ANAHEIM, CALIF. — The scoreboard at the end of Team USA’s practice earlier this week raised some eyebrows. It read 36-17, the kind of lopsided affair you might expect when a squad of NBA stars with World Cup aspirations takes on a squad of players fighting for spots on NBA rosters. Only this day, Team USA’s stars were on the losing end.
The scrimmage brought even more questions for a version of Team USA that has already faced plenty of them.
But this U.S. squad wasn’t concerned.
“Nobody gave the whole perspective of what happened,” veteran forward PJ Tucker said the next day.