Olympic Basketball 2012: No Room for Regret in Team USA's Roster Selections

When Team USA goes about selecting its roster for either the Olympic Games or FIBA competition, there's inevitably much conversation over the pool of candidates and the interests of the USA Basketball program.

Each of the NBA's stars and up-and-comers alike has his lobbyists, and it's instances like these in which the boosters come out; the straining of a wide talent pool into 12 selections simply incites debate in its most natural order and forces basketball fans—said as if coercion is really necessary—to consider one-for-one exchanges of All-NBA players with a sense of context and gravity.

Being picked to play for Team USA means something, and as such, basketball fans all over the world have their own ideas about who should or shouldn't make the final cut.

Yet with this year's team, there were no wrong answers. Once USA Basketball set its expanded roster of finalists, its work was done. LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul and co. were all guaranteed spots based on equity, talent and obviousness. Beyond that, Jerry Colangelo and Mike Krzyzewski had but a few choices to make in order to flesh out the bottom half of the roster.

Should they include James Harden or Eric Gordon? Andre Iguodala or Rudy Gay? Blake Griffin or Anthony Davis? A slew of injuries and withdrawals simplified a potentially gut-wrenching decision into a series of binary considerations. I suppose Colangelo and Krzyzewski could've gotten creative and picked among those six players without regard for redundancy, but the direct competition between comparable candidates was almost too straightforward to ignore.

Harden, Iguodala and Davis have all played well for Team USA thus far, but that doesn't mean Gordon, Gay, Griffin (who was selected but subsequently ruled out due to injury) or a compensatory big (DeMarcus Cousins, Greg Monroe, etc.) wouldn't have. It just came down to a series of slight differences that hardly matter in the present or in retrospect.

With all of the team's essential pieces locked in place, the final cuts merely decided who would serve as the world's most talented dressing—valuable and flavorful in their own way, but inescapably complementary.

Those players are still important given the balance of production and minutes throughout the Team USA roster, but the baseline talent level of the program pool was so impressive that the committee's judgment calls matter little. This team still looks a few steps ahead of the rest of the field, and though at the time USA Basketball's inclusions may have warranted added consideration, by this point the margins of victory are too bloated for controversy.

Spain, Russia and Brazil still loom, but this is currently a roster without worry or regret. Everyone chosen was deserving of the slot he received, even if some of the alternatives would have been equally so.