men\u2019s national team coach Erik Spoelstra\u2019s staff<\/a> for the 2027 FIBA World Cup in Doha and 2028 Los Angeles Olympics: Oklahoma City\u2019s Mark Daigneault, Detroit\u2019s J.B. Bickerstaff and Gonzaga\u2019s Mark Few. Their appointments were reported Tuesday by The Athletic and other media outlets, subject to approval by the USAB\u2019s board of governors. The board gave its consent Thursday.<\/p>\n\u201cBuilding a staff is similar to building a team. You want character, intelligence, but you also want different approaches and different perspectives and different styles,\u201d said Grant Hill, U.S. men\u2019s national team managing director, in an interview with The Athletic. \u201cI am really excited and look forward to these four men working together, problem-solving and collaborating.\u201d<\/p>\n
How J.B. Bickerstaff invests in his players<\/p>\n
Hunter Patterson<\/p>\n
With the coaching staff set, Hill, USAB director Sean Ford and Spoelstra will spend the next nine to 10 months identifying, recruiting and perhaps even making some tough cuts to fill out a 12-player roster of American NBA stars (or rising stars) for the World Cup.<\/p>\n
Actually, those discussions have already begun. Whereas Team USA has won five consecutive Olympic golds, the last two World Cups (2019 and 2023) have not gone the Americans\u2019 way. The challenges that make the World Cup harder on USA Basketball still exist.<\/p>\n
But there is reason for optimism that the team the U.S. sends to Qatar next summer will capture American fans\u2019 attention and, of course, win.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou got a lot of young guys who want to be a part of it, which is great,\u201d Hill said. \u201cIt\u2019s actually an exciting time. \u2026 We\u2019ll be good.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be big, we\u2019ll be really good defensively,\u201d Hill continued. \u201cWe\u2019ll have shooting. \u2026 We\u2019ll be fine. We\u2019ll have an opportunity to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
To the casual American fan, Hill\u2019s rhetoric may be confusing. Have a chance? What? Shouldn\u2019t the best, deepest, richest basketball-playing country have more than a chance to win a World Cup?<\/p>\n
Well, again, the World Cup is harder for the U.S. Beginning in 2019, FIBA, the international governing body for basketball, moved the World Cup from two years prior to the Olympics to one. A two-year commitment has been much, much harder for USA Basketball to sell to top American stars than it has been for the other great basketball countries with NBA stars like Germany, France, Serbia and Canada, to name a few.<\/p>\n
The Americans finished seventh in 2019 in China, and then fourth at the 2023 Cup in the Philippines. Reading back the rosters from those teams, a fan might think, \u201cWait, there were a bunch of stars on both rosters.\u201d While that would be true today \u2014 Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Donovan Mitchell were on the team in 2019; Anthony Edwards, Tyrese Haliburton, Jalen Brunson, Austin Reaves, Mikal Bridges and Jaren Jackson Jr. were on in 2023 \u2014 those same players were mostly rising stars with little experience at the time.<\/p>\n
While the same dynamics will mostly be in place for this cycle, Hill said that over the past year, he has been approached by \u201cplayers, agents, and parents (of players) about wanting to play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill declined to disclose which players have reached out, or which players he and the rest of the U.S. staff have identified as targets. But there is a chance the U.S. could attract players who have already made All-NBA teams, All-Star games, won NBA titles and previously played for the men\u2019s national team.<\/p>\n
Consider candidates from the Pistons, whom Bickerstaff coaches, and the Thunder, with whom Daigneault won a championship in 2025.<\/p>\n
In Detroit, there is All-NBA guard Cade Cunningham, whose only experience with the U.S. men\u2019s national team was a brief stint on the Select Team in 2023. He is a 6-6, 220-pound point guard. Jalen Duren, the restricted free-agent center for the Pistons, was also on the 2023 Select Team with Cunningham; he\u2019s a 6-10 behemoth who averages a double-double in the NBA, was an All-Star last season and would thrive under FIBA rules for paint and rim defense.<\/p>\n
In Oklahoma City, Jalen Williams missed most of last season with hamstring injuries. But the year before, he was an All-NBA selection on a title team. He is a 6-5 wing and two-way player. Chet Holmgren, who is 7-1, is not only under Daigneault\u2019s direction in Oklahoma City, but also played for Few at Gonzaga.<\/p>\n
Reigning NBA Rookie of the Year Cooper Flagg was the USA Basketball Male Athlete of the Year, leading the under-17 team to a gold medal at the youth World Cup, and also played for the 2024 Select Team. Charlotte\u2019s Kon Knueppel does not have a history with USAB, but he is 6-6, young and shoots 42.5 percent from 3-point range. He is also a Duke alum, where Hill is a crown prince (if Mike Krzyzewski is king on campus), and would surely answer the phone if Hill calls.<\/p>\n
How excited is AJ Dybantsa about being the number 1 pick?<\/p>\n
Josh Robbins and Jeshua Kidd<\/p>\n
The No. 1 draft pick from June, Washington\u2019s AJ Dybantsa, told The Athletic he wanted to play for the next U.S. World Cup team two years ago. His business manager is his father, Ace, and AJ was MVP of the under-19 World Cup playing for the U.S. in 2025.<\/p>\n
Paolo Banchero, the Orlando Magic\u2019s biggest star, was an NBA All-Star following his appearance with the U.S. team at the 2023 World Cup. He hoped to be on the Olympic team that won in Paris and ultimately didn\u2019t make that roster. League sources with knowledge of Banchero\u2019s thinking said he has strong interest in playing for the U.S. in 2028.<\/p>\n
Banchero saw firsthand that building equity in the World Cup can bode well when it comes time to pick the Olympic team. Two of his teammates from 2023, Edwards and Haliburton, were picked for the Paris team the following summer<\/p>\n
\u201cAnthony Edwards and Halliburton\u2019s play certainly helped them,\u201d Hill said. \u201cI don\u2019t know if I could honestly say before the World Cup in \u201923, that either one of them would be on the Olympic team. But how they played (at the World Cup) and certainly what they did the following year in the NBA certainly helped with the decision to put them on the team (in 2024).\u201d<\/p>\n
There will be more names to emerge (the 2026 NBA Draft class is deep with top-line American talent), and there are no guarantees any of the names speculated about here will ultimately play for the U.S. in Qatar. The NBA season is long, injuries change things and war still rages in the Middle East, where both the host nation and the United Arab Emirates (where the Americans would likely play exhibition games) have recently taken fire from Iran.<\/p>\n
If those players are interested, such mitigating factors could change their interest. Or Hill, Ford and Spoelstra could go in a different direction.<\/p>\n
But who is going to play for USA Basketball at the next major competition is going to be a dominant storyline for the 2026-27 season, and there is momentum on the Americans\u2019 side.<\/p>\n
Why? Because most of the next crop of stars in the U.S. don\u2019t have much equity with the men\u2019s national team, and would like to build some before the Olympics.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be the first to say I have a better idea and a better understanding of what this is,\u201d Hill said, whose first tournament as managing director was the 2023 World Cup. \u201cAnd so I will be better, in terms of the World Cup and my role and my responsibility to build the roster.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now that the USA coaching staff is set for the next two summers, next comes the fun part.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,590,10018,85],"class_list":["post-804807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-nba","tag-olympics","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}