By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
“The rest of the world is catching up” is a popular phrase when it comes to how the gap between the NBA and international basketball may becoming smaller and smaller, something that is reflected in both the league and FIBA tournaments.
Kevin Durant, one of the most experienced and successful NBA superstars in international competitions, doesn’t subscribe to that opinion.
“Hell nah. Of course not,” Durant answered when asked if the world will ever catch up with the USA on the Out of the Mud podcast.
“We beat Serbia three times this summer. One game? Yeah, they’re going to get one game when they look solid. France beat us one time but we beat them for the gold [in the 2021 Olympics]. We beat them in the last Olympics too.”
USA has been the dominant force in the Olympic Games, claiming gold medal from 2008 and onward. The situation has been different in the World Championships where USA doesn’t always feature the strongest possible team and prominent stars are usually absent. They had an all-time low seventh-place finish in the 2019 World Cup while losing to Canada in the bronze-medal game in 2023.
In both these tournaments, USA Basketball didn’t include players like Durant himself, LeBron James or Steph Curry who led the charge in the 2024 Olympics when their national team went on “revenge mode.”
“There’s going to be some players like Victor[Wembanyama], [Nikola] Jokic and Giannis [Antetokounmpo]. I don’t want to put Shai [Gilgeous-Alexander] in there because Canada is next door,” Durant added on the NBA. “If you want to look at three players and say that ‘they caught up to the Americans’…. you can’t just use three players to make that claim to say that they start to catch up now. Or because of one tight game against Serbia. I don’t believe it’s close. For people to give them credit just for being in a close game with us shows that they can’t even compete.”
Serbia led even by 17 points in the 2024 Olympics semifinal game against USA and was up 84 – 77 halfway through the fourth period. James and Curry then took over to give their team a 95 – 91 win.
“We created basketball,” Durant continued. “They were influenced by us. Luka was influenced by Americans. So is Jokic. So was Toni Kukoc. So was Manu Ginobili. Tony Parker. All these dudes were influenced by Americans. We set the blueprint.”
“It’s cute for sure for people who want to experience history,” Durant also mentioned. “I was there to see the changing of the guard between Americans to Europeans. People want to try to switch the narrative and hype some sh–t up when the reality is that we’ve been dominating these dudes the whole time. And they finally got close to 20 points and now you’re saying they are catching up. It doesn’t make sense. We set the standard on what being great in basketball is.”
Photo: FIBA Basketball