First it was Kevin Love, then it was Paul George’s horrific injury. Now, Kevin Durant has pulled out of the FIBA World Cup:
This was an extremely difficult decision as I take great pride in representing our country. I know that I owe it to my USA Basketball teammates to be totally invested in the experience. After going through training camp with USAB, I realized I could not fulfill my responsibilities to the team from both a time and energy standpoint. I need to take a step back and take some time away, both mentally and physically in order to prepare for the upcoming NBA season. I will be rooting for USAB and look forward to future opportunities with them.
If Spain wins this thing (which they could very well do), the gold medals should come in the shape of asterisks.
UPDATE: By the way, I hope everyone realizes what losing the World Cup entails. The winner gets an automatic Olympic bid for 2016 and the summer of 2015 off. Meanwhile, everyone else has to play in their respective regional tournaments (FIBA Americas, Eurobasket, etc.). The good news for Team USA is that they’d only need to make the final of FIBA Americas to qualify for the Olympics. Hell, they could probably make the final with a team of twelve J.R. Smith clones. The bad news, of course, is the fact they’d have to play in what could have been an easily avoidable tournament. Not only is the degree of difficulty that much higher for the World Cup, but the prospect of essentially running it back next year, and then competing in the Olympics in 2016 (with, you know, two full NBA seasons mixed in), makes me tired just thinking about it.
[NBA.com]
