Entering a selection of 12 NBA players to attend an international tournament is never easy. Even if several of the best decide not to be with Team USA (cases this year of LeBron James and Trae Young), there are numerous candidates to occupy a place both for talent and for what was done in the campaign that precedes, in this case, to the Olympic Games.
In this context, it is seldom talked about which players have been left out of the national team, but this time a second door has opened with the unexpected losses of Kevin Love and Bradley Beal. Shortly after we learned that both of them would not finally be in Tokyo, it was announced that who would replace them would be JaVale McGee and Keldon Johnson. We do not know what the selection process of both has been, but we do know that Trae Young was out of it and that he did not like it that way. Before the names of the substitutes were made public, he posted this video on his Twitter account.
Yes. The video belongs to documentary film The last dance and in it we can see Isiah Thomas regretting not being in the 1992 Olympic Games with these words: “I don’t know what that selection process involved. I met the criteria to be selected, but I was not ”. It is not heard by voice of the base of Atlanta, but it makes clear his feeling of dissatisfaction for not being in the Olympics; that yes, shortly after he returned to share his thoughts with a concise: “Another day, another opportunity.”
Without entering into debates about whether he should be with the US team or not, it is his numbers that undoubtedly support his candidacy. In his third NBA season, he averaged 25.3 points and 9.4 assists to lead the Hawks to the Eastern Conference finals, where they lost 4-2 to the Milwaukee Bucks. In 16 playoff games, he surpassed 30 points on eight occasions and achieved a maximum of 48 in Game 1 against Milwaukee. His talent is beyond any doubt, a different question is whether in Gregg Popovich’s criteria it was what Team USA needed.
(Photograph by Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)