a variety of ways, including one Kerr is specifically focused on after his time under Gregg Popovich the past several years with Team USA: FIBA’s emphasis on baseline out-of-bounds plays.
“One of the rules, for example, the ball is taken out of bounds underneath all the time in FIBA, whereas in the NBA, it’s on the sideline,” Kerr said. “So, statistically, you run eight baseline out-of-bounds plays a game in FIBA. It’s two and a half in the NBA. So you better execute better offensively, you better execute defensively on those specific eight plays every game.
“We [lost] in the preliminary game [of the Olympics] to France two years ago when they scored, I think, on three out-of-bounds plays in the second half. So you plant that in your brain and you work a little harder on those [things].”
To help shepherd that learning curve — particularly with only six weeks between now and when the tournament wraps Sept. 10 in Manila — Kerr made it clear there will be a simple structure so his group can focus on executing well.
“Complex is not a word that we’re going to use in USA Basketball very often, just due to the nature of the whole thing,” he said. “Six weeks, and part of my coaching experience with USA Basketball … we got to carry forward the experience that we had, good and bad, and understand how we can make things more efficient and understand the timeline and how quickly this thing starts.
“So, simpler is better.”