International superstars have now taken over the NBA, but Raymond Felton believes the Americans are still better as a whole. Felton, who played 14 seasons in the NBA, made his feelings on the subject crystal clear on the latest episode of the To The Baha podcast.
“I’m in the AAU space,” Felton said. “I’m an AAU coach. Some of these kids are not coachable, but then it’s a lot of these kids that are coachable. F*** that overseas s***, overseas is better, this and that. No, overseas ain’t better. They ain’t, sorry. I’m sorry, f*** that, they not.
“As a whole, they’re not,” Felton said. “Are they getting better? Yes, of course. They making kids play pros at 14 years old… They’re more disciplined because they play as a pro at 14 years old. 14-year-old kids is still playing AAU over here, they ain’t playing against grown men.”
It’s true that the U.S. still has a better pool of talent than any other country in the world. The sheer number of good-to-great players they have is far greater than other nations.
This is why Team USA has won the gold in each of the last five Olympic Games, but the gap between them and the rest is reducing. We saw Serbia give them a run for their money in the semifinals in 2024 in Paris. Team USA trailed by as many as 17 points in that game, and it took some heroics from Stephen Curry to come away with a 95-91 win.
Curry won’t be there at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and neither will LeBron James, who was named MVP in Paris. It will be very interesting to see if Team USA can still come out on top without the old guard. As things stand, there is a decent chance this spectacular gold medal streak could come to an end thanks to the big names they will come up against.
Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Victor Wembanyama will all have their eyes set on capturing the gold in 2028. They might just be the five best players in the world today, and this is probably the first time in history that you can make a strong case that not a single player from the U.S. should be in the top 5.
A couple of players from this group have dominated when it comes to the major awards in the NBA in recent history. Jokic, Antetokounmpo, and Gilgeous-Alexander have won MVP in six of the last seven seasons.
The only time they didn’t win was in 2023 when Joel Embiid took home the award. Embiid did play for Team USA in Paris, but he was born and brought up in Cameroon.
So, the last time a U.S.-born player won MVP was James Harden in 2018. You can maybe argue that LeBron should have won it in 2020, but that’s about the only time during this stretch that you can make a decent case for an American.
The fact of the matter is that the very best basketball players haven’t been from the U.S. for a little while now. If you look at the MVP race for this season, it’s likely to be between the five men we mentioned earlier again.
This is something that USA Basketball should be concerned about. There has been a lot of talk about how maybe the way young American players are being coached needs to be changed. Former NBA player Matt Barnes explained how European kids are coached differently, and perhaps a retooling of the system might be in order.
