We’ve had the Dream Team in 1992, highlighting many of the greatest talents we have seen in the NBA’s history (MJ, Magic, Bird, etc…). We had the Redeem Team in 2008, which was quite possibly the closest thing we have seen to the Dream Team, with one of the best isolation scorers in Carmelo and a sneak peak at what would become Miami’s dynamic duo with LeBron and Wade. Well for the 2020 team, we have more drop-outs than sign-ups. Why is that?
Let’s go over who dropped out so far:
- Anthony Davis
- James Harden
- Damian Lillard
- Demar DeRozan
- Bradley Beal
- Tobias Harris
- Zion Williamson
- Eric Gordon
- C.J. McCollum
I think a major reason why this is happening is these two reasons, Player Movement and Injury Risk. Players like Harden, Lillard and Harris got a new piece to an already great team. So they’d probably wanna get as much chemistry going while super teams are out and it’s everyone’s game. We all saw KD and Klay suffer injuries this past finals, and the PG injury in a past USA Camp back in 2014. Injuries happen, it’s not rare. Like I said, every playoff team next season has a shot, basically. So it only makes sense for the contenders to be very careful about possible injuries.
So what could this change in the future? In all reality, it probably changes the amount of the leagues best All Stars joining the team. Especially the amount of player movement stays as it was these past few years, or even increases. The only way I see an increase of players wanting to be apart of it, is more incentives. What could some of these incentives be?
3 Ideas of incentives Team USA can try and use could be the following:
- More Money! Money is definitely a generic way to do it, but at the same time, it can definitely work.
- Give Awards for individual success! Like a MVP, DPOTY ect., this could give the players more of a reason to play!
- Finally, make the normal basketball tournament every 4 years along with the Olympics, but have a BIG 3 type tournament every year. So it’s not as exhausting or as time consuming.
Those are just my ideas, let me know what you guys think below or on IG! Thanks for reading!