For Americans, losing an international tournament - any international tournament - is hard to accept. It’s our game. We invented it.
The truth though is that it’s not like it used to be, as we saw in the FIBA World Cup. And we’ve been here previously.
The rest of the has world caught up before. The Russians beat the US in 1972. It was controversial and ugly, but they got the gold. In 1988, the US fell hard, getting only bronze in the Olympics.
After the Dream Team redefined the sport globally, the rest of the world eventually caught up again.