Sunday night, USA basketball captured the gold medal in the FIBA World Basketball Championships for the first time since 1994. The end of a 16-year drought should have Americans celebrating in the streets, right? But the truth is the tournament has seemed to draw little interest from most U.S. sports fans.
For those who don’t know, the FIBA tournament is the basketball equivalent of soccer’s FIFA World Cup that took place earlier this summer. The difference between the two this year: Americans were more interested in the soccer.
For many countries and basketball fans across the world, the FIBA tournament is bigger than Olympic basketball. For the American sports fan, however, it’s been a mid-day substitute for when watching that second episode of Sports Center in a row has become repetitive, or when there’s no baseball or football on worth watching. But why were Americans so disinterested?
Ultimately, this year’s U.S. squad was subject to three unfortunate downfalls when it came to the American public’s interest in the tournament. The first was the time-zone difference. Because the tournament was played in Turkey, many of the U.S. games were played between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. This was even evident in the channels that aired the U.S. games, with eight games being played either on ESPN2 or ESPN Classic instead of ESPN.
Miami University senior Brad Wilson actively followed the tournament. Wilson is an avid NBA fan, and recorded many of the games while he was at class in order to watch them later, or caught reruns on NBA TV.
“I think the scheduling hurt interest, many people couldn’t watch the games because they were at school or work,” Wilson said.
The time of year in which the tournament was held was not helpful either. With divisional races heating up in Major League Baseball and a new college and NFL football season just under way, FIBA had a lot of competition. If baseball is America’s pastime, then football is America’s primetime and a world basketball tournament this time of year just didn’t fit into a lot of sports fans’ schedules.
Another big thorn in the side for this year’s U.S. FIBA squad was that many of the big NBA stars decided to sit out of the tournament. Lebron James, Dewayne Wade and Chris Bosh all stayed in South Beach rather than making the trip to Turkey. Other big names absent from the FIBA games included Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, Deron Williams, Chris Paul and Kobe Bryant. Amare Stoudemire also missed the tournament with an injury.
If you’re a basketball fan and chose not to watch the games because so many marquee players were missing from the U.S. roster, then shame on you, because you missed some good basketball. In 2006, the U.S fielded a team that included names like James, Anthony and Howard, but the lack of team-oriented play resulted in a disappointing third place finish.
This year’s team sounded more like a college all-star team from the last five years, with names like Eric Gordon, Stephen Curry and Russell Westbrook, than a dream team NBA squad. Coach Mike Krzyzewski had the U.S. playing good fundamental basketball with fluid ball movement and lock-down defense, something rarely seen from USA basketball, which in past years has looked more like the Globetrotters or one-man shows.
The one young superstar who did show up for the USA was Kevin Durant, and Durantula was lights out! Durant is special because he has desire. This is the same guy who led the NBA in scoring this past season, and yet he still showed up for Oklahoma City’s 6 a.m. workouts during the summer league. Durant wanted to wear the red, white and blue, and he didn’t disappoint.
Durant was named the tournament MVP. He led the U.S. in scoring as well as a number of other statistical categories, and was clearly the star of the championship game.
The U.S. rolled to the championship, blowing out teams and going undefeated in the tournament, only having to survive on scare when Leandro Barbosa’s last second shot rimmed out for Brazil and the U.S held on for a 70-68 victory in the preliminary round.
The stage was set for an epic battle with Turkey, the home country, in the final. Both teams came into the game undefeated. Hedo Turkoglu, a.k.a. the Michael Jordan of Turkey, and NBA star with the Phoenix Suns, led Turkey in front of a spirit-filled arena of his home countrymen.
If the championship had gone to the team with the better fans, Turkey would have won in a blowout. The ruckus crowd was reminiscent of World Cup fans. Even when they were down 11 in the third quarter, the Turkish fans continued to cheer and root on their team wildly. U.S. fans most likely spent the championship game watching Sunday NFL Countdown.
The crowd’s momentum led Turkey to an early 17-14 lead, until Durant turned it on. After tying the game with a three-pointer late in the first quarter, Durant hustled down to play defense and blocked a layup attempt on Turkey’s next possession, and the U.S. never looked back. Durant led the team with a thrilling 28 points on the way to an 81-64 gold medal route.
It’s too bad not too many people were watching. Turkey’s team is considered national heroes for making the final, and the U.S. will return home to not much fan-fare.