Jerry Colangelo: 'You Can't Help but Notice' Players Who Withdrew from Team USA

As Team USA prepares for its worst-ever finish in international competition, those in charge of the team have begun their postmortem.

USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo appeared to hint there will be some hard feelings about players who withdrew from the 2019 World Cup when assembling the 2020 Summer Olympics roster.

"I can only say, you can't help but notice and remember who you thought you were going to war with and who didn't show up," Colangelo told reporters. "I'm a firm believer that you deal with the cards you're dealt. All we could have done, and we did it, is get the commitments from a lot of players. So with that kind of a hand, you feel reasonably confident that you're going to be able to put a very good representative team on the court.

"No one would have anticipated the pullouts that we had."

The United States will play in the seventh-place game against Poland on Saturday after losing to Serbia on Thursday. This will be its worst result in team history, with the previous worst a sixth-place disappointment at the 2002 World Cup.

Kemba Walker was the only player who made an All-NBA team last season who was part of the 12-man roster. Khris Middleton was the lone other All-Star. It was a largely thrown-together group of guys who did not seem to fit well, essentially the leftovers from a group of more than 50 players.

Some, including De'Aaron Fox, dropped out at the last minute to focus on the upcoming season. Fox's explosion at the point guard spot likely would have helped Team USA; the loss of Kyle Kuzma, a natural 4 for international play, also hurt the roster.

"We're going to let the dust settle, let things depress a little bit," Colangelo said. "Obviously I'm always thinking ahead, which means what's going to take place, and it's going to happen fast and soon because we just have to get our act together for the Olympics."

But the overwhelming reason Team USA will be playing in a seventh-place game is the lack of talent. The United States rosters always tend to be a thrown-together group who get relatively limited practice time to get themselves in order. Where European teams tend to win with the cohesion built over years of playing for their national team, the U.S. overwhelms with sheer talent.

If Colangelo plans on holding a grudge against the talented players who opted out of the World Cup next year, the U.S. could be looking at Olympic disappointment in 2020.