Tich’s Take

This column is about the FIBA World Cup.

That probably means nobody is reading by this point.

FIBA recently rebranded their World Championships, calling it the World Cup in an attempt to raise the profile of international basketball. The Olympics have been the most important international basketball tournament pretty much since James Naismith hung up that peach basket more than 100 years ago. FIBA is looking to change that and make their World Cup a mega-event like soccer’s FIFA World Cup.

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However, unlike FIFA’s World Cup this summer, FIBA’s basketball World Cup has not exactly been a success in the United States, registering about 1.3 million viewers for Team USA’s preliminary matchup against Turkey. Compare that to the U.S. Men’s National Team’s (USMNT) first match of the FIFA World Cup, which had 11.1 million viewers nationally. The comparison is pretty easy, actually — a bunch of people watched the soccer World Cup and nobody has watched the basketball World Cup.

Why are people not watching? As odd as it sounds, Team USA is too good. Sure, in soccer, the same few teams win just about every World Cup. Even so, a different country has won the cup each of the last five tournaments. The last time a country won back-to-back World Cups was Brazil in 1958 and 1962. Since professionals have played international basketball, there have been six Olympics. Team USA has won gold at five of those six, including the last two. Dominance is a conservative term to describe the team’s performance.

Americans love a Cinderella story. Almost as much as we love burgers and guns. That is part of why so many people watched the USMNT — they wanted see an underdog defy the odds. It is why we love March Madness.

On the international basketball level, we are much more the prince than Cinderella. The U.S. has no ugly stepsisters and we do not need magic pumpkins and fairy godmothers to continue smacking every team we encounter. Since a loss to Greece in the 2006 FIBA World Championships, Team USA has won 61 straight games as of Sept. 8, including 45 of those coming by more than 20 points — yes, 61-0.

The widely regarded No. 2 team in the world, Spain, which features NBA stars Marc Gasol, Pau Gasol and Serge Ibaka, has gone 0-5 against Team USA during that stretch. On second thought, Team USA is not the prince, we are the king that we never see in Cinderella.

Basketball has grown considerably in popularity worldwide over the past two decades. When NBA players were unleashed in international basketball, Team USA held an even larger advantage over the rest of the world with the Dream Team running roughshod over the 1992 Olympics, not allowing a team to get closer than 32 points when the buzzer sounded. In eight games, the Dream Team maintained an average margin of victory of 43.8 points.

So, by that standard, other teams kind of stand a chance now. Argentina won the gold medal during the 2004 Olympics. Yugoslavia and Spain won the World Championships in 2002 and 2006. Even in losing to Team USA five times during the 61-game streak, Spain has put a real scare into the Americans on multiple occasions. Some people even tabbed the Spaniards as favorites in this World Cup.

Maybe if we actually do lose, people will start watching.

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